CONTROL OF TERRITORY
State lines are not drawn — control is painted over the national map; boundaries and fronts are simplified.
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CLICK COUNTRIES & MARKERS
CLICK COUNTRIES & MARKERS
This is a situation map of the American Civil War — the kind of map Lincoln studied in the War Department telegraph office, redrawn month by month. It opens in April 1861 with the eleven-state Confederacy in charcoal, the loyal slave states in a tan border belt, and a dashed line marking where freedom stopped in 1860. Then watch the anaconda work: the coast in ’61, the rivers in ’62, the Mississippi in ’63, Georgia in ’64 — the grey-tan of Union control spreading until, in the spring of 1865, there is nothing left to color.
Twelve chapters argue the war rather than merely recount it: why compromise failed, why the weaker side nearly won, what emancipation did and did not do, how a democracy held an election in the middle of a civil war — and what Reconstruction won and lost. Every battle, arrow and boundary is drawn where it happened. Take the guided tour, or scrub the timeline and interrogate the map yourself.
Keys: ←→ chapters · space play time · +− zoom · 0 reset.