1840 Campbell Map of the United States

An utterly fascinating map by Daniel Coxe illustrating the British colony of Carolana, a little-known period in American history. The map was issued for and accompanies the 1840 edition of Coxe's 1722 book A Description of the English Province of Carolana. It features a mishmash of speculative and wishful cartography intended to support Coxe's grant, as well as suggest opportunities for growth and commerce if his proposition to settle the Mississippi Valley with Englishmen were to be followed. While not a landmark of cartography, the book and map influenced geographical thought regarding the Transmississippi and theories of parallel geography.

A Closer Look

The map is loosely based upon the 1718 Guillaume de L'Isle map, Carte de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississipi, the best available source map in 1722, when this map was originally compiled. Coverage is reduced somewhat to focus on the Carolana Grant, and there is much of interest in terms of updated and revised content not present on the earlier L'Isle map. Coverage embraces from roughly central Texas to Cape Breton Island and from the Great Lakes to southern Florida. The Mississippi, being the subject of Coxe's interest, dominates the map and is the area of most detail. The map emphasizes the navigability of the Mississippi as well as its connections to rich American Indian trading partners, and river connections to British Colonies in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Of note, the cartographer here adds the Lahontan geography connecting the Upper Mississippi, via the Longe River, to the compelling 'Lake of Thoyago'. While Thoyago does not appear in Lahontan's narrative, it is key to Coxe's argument that the Mississippi had easy connection to lands west and possibly the Pacific.

Carolana

Carolana was an early British colonial grant given in 1629 by King Charles I (1600 - 1649) to his attorney general Sir Robert Heath (1575 - 1649). The charter spanned most of what is today the southeastern United States, from Albemarle Sound to the St. John's River, Florida, and west beyond the Mississippi River. In his unsurpassed humility, Charles named the colony after himself, deriving it from the Latinization of his name, Carolus. The colony was intended to 'spread Christianity' as well as to further dominate the tobacco trade and buffer against Spanish expansion into North America.

Carolana may have originally been intended as a haven for Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in France. Nonetheless, efforts to launch colonizing expeditions to plant the colony repeatedly failed. Ultimately, Heath did little with the grant and in 1663 it was quashed, on the basis that no settlement was established, to make way for new grants to Lords Proprietors.

In 1698, the lands and titles were acquired Daniel Coxe (1640 - 1730), an English politician and physician. Coxe was most interested in the western reaches of Carolana which he argued extended to include the Mississippi Valley. Although by this time the Carolana grants were mostly defunct or superseded by more recent grants to the Lords Propreitors, in 1699, Coxe successfully defended them in court. Coxe sent at least one expedition up the Mississippi, but generated no concrete settlement.

Daniel Coxe, Jr. (1673 - 1739), unlike his father, actually visited America. He lived in the colonies from 1702 to 1716. After returning to England, he published an account in 1722 of his travels and a description of the area encompassed by his father's claim, entitled A Description of the English Province of Carolana, by the Spaniards called Florida, And by the French La Louisiane. The book not only provides a history of the grant, but also argues for Coxe's plan to establish a British colony on the Mississippi - to oppose the French who were already more successfully doing the same.

The work, being of great interest, was reprinted several times, although all editions are scarce. It contained a map, (as here) supposedly based upon an original manuscript, illustrating the Carolana. It is one of just two maps to do so, the other being the 1651 map of John Ferrar.

As an aside, in 1731 Daniel Coxe Jr. made a further claim that he possessed superior title to that of the West Jersey Society, via a superseding deed that his father had recorded years earlier. The courts upheld Coxe's claim, forcing hundreds of settlers to repurchase their property or be evicted. The ensuing scandal precipitated lawsuits and riots; Coxe was burnt in effigy. The event was just one of many that inflamed American anger against the British during the years leading up the American Revolutionary War (1775 - 1783).

Publication History and Census

This map was originally published in the first edition of Coxe's 1722 book, A Description of the English Province of Carolana. There were numerous subsequent editions, the present being the 1840 London / Saint Louis imprint. The map was engraved by R. L. Campbell of Saint Louis. Examples of all editions occasionally appear on the market, with the earlier editions commanding a premium. The present example represents affordable access to a little known but extraordinary work.