Bibliophilic Essay #10: Semiquincentennial
1776 has been a magic number in the American psyche for 250 years. Why? It’s not the date of the worst-brewed cup of tea of all time in Boston harbor (1773) or the first fights for freedom (1775) or the last (1783). Indeed, Americans were champing at the bit of autarky at least since the 1750’s. The Seven Years’/French-and-Indian War of 1756–1763 was, arguably, the real detonation of colonial mercantilism; might (argue thousands of undergraduates a year) the War of Independence just have been an aftershock? Why 1776, then? This bisesquicentennial — please forgive my sophomoric sesquipedalianism, but I prefer that construction; I suppose I should be grateful we’re using Latin at all and not, say, emoji — marks, quite simply, the publication of one of the great American essays.
The Declaration of Independence galvanized a widely-felt injustice and turned rebels into Patriots. Walter Isaacson finds in it The Greatest Sentence Ever Written (not the foregoing, I’m sorry to say, but “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”), and who am I to argue? Printed paper is powerful, and is no less worthy of celebration than shots heard ’round the world or tea parties. To that end (for my next trick…) I want to limn the Revolution with books and maps in our collection published only in 1776.
Partly because I’m an unapologetic New York chauvinist (see: Essay #5) and partly because it was published 12 January 1776, I begin with Bernard Ratzer’s Plan of the City of New York.
At some 4’ x 3’ (patriotism precludes my use of millimeters), this vast plan points to the greatest resource in any conflict: information. Minutely detailed on land (the estates of Stuyvesant(s), Murray, Delanc(e)y) and on sea, with dozens of depth soundings, the “Ratzer map” contains everything necessary to attack colonial America’s second city. Even the coastal view at the bottom is strategic (thanks to a distinguished admiral who set me straight on this); it is indexed to a precise location on the map (marked with an *) and would confirm to a captain that he had indeed reached New York Harbor.
It’s a good example of closely-held intelligence; although there’s some evidence that American officers were aware of the map, only examples held by British commanders (including George III) have been traced definitively.
The Ratzer map focuses on the settlements at the southern part of Manhattan with parts of Brooklyn and New Jersey, but the strategic importance of the city was in no small part its access to the Hudson River; to that end we sank chevaux de frise near where the George Washington Bridge stands today, flanked by Fort Washington and Fort Lee (Arader is auctioning a rather splendid Serres picture of the British breaking that blockade 9 October 1776 in our February 7th auction, but as it was painted in 1779 I wouldn’t dream of mentioning it). Claude Joseph Sauthier’s Topographical map of Hudsons River is a “strip map,” making the 300-mile river easier to comprehend in an ordinary format.
Here the depth soundings of the Ratzer are extended, snaking up the Hudson. The hills, kills (from Dutch “kil,” river-bed), bridges and ferries are carefully noted, threats of ambush and promises of escape.
Our example’s superb and unusually full color, the oxidizing verdigris (copper-based green pigment) proclaiming contemporary coloring, indicates use by a senior officer. Indeed, the first two states of the map (both 1 October 1776) give quick way to our third state on 11 October — certainly a coincidence, as news couldn’t have reached London in two days — pointing to the intense focus on the river’s strategic value.
But — I hear you, dear reader, cry — none of these is a book! Through my blushes at having taught you so well in the last nine essays, I proffer the Book of The Year: Jefferys’s American Atlas.
Revised and expanded from its 1775 first edition, the AA is the ultimate resource for subduing the revolting Americans. Jefferys (1719–1771), protégé of George III from his time as Prince of Wales, benefitted from the access granted by his royal patron and produced superb American maps following the Seven Years’ War. His death, years before the first hostilities of the Revolution, brought the plates into the hands of Sayer and Bennett, who supplemented them with the very best maps available regardless of their makers.
Thus the most ardently-sought maps of the Revolution — Braddock Mead’s New England, Nicholas Scull’s Pennsylvania, Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson’s Virginia, Henry Mouzon’s North and South Carolina, John Ross’s River Mississipi [sic] (a lovely example is coming up at our auction) — are all brought into a single volume, as alluring to the modern collector as to the XVIIIc combatant.
Take for example the Mouzon map (also coming up at auction on February 7th), easily the best survey of the Carolinas of the XVIIIc, and used as the basis for nearly all subsequent mapping well into the XIXc. Whereas the Ratzer map, circulated separately, was held closely by the British, the Mouzon map — published in the AA — was certainly used by the Americans and the French as well: George Washington’s copy is preserved at Yale, Rochambeau’s copy at the Library of Congress and Sir Henry Clinton’s at the Clements Library at the University of Michigan. Leveling the playing-field, to be sure, but at an altogether higher level, how did this map shape the course of the Revolution? The French joined the cause in 1778 as the crushing “Southern Strategy” led to the siege and capture of Charleston in 1780 — all using the same map. To own it is to own, quite literally, a determinant of our Independence.
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In personal news — I’m happy to share that I’ve been named president of the New York Map Society, which since 1978 has supported and encouraged the study, preservation and collecting of maps here in New York. My inaugural lecture — “Dutch Gold: Mapping Dominance in the XVIIc” — will be broadcast on Zoom at 7pm on Tuesday the 27th of January 2026. This link will take you to further details.
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