St. Louis Mercantile Library

Earlier this month I attended for the first time the St. Louis Fine Print, Rare Book & Paper Arts Fair. We have exhibited there for all 8 years of its existence, but it was always my partner, Don Cresswell, who attended. This year it made more sense for me to go, which I was pleased about as I had never really spent any time in St. Louis.

It was even more of a pleasant visit than I anticipated, though, for I was totally blown away by the venerable St. Louis Mercantile Library. This is one of the many private libraries (such as the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Cincinnati Mercantile Library) founded in order to provide a library to the community in the era before public libraries were established.

The St. Louis Mercantile Library was founded in 1846 and it is the oldest library west of the Mississippi. It was originally established to be a subscription library "where young men could pass their evenings agreeably and profitably, and thus be protected from the temptations to folly that ever beset unguarded youth in large towns."

The Mercantile Library has moved several times-—it is now housed at the University of Missouri-St. Louis—-and its purpose has changed over the years as well. Today it’s purpose is to serve as a community cultural asset, as a research library, and a repository of its impressive collection which its makes available to local and national users.

The collections concentrate on Western Expansion and the history, development, and growth of the St. Louis region and of the American rail and river transportation experiences, and they encompass a wide variety of objects including rare books, manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, newspapers, drawings, and of course, maps and prints.

To have such a great research resource is terrific, but a visit to the library itself is a real experience. The library is on the lower floors of the university library and the rooms are simply packed with not only shelves and shelves of books, but sculpture, models, paintings, maps, and prints hung in, it seems, every nook and cranny.

My visit for the fair was my first opportunity to visit and I didn’t have nearly enough time, but I wandered about looking at familiar and unfamiliar items with a huge grin on my face. Anyone interested in the Western Expansion would be well served to use this resource, but anyone visiting St. Louis should make it a point to stop by and experience what is, in effect, a twenty-first century version of the enlightenment's cabinets of curiosity.

Shaping the Trans-Mississippi West: 1860-61.

As discussed in the previous Shaping the Trans-Mississippi West blog, the 1850s saw the division of the American West into slightly smaller, though still large territories. This was a period when many Americans were heading across the West to Oregon and California, but also when some of these emigrants from the East were settling in the wide open spaces between the West Coast and the Mississippi River. Then at the end of the decade new gold and silver discoveries brought in even more settlers, who very soon began to agitate for territories of their own.

Thus, as the decade of the 1850s came to a close, there was great pressure to create new, smaller territories in certain areas of the American West. The New York Times reported on Jan. 11, 1859 that there were six applications for new territories before Congress. Five of these were for trans-Mississippi regions: one was for the creation of Arizona “out of the southern half of New-Mexico,” one for Dakota from the eastern part of Nebraska, one for Laramie from the southwestern part of Nebraska, and then two for mineral-rush related territories, Colona and Nevada, to be formed out of the western parts of Kansas and Utah, respectively.

Some version of four of these proposed territories were created within five years, though most with different borders and in one case with a different name. The citizens who proposed the creation of Laramie, which would have been somewhat similar to the eventual Wyoming Territory, did not get their territory for almost a decade.

Despite these, and other petitions for territorial creation, Congress did not act. The reason was, not surprisingly, the simmering issue of slavery. With a roughly equal balance in Congress between the free and slave states, neither side was willing to let in a new territory which would lead to one side gaining a numerical advantage. Thus as the 1860s began, no new territories had been created since the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854.

This changed suddenly, beginning in December 1860, when eleven slave states declared that they were seceding from the United States, whereupon their representative left the U.S. Congress. All of a sudden, the Northern states controlled Congress and could create territories as they wished. Within the first three months of 1861, three new (free soil) territories were created and Kansas had become a new (free soil) state.

The Dakota Territory mentioned in New York Times article was created out of Nebraska, but not as originally suggested. When Minnesota had become a state in 1858, created out of the eastern part of the Minnesota Territory, the rest of old territory became officially unorganized. It was often called Dakota, and a provisional government was set up, but it had no formal status.

In 1861, Dakota Territory was created, but much expanded. It encompassed the western part of the old Minnesota Territory, which had been bordered on the west by the Missouri River, but it now extended all the way to the continental divide, adding on all of the Nebraska Territory north of the 43rd parallel. Newly created, and very sparsely settled, Dakota was now the largest territory in the country.

About the same time, Nebraska lost not only all the land north of 43°, but also a bit of its southwestern corner to another new territory, Colorado. (At the same time, though, Nebraska did gain a bit of land from the extreme eastern part of Washington Territory.) The New York Times article mentioned that there was a proposal for a new territory of Colona. This was spurred by the gold seekers who had poured into the foothills of the Rockies as part of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush of 1858-59. This region mostly lay in the western part of an very wide territory of Kansas. The new settlers in Denver City and nearby communities felt far away from the Kansas government well to the east and wanted their own, more local government.

A petition was sent to Congress by one group to create Colona, and shortly thereafter another group petitioned for the creation of a similar territory to be named Jefferson. When Congress was finally able to act after the secession of the Confederate states, southern names were definitely out of favor, so the new territory came in named as Colorado. It was created out of the western part of Kansas (the eastern part of Kansas Territory having just been accepted as the new state of Kansas), the southwestern part of Nebraska, the northeastern part of New Mexico, and a chunk out of the part of Utah east of 109° longitude.

This was the first part of a long series of instances where the Utah Territory had its borders shrunk down. Utah was dominated by the Mormons and there was definitely an anti-Mormon prejudice in Congress in the 1850s and 60s. Not only was there the Mormon War of 1857-58, but there was a general suspicion of the religion and a strong anti-polygamy feeling in Congress. Thus there was little hesitation in taking land away from Utah whenever it was convenient, as we will see several more times in the future.

In 1861, Utah lost not only a large chunk of its eastern territory, but also all the land to the west of 116° longitude. This was used to create another mineral-rush territory, Nevada. About the same time gold was discovered in the “Pikes Peak” region, the great Comstock silver lode was discovered, leading to a huge influx in prospectors to the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in western Utah. Similarly to the Pikes Peakers, those in the Comstock region wanted their own territory. This suited Congress fine, as they could diminish the power of the Mormons in Utah and at the same time get more control of the new mineral wealth in the Nevada, the third new territory created in 1861.

There was one other territory which made its appearance in 1861, at least according to some: Arizona. This territory had its genesis in the vast size and character of New Mexico. This territory had its capital in Santa Fe, which was located in the northeastern part of the territory, a region settled mostly by an Hispanic population. In 1854, the Gadsden purchase had added almost 30,000 square miles of land in the south to New Mexico, a region into which settlers from Texas and elsewhere in the American south moved into in the 1850s.

The settlers in this southern part of New Mexico--called either “Gadsdonia” or “Arizona”--strongly felt they needed a local government. Not only were they separated by distance and difficult-to-traverse terrain from Santa Fe, but they were separated by culture and beliefs from the New Mexican government. In 1856 conventions were held in Tucson and Mesilla calling for a new territory to be created from the southern part of New Mexico. The U.S. Congress, however, deemed that the population was still too small to create a new territory.

The dissatisfaction of those in the south continued and it only increased as large numbers of new settlers poured in after gold was discovered along the Gila River in 1858. In July 1860, another convention was held in Tucson, which drafted a constitution for a “Territory of Arizona,” to be organized out of New Mexico Territory south of the 34th parallel. The convention elected a territorial governor, Lewis Owings, and sent a delegate to Congress.

This time Congress refused to accept the new territory because of the slavery issue. Many of those in the proposed new territory were pro-slavery, with business connections with the southern states, and this new territory lay below the old Missouri Compromise line of demarcation between slave and free states. Thus anti-slavery Congressmen were convinced the new territory would eventually become a slave state, something they were keen to avoid.

When the Confederacy was created in February, 1861, Arizonians finally saw a new opportunity to create their own territory, so a convention was held in Mesilla, which voted on March 16, 1861, to secede from the Union and petition to join the Confederate States. These eastern Arizonians asked those to the west join them, resulting in a convention, held in Tucson, where the westerners voted, on March 28, 1861, to join those in the east in forming the new, secession territory. Owings was again selected as governor, but things didn’t any proceed further for a few months.

That summer, Col. John Robert Baylor, from Texas, moved his troops into the area to support the Arizonians’ cause. He fought and won the Battle of Mesilla and then on August 1, 1861, declared the creation on the Confederate Territory of Arizona. This act was authorized by the Confederate Congress on January 13, 1862, and then officially recognized when President Jefferson Davis signed the proclamation on February 14, 1862.

The initial victories and political success of the Arizonians lasted only a short time. In March, 1861, at the Battle of Glorieta Pass—-just southeast of Santa Fe—-a Confederate army was victorious on the field, but their supply train was destroyed and it soon became clear that it was militarily and logistically impractical to try to maintain their forces in New Mexico and Arizona. Thus by July 1861, the Confederate troops had retreated to Texas and the Arizona territorial government set up shop in El Paso. The Confederacy never again wielded any control within the borders of its purported territory of Arizona, but still the territory continued to be represented in the Confederate Congress and troops fought under its banner until the end of the Civil War.

The political fall-out for the American west from the absence of Southerners in Congress continued in the years after 1861, as we will see in the following blog in this series.

Maps in movies

Over the weekend I watched the 2002 version of the movie Solaris, which though I am a Sci Fi fan was not my favorite example of that genre. Be that as it may, it did have a map in the background of one of the scenes. This is a scene with Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) and Rheya (Natascha McElhone) in the kitchen of Chris' apartment. If you look closely, in the background is a 19th century map (Johnson?) of Illinois.

The map is rather fuzzy and I am not sure why this map is there. Maybe the apartment is supposed to be in Chicago or perhaps it was a map that belongs to the actual owner of the apartment used for the scene (assuming it was not a kitchen built on a set). In any case, not terribly exciting, but still I do enjoy finding maps in movies even if they do not play much of a role.

Maps also appear in this year's movie Lincoln, but there they play a larger role. This was called to my attention by Susan Schulten in her map blog. As Susan points out, in this movie the maps used are displayed as an important part of the on-going drama.

As Susan describes in her excellent book, Mapping the Nation (discussed in an earlier post in my blog), the Coastal Survey map of slavery in the southern US was an important document in Lincoln's thinking about the Emancipation Proclamation. [You can also read about this in an on-line paper by Susan.] Beyond this, however, maps were very much a part of the political landscape in Washington during the Civil War and this is nicely illustrated by their use in this movie.

Thanks to Susan for blogging on these maps and if you are interested in maps, you should take a look. Also, I hope anyone else who sees maps (or old prints for that matter) in movies will let me know.

Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon

I have written a couple blogs about the history of Alexander Wilson and of his important work, American Ornithology. There is a very interesting part of the story of Alexander Wilson I have not yet discussed, and which mostly took place after Wilson's death, viz. a rather fierce feud that arose between a group of Wilson supporters and those of John James Audubon.

It has been suggested that this feud started as a conflict that arose between Wilson and Audubon themselves, during the meeting of the two in Louisville in 1810, mentioned in my first Wilson blog. However, this is unlikely. First off, Audubon was not really a rival to Wilson at the time, and indeed it has been convincingly argued that Audubon was inspired to go ahead with publishing his own work because of his meeting with Wilson. Also, Wilson had several times met other artists/naturalists with whom he had good relationships and there was no reason he should have then felt threatened by Audubon. And finally, Audubon and Wilson went hunting together a couple days after they first met, apparently perfectly amiably.

This feud actually began a decade after Wilson’s death, in April 1824, when Audubon first came to Philadelphia looking for a publisher and financial support for his planned Birds of America. There Audubon ran into significant resistance to his plan, at the heart of which lay the fact that Alexander Wilson had become one of the revered figures in Philadelphia scientific circles and Audubon was seen by some as a threat to Wilson’s preeminence.

In Philadelphia, Audubon was introduced to Charles-Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon’s nephew and a respected naturalist who had settled near Philadelphia. Bonaparte was very impressed with Audubon's work and said he would support Audubon if he could get Alexander Lawson to engrave the plates for the proposed book.

Lawson, however, was not at all impressed, saying that Audubon’s drawings were “ill-drawn, not true to nature and anatomically incorrect.” Bonaparte and Audubon tried to convince him, but Lawson replied “I think your paintings extraordinary for one who is self-taught—but we in Philadelphia are accustomed to seeing very correct drawings.”

Despite this reception, Bonaparte did not give up, so he took Audubon to a meeting of the Academy of Natural Science in hopes that he would find support there. Though there are no records of what specifically took place, it is clear that the meeting was a disaster for Audubon. The reaction of the members seems to indicate that Audubon tried to bolster the importance of his own work by criticizing Wilson’s, and this did not go over well at all. Audubon received no support and was later blackballed when he applied to membership of the Academy.

George Ord, who was vice president of the Academy at the time, defended Wilson and sharply criticized Audubon and his work, an approach Ord avidly continued to pursue thereafter. Ord attacked Audubon both as an artist/naturalist and as a man, claiming that Audubon was belittling Wilson.

From the reception he received, Audubon realized he would get no satisfaction in Philadelphia, the center of American natural science and publishing, so he would need to go to Europe to achieve the backing he was seeking. Of course, Audubon was successful in Britain and the first part of his magnificent Birds of America was issued in London just three years later. This was just the beginning of the feud between the Wilson and Audubon camps. In 1831, Audubon issued his Ornithological Biography, a book intended to accompany the prints from his Birds of America. In this volume, Audubon made the claim that when he and Wilson had met in Louisville, Wilson had borrowed a couple of Audubon’s drawings which he then used, unattributed, in American Ornithology.

Specifically Audubon mentioned the “Small-headed Flycatcher, about which he wrote.

“When Alexander Wilson visited me at Louisville, he found in my already large collection of drawings, a figure of the present species, which, being at that time unknown to him, he copied and afterwards published in his great work, but without acknowledging the privilege that had thus been granted to him. I have more than once regretted this, not by any means so much on my own account, as for the sake of one to whom we are so deeply indebted for his elucidation of our ornithology.

It is definitely true that the drawings are essentially the same. However, Wilson’s backers, led by George Orb, claimed that the copying went the other way. In his text, Wilson had written that the specimen he used for his drawing of the Small-headed Flycatcher was shot in April 1812 in New Jersey and Ord said he was with Wilson when it was shot. Wilson also claimed to have shot “several of the same species” and Lawson said that he made the engraving of this bird from an actual specimen.

Finally, Ord pointed out that there were other cases where Wilson definitely had drawn his images from life, but where Audubon’s drawings were so similar that he must have copied Wilson. A good example is the two depictions of the Mississippi Kite, which Wilson clearly had produced before Audubon's print.

In the case of the small-headed flycatcher it is not clear who copied whom and the debate continues to today. But what makes this story particularly interesting is that the only small-headed flycatchers anyone has ever seen are the ones in Wilson’s and Audubon’s prints! No such bird has been found today and while over the years some have claimed to have spotted this bird, no specimen has ever been brought forth. It would appear that one of these naturalist probably drew some variant of another known warbler or flycatcher, but no one is sure. A fun puzzle and story!

Maps & the Kansas-Nebraska Act

I recently finished reading Susan Schulten’s fascinating Mapping the Nation. History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America. This scholarly work examines the development and importance of thematic maps in the United States during the 19th century. (The maps discussed in the books and an interesting blog by Susan can be found on the Mapping the Nation web site) One section that really caught my attention was the use of maps as part of the national argument over the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 (pages 128-130).

In the previous blog, I discussed the Kansas-Nebraska Act as the most important change in the political borders of the trans-Mississippi West during the 1850s. It wasn’t just in political borders that this act had an impact, for it was one of the most controversial Congressional acts in an ante-bellum period filled with controversial acts.

The crux of the issue was, of course, slavery. In the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Congress laid down that slavery would not be permitted in the Louisiana Purchase lands north of 36°30” latitude. By the Kansas-Nebraska Act, however, these new territories would be created under the process of “popular sovereignty.” This allowed the citizens of Kansas and Nebraska—-despite the fact that both were north of the Missouri Compromise line—-to vote on whether to be free or slave.

To those opposed to the expansion of slavery, this was clearly a case of Congress stepping over the line drawn, not in the sand, but on the map. This caused a huge outcry in the north, led to the creation of the Republican party, and was one of the primary causes of the Civil War.

The issue was at its core a geographic one, so it is not surprising that maps played an important role in the furor over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The act was introduced by Stephen Douglas on January 4, 1854, and within days a “large and influential meeting of citizens opposed to any violation of…the Missouri Compromise…” was held at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City. Called “to protest against the project now pending in the Senate of the United States, for the repeal of that section of the Missouri Act which forever prohibits Slavery in the Territories lying north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes,” the meeting was attended by about 3,000 citizens.

Of great interest was a prop used for the meeting. As reported in a newspaper, “The front of the choir, in rear of the pulpit, was illuminated by a row of lights, intended to display the proportions of a large and handsome map of the United States and the Territories, prepared for the occasion by Mr. Colton. The map was painted upon white canvas and displayed the relative sizes and proportions of the States and Territories. A heavy black line was drawn entirely across its face, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, representing the latitude of 36°30’—-the line which defines the limitations imposed by the Missouri Act. The new Territory of Nebraska was indicated in its appropriate place, as proposed in the bill providing for its organization.” (The original bill mentioned only one new territory, Nebraska, but concerns about its vast size soon caused the bill to be modified to create two new territories).

This map was drawn by George W. Colton, whose father had a map publishing firm that was one of the country's most influential, and which George would take over with his brother in about a decade. Colton’s large, hand-drawn map graphically demonstrated that slavery would no longer be limited to the southern part of the country, for if slavery were voted in by the new territories, it would extend all the way to the northern border. This map helped galvanize the meeting and was referred to by many of the speakers.

A short time after the meeting, a New York abolitionist paper, The Independent, ran a woodblock cut map “drawn for us by our obliging friend Mr. George Colton.” This map is clearly a simplified version of Colton’s painted map used at the meeting. The paper said the intent was to “present our readers with a beautiful and accurate delineation of the States and Territories of our Union, illustrating their relation to slavery.” The white states were free-soil, the black slave, and “The Territories in regard to which the question of slavery or free-soil is yet an open one, are shaded as doubtful.”

This map was seen as an effective way to raise awareness of the threat of the expansion of slavery through the Kansas-Nebraska Act and The Independent was keen to spread the word. “We have preserved the engraved block; and can furnish stereotype casts like that which we now use, for two dollars each, to any paper that desires to aid diffusing through the community a correct idea of the extent of the monstrous iniquity that is now proposed.” An example is shown above from Concord's The Statesman’s April 1, 1854 issue.

The controversy over the Kansas-Nebraska Act was one of the main forces leading to the creation of the Republican Party and the Presidential candidacy of John Fremont in 1856. Other maps inspired by Colton’s original began to appear that year, for instance a map by John Jay 1856 in the New York Tribune, where Jay called on the readers to “Now look on the map, blackened by slavery.”

A whole series of other maps on the same theme were produced as part of the 1856 Presidential campaign. As discussed in Schulten’s book, William Reynolds issued his “Political Map of the United States,” where he differentiates the slave, free-soil, and territories “open to slavery or freedom” by the use of different colors. One thing Reynolds does as well is highlight the Missouri Compromise line with a bold white slash across the middle of the map.

Another 1856 broadside map, by G.W. Elliott, used a bold black line to show the Missouri Compromise demarcation and also distinguished the different status of the states and territories with reference to slavery, and other such maps were used during the campaign (a previously unknown version is discussed on Susan’s blog). Maps can convey some information in a graphic form which has a power beyond that of mere words and the use of maps related to this issue is a perfect example of that power. Despite the fact that Frémont lost, these different maps related to the Kansas-Nebraska Act played an important and fascinating role in American history between 1854 and 1856.

Shaping the Trans-Mississippi West: 1850-1859.

The lands of the Mexican Cession, acquired by the United States in 1848, came into the country without definite internal political organization. It soon became clear that there was a need to break this vast area into organized political entitles. Not only was the region too large to govern as a single unit, but a number of significant issues of the day made this a pressing yet knotty question for the federal government.

First was the flood of new immigrants into California after the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848. The gold rush increased the population in northern California dramatically and it was clear that there needed to be local organization and governance. The Mexican province of California was the most advanced and unified part of the lands acquired by the United States in 1848, and its citizens applied to Congress to be admitted as a state.

However, this could not be done easily because of the issue of slavery. By 1849 there were thirty states, fifteen free and fifteen slave. Neither the proponents nor foes of slavery were prepared to let in new political entities which would wreck this equilibrium. California would come in as a free state and that would upset the balance of power in Congress. At the same time, because of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, where slavery was prohibited north of the 38°30” degree line, it seemed that most of the land in the Mexican Cession would also be non-slave, a situation unacceptable to many Southerners.

At the same time, the Mormons were pressing to have a huge chunk of the Mexican Cession admitted as the state of Deseret, which would, naturally, be dominated by them. The Mormons had settled in the Great Basin, around the Great Salt Lake, beginning in 1847. Brigham Young, who had led the Mormons to this distant place so they would escape persecution, intended his follows to establish dominion over the vast lands lying between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, from the Oregon Territory in the north to Mexico in the south.

Hearing that California was petitioning for statehood, Young sent his representatives to Congress to ask that this region be admitted as the state of Deseret, which he thought should include also a bit of the southern California coastline. The name “Deseret” came from a word in the Book of Mormon meaning “honeybee,” representing industry. Congress, which was strongly anti-Mormon at the time, refused to accept any such state dominated by Young and his followers.

It was Stephen Douglas who came up with a plan which would—-in theory-—solve all these problems, the Compromise of 1850, which passed Congress in September of that year. California came in as a state, while Texas gave up its claims to the Mexican province of New Mexico and cut off its northern border at the 38°30” parallel. Its border had previously run much further north, into today’s Colorado, but with the new border the entire state would lie below the Missouri Compromise line and thus not contravene its slavery clause. In return, Texas was relieved of its huge public debt.

The lands of the Mexican Cession outside of California were divided into two large territories, separated at the 37° parallel, with Utah to the north and New Mexico to the south. It was here that the Southerners were paid back for the admittance of the free state of California, for these two new territories were brought in under principle of “popular sovereignty,” where their own citizens would be able to vote on whether to allow slavery or no. Some of the New Mexico territory and all of the Utah territory was north of the Missouri Compromise line, but it was argued that that compromise did not apply to these territories as these lands lay outside of the original Louisiana Purchase.

Southerners had long hoped for a railroad from Texas to the Pacific Ocean, but surveys in southern New Mexico made it clear that the best route for such a line lay south of the Mexican-American border as established with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This led, at the end of December, 1853, to the Gadsden Purchase, where the United States acquired an extra 29,000 square-miles south of the original border, creating what is today’s southern border of Arizona and New Mexico.

Also that same year, there was a new political border drawn in the northwestern part of the country. Emigration had steadily increased the population in the very large Oregon Territory, and those in the northern part, feeling cut off from the territorial government located in Salem, well south of the Columbia River, called for the creation of their own territory. In 1853, that part of the Oregon Territory, north of the Columbia River in the west and then north of the 46th parallel further east, was created as the Washington Territory.

With the addition of the western part of the country just before mid-century, extending the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, it became clear that there was a need for a transcontinental railroad. Most of the proposed lines for this railroad went through the large, unorganized section of the county that stretched north of Texas to the Canadian border, that is, the original Indian Territory. In order to build this railroad, this area would need to be politically organized.

By 1853, a number of attempts had been made to form a Nebraska Territory in this region, but Southerners stonewalled any such territory for it would, by the Missouri Compromise, have to be a free territory. The need to develop these lands created a pressure situation in Congress which was finally relieved in 1854 by Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act.

By this act, the Indian Territory was shrunk down to extend between Texas and the 37th parallel, and the area to the north of that was divided into two large territories. Kansas essentially was comprised of the lands west of Missouri to the continental divide and Nebraska encompassed all the territory running from Kansas north to the Canadian border. This was fairly straightforward, but the sticky point was the compromise that Douglas put in place so that the Southerners would support this act.

That compromise was to bring in these new territories under “popular sovereignty.” That is, the citizens of the Kansas and Nebraska territories could vote on whether to be free or slave. Since both these territories were part of the original Louisiana Purchase and lay north of 36°30”, this compromise was in direct contravention to the Missouri Compromise. This act infuriated many Northerners, and it not only led to the formation of the Republican Party, but it was one of the primary causes of the Civil War six years later.

This was the climatic event of the 1850s, but two other political changes did occur in the West before the end of the decade. In 1858, the eastern part of the large Minnesota Territory, which had by then become fairly well settled, was brought in as the thirty-second state, the western part of the original territory then left as unorganized territory called Dakota.

In the northwestern part of the country a similar thing occurred, where settlement in the western part of the Oregon Territory developed enough that it was brought in as the state of Oregon in 1859, the eastern part then attached to Washington Territory, which took on the shape of a tipped-over “L.”

While two states were created in the 1850s after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, no new territories appeared, something which would change quickly in the 1860s, as discussed in the next post in this series.

Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology

In an earlier blog, I wrote about Alexander Wilson, often called the "father of American ornithology." He earned this sobriquet mainly for his illustrated work on American birds entitled American Ornithology, the first work specifically on the topic. In this blog, I'll look closer at this monumental publication.

When completed, American Ornithology consisted of nine volumes published in Philadelphia by Bradford and Inskeep between 1808 and 1814 It contained 76 hand colored engravings composed of 320 figures depicting 262 species, including 48 that had never before been recorded. According to one study, this was over three quarters of the bird species that resided in the United States as it was then constituted, a really impressive achievement for the first attempt at an American ornithology.

Typically of illustrated books of the period, this was sold by subscription, where subscribers would get the work in "parts" or "fascicles," which they would then pay for, allowing the author to use that money to produce the next part; this process continuing until the book was finished.

Alexander Wilson was able to sign up just over 450 subscribers, for a total of about $60,000 in orders. However, with all the delays, added costs, and other problems, Wilson never received any significant money from the project and upon his death his estate consisted mostly of just a few copies of his book.

The birds in the American Ornithology were not shown in any scientific order, but essentially in the order Wilson came across them, beginning with the more common and popular birds. Wilson prepared his drawings for each bird based on his field sketches, as well as on studies he made of specimens that he had collected or which were given to him or which he found in the Peale Museum.

Wilson’s drawings were engraved onto copper plates by a number of engravers, including John G. Warnicke, but mostly by his friend and compatriot Alexander Lawson. Several species were usually put onto a single plate, sometimes quite crammed in, mainly because this was cheaper in terms of the cost of the copper for the plates, but also so Wilson could show more birds within the scope of the proposed work.

One point to note is that funding was more available when George Ord produced the later editions-—as the work had by then achieved a considerable reputation—-so whereas the paper used in the first edition was barely bigger than the plates themselves, the later edition prints have bigger margins. The lack of money for the first edition, compared to the later editions, also means that the paper and ink for the first edition were not as good quality and so first edition prints tend to have condition issues not found in the later edition prints.

In the book, Wilson included a short description of each bird and often also a longer essay which was based on his extensive observations. Wilson’s text frequently was fairly philosophical, reflecting his poetic background. It really is the writing of an enthusiast rather than a clinical scientist.

In terms of the prints, Wilson examined each copper plate as it was finished and he also superintended the coloring of each print. In most cases Wilson provided the colorists with specimens to follow. There is a story that on April 18, 1807, when a new plate had come from the engraver and was ready to be color, Wilson could find no sample specimen of the Black-capped nuthatch. Thus, he set off to shoot one of these relatively common birds, but was frustrated in not being able to find one.

For the coloring, Wilson started by using local artists, such as Alexander Rider (who would later be involved with Bonaparte’s supplement), but he then switched to amateur or untrained artists who would follow his directions more closely. One of these was Charles Robert Leslie, who moved to England and went on to become a famous artist there.

Wilson was very concerned about the color accuracy of his prints and he felt that sometimes the use of a black ink would have negatively affected the appearance of the bird in the print, so he experimented with printing areas of some of the prints in different colored ink. For instance, the Library Company of Philadelphia has a nice example of the “Roseate Spoonbill” which has the body of the bird printed with a red ink. [Click here to see more information on this print and the color printing]

If one is used to looking at the dramatic and imposing double-elephant folio prints of John James Audubon, then Wilson's small folio images might seem tame and unimpressive. However, they are really charming images, teaming with a variety of birds, their unusual appearance fascinatingly explained by the history of the work from whence they came.

The price range on Wilson prints is very moderate, especially when compared to those of Audubon, and really given their unique aesthetic appeal and historical significance, they are, in my opinion, rather under appreciated and priced. I think there are few, if any, antique prints that are a better value and I would recommend these for anyone interested in bird prints.