1890 Vorzet Map of Corinth, Mississippi, Winchester and Suffolk, Virginia

This sheet includes three intricate 1890 Dumas Vorzet maps of Corinth, Mississippi, and Winchester and Suffolk, Virginia, sites of battles during the American Civil War (1861 - 1865). It was issued to illustrate the scarce atlas volume of the French edition of the exiled french prince Philippe d'Orléans' Histoire de la Guerre Civile en Amérique.

A Closer Look

The sheet is divided into three maps, with the largest of the three occupying the left half of the sheet, depicting the city of Corinth, Mississippi, and its surroundings. Roads, railways, rivers, bridges, elevation, and military encampments are illustrated down to the individual building and labeled, as with the other maps in the atlas, using an idiosyncratic combination of English and French (Quartier General de Halleck, Ouvrages des Confédérés). At the bottom right is a closer-scale map of Corinth and its immediate surroundings.

The right half of the sheet includes two maps of Winchester and Suffolk, Virginia, respectively. Winchester sits in northwestern Virginia and is only about 25 miles, as the crow flies, from Harper's Ferry. It was drawn into the 1859 raid by John Brown and his comrades on Harper's Ferry. It remained strategically important throughout the war because of its proximity to the arsenal there and because several rail lines passed through or near the city. Winchester served as a staging ground for armies, especially Confederate ones, during multiple operations, including the Gettysburg Campaign.

Suffolk, near Norfolk in southeastern Virginia, was the site of a formidable Union garrison that could be used as the base for any Union attempt to capture Richmond. In April and early May 1863, Confederate forces under James Longstreet besieged the Union garrison, retreating once a relief force of Union troops arrived. Though the siege did not capture the garrison, it did manage to distract and divert Union forces from other potential uses.

Corinth in the Civil War

Though a fairly small town today, Corinth, Mississippi was an important strategic point during the American Civil War due to its being the intersection of two rail lines, the Memphis and Charleston Railroad and the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, control of which would be a major asset to either side in the Western Theater of the war. On April 6-7, 1862, the Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant scored a costly but important victory against the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in southern Tennessee (just beyond the scope of the map). Effectively rebounding from a surprise Confederate attack, the battle was one of the few Union victories early in the war and one that demonstrated Grant's effectiveness as a commander. (However, this was not immediately clear, as Grant faced negative news reports planted by his rivals and because the public was shocked at the number of casualties from the battle, the highest in any battle on American soil to that time.) After the battle, the Confederate Army of Mississippi retreated to Corinth (their staging area for the Battle of Shiloh) and was besieged by Union forces for a month before retreating. An attempt by the Confederates to recapture the city in October 1862 failed, leaving them in a weakened position in the West and opening the door to further Union advances, namely the Union assault on Vicksburg (captured July 4, 1863), which gave them complete control of the Mississippi River.

Publication History and Census

This map was drafted by Ernest Dumas-Vorzet, engraved by Louis Wuhrer, printed by Becquet, and published by Michel Lévy in Paris for the 1890 French edition of Philippe d'Orléans' Histoire de la Guerre Civile en Amérique. The atlas supplement, of which this map was part, was issued only with the 1890 French publication and not included in any of the earlier English editions. In this edition, the entire work is uncommon in institutional collections, with only 3 being identified in OCLC, and is scarce to the market. Most examples lack the atlas, which in OCLC appears only at the Boston Athenaeum. Minimal market history.