DESCRIPTION: This Civil War–era manuscript map of Beaufort, South Carolina and its surrounding waterways documents the region at the birth of Reconstruction ca. 1862. The map is perhaps the earliest record during what became known as the Port Royal Experiment, when Union occupation, emancipation, and continued military conflict unfolded at the same time. The map shows inland roads, ferries, and navigable rivers, identifies numerous named plantations, and records Union and Confederate picket positions, defensive rifle pits near Beaufort, the battlefield at Port Royal Ferry, and notations of Confederate shelling. It reflects a landscape under Union control but still actively contested.
The most striking feature of the map is the large number of plantations recorded and the size of the text used to describe plantation ownership vs the military detail. After Union forces captured the Beaufort area in late 1861, most plantation owners fled, leaving more than ten thousand emancipated Gullah people on intact estates without pay, supplies, or legal protection. Beginning in 1862, Northerners arrived to address immediate problems: preventing starvation, organizing paid work, starting schools, and safeguarding newly won freedom for the formerly enslaved. For teachers, missionaries, Treasury agents, and Army officers, a map like this was a working tool. It showed where people lived, where food and cotton were stored, how plantations were connected by roads and waterways, and which routes could be traveled with relative safety.
The military detail on the map explains why civilian efforts depended so heavily on accurate local knowledge. Notes of Rebel picket lines, rifle pits, skirmishes, and shelling mark areas where Confederate forces remained active from January to July, 1862 and where movement involved real risk. The map therefore captures a moment when military necessity and civilian reconstruction were inseparable. Rather than illustrating a single engagement, it records how Northerners navigated, defended, and reorganized a newly occupied landscape while attempting, imperfectly, to replace slavery with paid labor, schooling, and basic civil order at the very beginning of Reconstruction.
The map is executed in pen and ink, with areas of water and terrain shaded in graphite. The graphite shading appears to have been produced using a textured aid beneath the paper, a method consistent with known mid-19th-century drafting practice for creating uniform tonal effects efficiently.
PUBLICATION DATE: 1862
GEOGRAPHIC AREA: United States
BODY OF WATER: Port Royal Sound
CONDITION: Good.
On lined notebook paper. Folds.
COLORING: Graphite shading.
ENGRAVER:
SIZE: 15
" x
10 "
ITEM PHYSICAL LOCATION:
PRICE: $4500
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