Young, J.H. "Mitchell's National Map of the American Republic or United States of North America"

J.H. Young. "Mitchell's National Map of the American Republic or United States of North America."

Philadelphia: S. Augustus Mitchell, 1843, copyright 1842. First edition. Separately issued wall map. 24 1/2 x 33 3/4. Drawn by J.H. Young. Engraving by J.H. Brightly. Full original hand color. Together with "Maps of the Vicinities of Thirty-Two of the Principal Cities and Towns in the Union." Expertly conserved and mounted on new linen. Excellent condition.

A dramatic, separately-issued wall map of the United States issued by important Philadelphia publisher S. Augustus Mitchell. Mitchell had begun to produce wall maps about a decade earlier, and this was the first edition of a regularly updated series of "National Maps" which appeared every year from 1843 to 1850 (except for 1849). As intended for practical use, this map has a particularly strong appearance and very clear depictions of towns and roads between them, each labeled with a distance on it. The insets of the thirty-two cities surround the map. Included are insets of northern Maine and the southern tip of Florida. In the lower right corner is a table with the populations of each county within the United States.

This striking and highly detailed map shows the U.S. extending from the Atlantic to just beyond the Mississippi River, with the states of Louisiana and Missouri, and the territories of Arkansas and the recently created Iowa, much larger than it would become as a state. To the west of those lies a very large Indian Territory, as all that land (then thought to be useless to white Americans) had been set aside as a convenient place to send the eastern tribes. For much of the rest of the nineteenth century, of course, these Indian lands were taken away until only what later became Oklahoma remained.