Jedediah Hotchkiss's map of the Shenandoah: Stonewall Jackson's secret weapon

On March 26, 1862, Stonewall Jackson gave his topographer an order that sounds simple and was not: "make me a map of the Valley, from Harpers Ferry to Lexington, showing all the points of offense and defense in those places." Jedediah Hotchkiss spent the rest of the Civil War on it, and his maps helped win Confederate battles in the Shenandoah and far beyond.

Map of the Shenandoah Valley, 1862, by Jedediah Hotchkiss, about 50 by 100 inches. Library of Congress

The order

Hotchkiss had known Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson before the war, when Jackson taught at the Virginia Military Institute. By spring 1862 Jackson commanded every Confederate force in the Shenandoah Valley — and the valley, 150 miles long and 25 miles wide, had never been mapped in detail.

How the map was made

Almost nothing was left out: mountains, ridges and hills; rivers, streams and creeks; roads and farm lanes; railroads, towns and villages; even the names of individual farms. For a commander moving an army fast through country he had to know better than his enemy, that detail was the point.

Where to see them

Hotchkiss is one of the best-known topographic engineers of the war. Most of his original maps are in the Library of Congress, which has put its Hotchkiss map collection online. Several are reproduced in the exhibits at the visitor centre of Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park.

Sources

Written from "Jedediah Hotchkiss' Maps of the Shenandoah Valley," Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park, National Park Service, part of its series From Backcountry to Breadbasket to Battlefield and Beyond; a work of the United States government in the public domain.