DESCRIPTION: Small hand-colored map of Santa Rosa Island and Pensacola Bay, Florida. Published before the end of the U. S. Civil War.
This fine map illustrates the fall of Pensacola to Rebel forces in "The History of the Civil War in America …" by John S. C. Abbott. Published in 1863 from Springfield, Massachusetts. Volume 1. Page 359.
Includes the noted locations of these key features:
- Pensacola, Florida
- Gulf of Mexico
- Fort Barrancas
- Fort McRae
- Fort Pickens
- Fort St. Miguel
- Navy Cove
- Warrington, Florida
- Woolsey, Florida
- Deer Point
- Fair Point
- Foster's Island
- Pensacola Bay
- Santa Rosa Island
- Santa Rosa Sound
- Bayou Chico
- Bayou Grande
- Grand Lagoon
Fort Pickens, located on the western tip of Santa Rosa Island in the Florida Panhandle, played a significant role in the United States' coastal defense system during the period from 1850 to 1870. The fort's strategic location allowed it to control the entrance to Pensacola Bay .
During the Civil War (1861-1865), Fort Pickens remained under Union control, despite Florida's secession from the United States in 1861. On January 12, 1861, just days before Florida officially seceded from the Union, a group of Florida state troops and local militia demanded the surrender of the Pensacola Navy Yard. The Union commander, Commodore James Armstrong, surrendered the yard to the Confederates without a fight. The Union forces, however, maintained control over Fort Pickens, located on Santa Rosa Island, which guarded the entrance to Pensacola Bay. Fort Pickens served as a base for Union operations along the Gulf Coast, and its presence helped to disrupt Confederate shipping and supply lines.The appeal also reveals how intertwined speculation and infrastructure were along the Georgia coast. The same investors held stock in the City of Brunswick Land Company, the Canal Company, and related ventures such as the Brunswick Land Company trust deed later cited in congressional records. The letter’s rhetoric promised that, once the canal opened, emigrants from Maine would build sawmills, lots near the wharves would sell instantly, and the city would finally justify earlier hopes of becoming a major southern port. It was both a financial circular and a piece of booster propaganda.
In the broader context, the letter marks one of the last organized attempts to complete the antebellum Brunswick Canal before the project faded into insolvency. It ties together every thread found in later documentation—the Ocean Bank trusteeship, D. Randolph Martin’s role as fiduciary, and the continuing pattern of Georgia infrastructure financed through northern capital. The document stands as a vivid example of how local ambition, speculative land companies, and Wall Street banking combined in the mid-nineteenth century to promote internal improvements along the southern seaboard.
PUBLICATION DATE: 1863
GEOGRAPHIC AREA: United States
BODY OF WATER: Pensacola Bay
CONDITION: Very good.
Clean. Wide margins.
COLORING: Beautiful hand color.
ENGRAVER:
SIZE: 6
" x
4 "
ITEM PHYSICAL LOCATION: 11
PRICE: $175
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