Carte Generale des Etats-Unis de L’Amerique Septentrionale

Reconciling the Thirteen Colonies with the Fourteen States.

This interesting look at the fledgling United States was engraved by Pierre Francois Tardieu and published in 1787 in Paris as part of Michel Guillaume De Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer (Lettres d’un Cultivateur Ameriquain).

After being wounded at the Battle of Quebec during the French and Indian War, Crevecoeur settled down in New York and began a life as a gentleman farmer and surveyor under the English name of Hector St. John. Davis and Davies first published the 12-volume Letters in London in 1782 and its immediate popularity did much to encourage European emigration to America. This map was included in the three-volume French edition published in Paris in 1787 and shows the U.S. just a few years after the official end of the Revolutionary War.

The new country is evidently pushing westward, with the borders of several new states proposed by Thomas Jefferson outlined across would become the Northwest Territory. The French retain control over the vast Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi River and numerous Native American villages are noted throughout the image. Individual states and their respective capitals are numbered and listed in a table on the right side, with an asterisk indicating that Vermont had not yet joined the confederation.

Also of interest is the outline of the ‘Pays de Frankland’ – an uncommon example of the short-lived proposed state west of the Appalachian Mountains. According to Eliane Dotson of Old World Auctions;

“In 1785 settlers in western North Carolina and what would become eastern Tennessee organized a state government to be named in honor of Benjamin Franklin. Congress turned down their appeal but the state maintained a legislature and governor until 1788. This ephemeral state appears on only a small number of maps.”

Sources: McCorkle #787.8, Old World Auctions