Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Map of South Carolina

A nice example of Carey & Lea’s wonderful 19th century map of South Carolina.

Issued at a period of great industrialization across America, this image actually emphasizes the agrarian nature of South Carolina during the early 1820’s. Large county configurations reflect sparse populations, and the handful of urban settlements are connected by a sparse network of rudimentary roads. Some clusters of homes are only represented by the letters identifying a church, meeting house, or post office (as explained immediately below the title). Geographic features, including topography and swampland, are depicted pictorially.

Surrounding the map are numerous paragraphs and tables of statistics, several of which also allude to the agricultural composition of the state. Text such as “very little attention is paid to manufactures” and “the cultivation of cotton has become so profitable that almost every thing else is neglected”, along with the significant numerical ratio of black slaves to free whites, foreshadow a few of the reasons why South Carolina would be the first state to secede from the Union.

The map was designed by J. Wilson and engraved by Samuel Hufty, with apparent oversight by W. Kneass. It was issued as sheet number 24 in the 1824 edition of Carey & Lea’s Complete Historical, Chronological, and Geographical American Atlas. This important American publication was issued in six separate editions and three different languages between 1822 and 1827. It was heavily influenced by an earlier European atlas by Emmanuel Las Cases (published under the pseudonym A. Lesage.), which inspired the format of a base map surrounded by blocks of informative text and tables of statistics.

Henry Carey, a political economist and the son of prominent publisher Matthew Carey, and his brother-in-law Isaac Lea incorporated this novel theme into their atlas, which focused entirely on the countries of the Western Hemisphere. It was issued at a time of tremendous political change in both North and South America, and the detailed maps accompanied by extensive text provide a unique, often insightful, perspective on the problems and possibilities of the Americas in the first quarter of the 19th century.