1861 Goldthwait Map of the United States w/ Confederate Arizona

Produced in the early days of the U.S. Civil War, this is Jonathan Hale Goldthwait's 1861 map of the United States and Canada. Highlighting matters of military importance, including railroads, ports, and the proportion of enslaved people in each state, it is notable for its inclusion of the Confederate Arizona Territory, a short-lived attempt to extend slaveholding territory beyond Texas and increase Confederate influence in the American West.

A Closer Look

Goldthwait retains the prewar borders of Virginia and includes the Nevada, Dakota, and Colorado Territories, created just on the eve of the conflict. Notably, he divides the New Mexico territory in half, indicating the Confederate Arizona Territory (discussed below). The mapping of Canada is also unusual in that the territory of Rupert's Land is divided into territories named by local Native American groups, along with the Red River Colony.

Railroads, waterways, and mountains (in the Western U.S. and Mexico) are indicated. Railroads are noted as being single or double-tracked and the width of their gauge is also recorded, all details of military importance. At right, a list of forts is provided with their locations. Inset maps at bottom focus on the railroads of New England and the Midwest. Tables at bottom-left list the population of the states and territories along with the ratio of slaves to free population through successive censuses. Local times across the county are compared with that in Washington, D.C. (time zones were not instituted until 1883).

Confederate Arizona

Confederate Arizona was a territory claimed by the Confederate States of America from 1861 until 1865. The idea for an Arizona Territory appears as early as 1856, when the government of the Territory of New Mexico began to express concerns about being able to effectively govern the southern part of the territory, as it was separated from Santa Fe by the Jornada del Muerto, a particularly unforgiving stretch of desert. The New Mexico territorial legislature acted on these concerns in February 1858, approving a resolution in favor of creating an Arizona Territory, with a north-south border to be defined along the 32nd meridian (from Washington). Impatiently waiting for Congress to approve the creation of the new territory, thirty-one delegates met at a convention in Tucson in April 1860 and drafted a constitution for the 'Territory of Arizona', which was to be organized out of the New Mexico Territory below the 34th parallel. The convention even elected a territorial governor and a delegate to Congress. Congress, however, was reluctant to act. Anti-slavery representatives knew that the proposed territory was located below the line of demarcation set forth by the Missouri Compromise for the creation of new slave and free states, and they were not inclined to create yet another slave state. Thus, Congress never ratified the proceedings of the Tucson convention, and the Provisional Territory was never considered a legal entity.

At the beginning of the American Civil War (1861 - 1865), support for the Confederacy ran high in the southern parts of the New Mexico Territory. Local concerns drove this sentiment, including a belief that the war would lead to an insufficient number of Federal troops to protect the citizens from the Apache, while others simply felt neglected by Washington. Also, the Butterfield Overland Mail Route (an overland mail and stagecoach route from Memphis and St. Louis to San Francisco) was closed in 1861, depriving the people of Arizona of their connection to California and the East Coast.

All of these factors and others led to the people of the southern New Mexico Territory, or the Arizona Territory, to formally call for secession, and a convention adopted a secession ordinance on March 16, 1861, with a subsequent ordinance ratified on March 28, establishing the provisional territorial government of the Confederate 'Territory of Arizona'. The Confederate Arizona Territory was officially proclaimed on August 1, 1861, following Lieutenant-Colonel J. R. Baylor's victory over Union forces in the First Battle of Mesilla It was officially recognized by the government of the Confederacy on February 14, 1862. Nonetheless, by July 1862, Union forces from California known as the 'California Column' were marching on the territorial capital of Mesilla. Sent to protect California from a possible Confederate incursion, the 'California Column' drove Confederate forces out of the city, allowing them to retreat to Franklin, Texas. The territorial government fled as well and spent the rest of the war in 'exile'. First, they retreated to Franklin, then, after Confederate forces abandoned Franklin and all of West Texas, to San Antonio, where the 'government-in-exile' would spend the rest of the war. Confederate units from Arizona would fight for the rest of the war, and a delegate from Arizona attended both the First and Second Confederate Congresses.

Publication History and Census

This map was drawn by Jonathan Hale Goldthwait and published by 'G. Q. Colton' in New York in 1861. The identity of this little-known publisher is disputed. He might have been a member of the family of Joseph Hutchins Colton, whose firm was in a state of upheaval at this time, leading to a confusing mix of Colton publications from the early war period. But 'G. Q. Colton' is generally considered to be Gardner Quincy Colton, who briefly took up publishing before becoming a pioneer in the field of dentistry (a fuller biography is provided below). This map is held by the New York Public Library, Yale University, the Connecticut State Library, Brigham Young University, and the University of Texas at Arlington (which catalogs the publisher as G. Woolworth Colton, perhaps an alternate edition, but more likely a cataloging error).