1859 Bachelder Map, Encampment of the Massachusetts Volunteers

A rare map produced in the run-up to the U.S. Civil War, this is an 1859 plan of the camp of the Massachusetts Volunteers in Concord, Massachusetts, published by John Bachelder. Though generally less effective than regular army units, such state militias played an important role in the early months of the Civil War as regular units were organized, outfitted, and trained.

A Closer Look

The plan is oriented towards the east with the Assabet River at top and a pond, now Warner's Pond, at bottom, connected by the Washoba Creek. The Fitchburg Railroad, now the Fitchburg Line of the MBTA's Commuter Rail network, runs along the right side of the plan. A detailed schematic displays the location of the camps of various locally raised militia units, whose officers are listed at bottom. Additional units and visitors, including cadets from Boston, officers from New Hampshire and Maine, and a detachment from the Massachusetts state legislature, are also indicated, along with sentinel posts, the band, a stable, an observatory, and other necessary fixtures of a military encampment. A box at bottom-center commemorates the Battle of Concord between Massachusetts militia and British regulars eighty-four years earlier.

In the years prior to the U.S. Civil War, as tensions around slavery and its expansion boiled over in places like Kansas and Nebraska, states began to more earnestly organize and train militia units. As a stronghold of abolitionism, Massachusetts was on the leading edge of these efforts in the north. State militia units did much of the fighting in the opening phase of the war but fared poorly against trained regulars.

Some of the officers listed here went on to command large armies during the conflict, most notably Nathaniel Banks, who was also the Governor of Massachusetts at the time of this map's publication (he had previously been a U.S. Representative and briefly served as Speaker of the House). Disliked by many contemporaries for his political slipperiness, including on the issue of slavery, as governor of one of the most critical northern states, Banks was nevertheless in a strong position to stake out a leading role in the conflict. Though he had left the governorship by the start of the war, Lincoln chose Banks as one of the first 'political generals,' that is military commanders with little to no wartime experience but with important political clout. Commanding volunteer militia and then regular units, Banks was easily one of the least successful Union commanders of the war and was a regular irritant for Ulysses S. Grant when the latter commanded Union forces in the war's Western Theater. His losses included the disastrous Red River Campaign against a much smaller and poorly equipped Confederate force in the final months of the war. After the war, Banks returned to the U.S. House, where he would spend much of the next thirty years.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared and published by John Bachelder in 1859. It was meant to accompany and serve as an index for Bachelder's lithograph 'Review of the Mass. Volunteer Militia: At Concord, Sept. 9, 1859' (OCLC 191909119), held by the Boston Athenaeum and the Library of Congress. Though the present map has an OCLC identifier, it is not noted among the holdings of any institution and is scarce to the market.