Key
At the selected date, the colour of each place shows who held it. To learn its story, click or tap a country or marker.
Drag to move · scroll to zoom · click a country or marker
To move the map on a touch screen, drag it. Pinch to zoom, or double-tap to zoom in.
This situation map traces the American Civil War and the generation that made it, month by month. Lincoln studied maps like it in the War Department telegraph office. The story begins in 1840, with the whole continent in view: Mexico holds California and the Southwest, Texas is an independent republic, and Britain shares Oregon. Over the next decade, conquest brings new land into the United States. Whether slavery will be allowed on that land becomes a question the country cannot escape.
The war map takes over in April 1861. Charcoal marks the eleven-state Confederacy; a tan border belt shows the loyal slave states; and a dashed line shows where freedom stopped in 1860. The Union’s anaconda plan sought to squeeze the South through blockade and river war. Follow its progress from the coast in ’61 to the rivers in ’62, the Mississippi in ’63, and Georgia in ’64. Grey-tan Union control spreads across the map until, in the spring of 1865, there is nothing left to color.
Across thirteen chapters, the atlas considers why the conquest of Mexico made slavery unavoidable as a political question, why compromise failed, and how the weaker side came close to victory. It also asks what emancipation achieved and what it left undone, how a democracy held an election in the midst of civil war, and what Reconstruction won and lost. Every battle, arrow and boundary is drawn where it happened. Follow the guided tour, or scrub the timeline and interrogate the map yourself.
Keys: ←→ chapters · space play time · +− zoom · ⌘K search · ? all keys.
You can return to the library of twenty-one atlases at any time: select the balloon at the top left.