Freedom and Slavery, and the Coveted Territories
- Title:
- Freedom and Slavery, and the Coveted Territories
- Alternate Title:
- Freedom and Slavery, and the Coveted Territories
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- John C. Fremont Campaign
- Date:
- 1856
- Posted Date:
- 2017-04-14
- ID Number:
- 2101.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2101_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1800 - 1869
- Subject:
- U.S. Civil War
Unusual Graphics/Text
Unusual Projection
Slavery/Race - Measurement:
- 12 x 20 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This map warning of the expansion of slavery into the west appears in a pamphlet published by Horace Greeley in support of John Fremont in the 1856 Presidential election campaign. For more about the background and importance of the Fremont campaign map, see ID #2132, "Reynolds's Political Map of the United States Designed to Exhibit the Comparative Area of the Free and Slave States and the Territory open to Slavery or Freedom by the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise" (1856). The collection includes six examples of the Fremont campaign map, all dated 1856: ID #2132 (the Reynolds map poster), ID #1058 (handbill with map), ID #1059 (folding map in German), ID #2101 (pamphlet with map), ID #2199 (pamphlet with map), and ID #2264 (biography with map).
The map "startles the reader" (Schulten 129), in part through a number of techniques found in persuasive cartography. The grey tone of the "Coveted Territories" is very close to the black of the slave states, giving the impression that slavery has already (or nearly) arrived in the Territories. The text on the map describes the existing unfairness of congressional representation and postal expenditures, both favoring the slave states. Mexico (including Lower California), the Great Lakes, and the shorelines of the Pacific, Gulf and Atlantic are shaded in the same tone as the Territories, artificially enlarging the area "at risk." And the top of the map is tilted slightly away from the viewer, foreshortening the size of the Northern free States and enlarging those in the south.
Greeley was adamantly opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the western expansion of slavery. He editorialized against it in his paper, the New York Tribune, and helped to found the new Republican Party in 1954. This pamphlet reprints and attacks a series of dramatic statutes supporting the spread of slavery to Kansas, "the Code of pretended Laws enacted by the bogus Territorial Legislature of Kansas - a legislature notoriously forced upon the people of that Territory, at the hands of invading ruffians from Missouri, using the persuasive arguments of the Bowie-Knife and Revolver." Following the text of the "Border Ruffian Code," the pamphlet sets out the platforms of the competing presidential candidates, and closes with the reprint of the map, apparently content that the facts would speak for themselves.
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Source:
- Greeley & McElrath. [1856]. The Border Ruffian Code in Kansas. New York: Tribune Office.
- Repository:
- Private Collection of PJ Mode
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.