(CIVIL WAR MAP) Birds Eye View of the Camp and Fortificatio

Sale 2368 - Lot 72

Price Realized: $ 6,500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000

(CIVIL WAR--MAP.) Birds Eye View of the Camp and Fortifications around Suffolk, Virginia. Hand-colored manuscript map, 21 1/2 x 15 1/4 inches on two conjoined sheets; several closed tears with tape repaired, pasted into a crude early mat made from strips of wallpaper. Suffolk, VA, 12 May 1863

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From 11 April to 4 May 1863, a large Confederate force under Longstreet besieged a much smaller Union garrison at Suffolk, VA. The Union troops were able to hold out until Longstreet withdrew to fight at Chancellorsville. This brightly colored map shows the "rebel rifel pits," the Dismal Swamp to the east, several Union fortifications within the siege lines such as Fort Halleck and Fort Jericho (here "Charico"), and Suffolk town landmarks such as a church and courthouse. The camps of numerous regiments are shown. It is captioned "Birds Eye View of the Camp and Fortifications around Suffolk, Virginia drawen by Hamm and Seitz"--Hamm and Seitz presumably being the artists, while Isaac Beidler perhaps did the captions.
Isaac Y. Beidler (1826-1911) of Berks County, PA, was a sergeant in the nine-month 167th Pennsylvania Infantry. He completed this map eight days after the Siege of Suffolk was lifted, and then mailed it home with this touching note on verso, headed "Isaac Y. Beidler, his map": "I want you to take good care of it and don't give it to know body . . . I want you my dear to take a hot iron and ironed well after you take it out of the envelope, and keep it right nice and strait till I will come home, but don't show it to no body else because it might bring me truble."