The First Comprehensive Look at the Battle of Gettysburg With an Important Inscription

DITTERLINE, T. [New York, 1863]

Battle of Gettysburg. DITTERLINE, T. [New York, 1864] Sketch of the Battles of Gettysburg…Compiled From The Personal Observation Of Eye-Witnesses Of The Several Battles… [Map:] Field Of Gettysburg …Prepared By T. Ditterline.  Octavo in original, blue, whorled, silked paper wrappers, 24pp; now separate; chromolithographed, folding map with troop position in hand color, 18 ½ x 14 ¾ inches.  Title page inscribed at top; split at bottom of cover else excellent; folding map with a few reinforcements of splits, else excellent.                                                                                                                
A fine example of this striking, oval-shaped plan that provided the American public with its first detailed and accurate visual account of one of the most significant battles in American history.  It is accompanied by a pamphlet that provides an in-depth, chronological account of the complex battle.  On its title page is an important inscription from the New York Adjutant General and prolific historian, John Watts De Peyster, to Louis Phillippe D’Orleans, Compte de Paris, author of a massive history of the Civil War published 1875-1888.  A one-volume extract from this work on Battle of Gettysburg alone was published in 1886.  L. P. D’Orleans was the son of King Louis Phillippe and served as an aide-de-camp to McClellan during the Civil War.  From a prominent New York family, De Peyster published on a wide variety of subjects in addition to military history, including biographies and military tactics.

Ditterline states unequivocally on the title-page and elsewhere that this work was based solely on eye-witness, first hand accounts.  It was, in fact, written a mere few months after the battle and thus presents one of the freshest early accounts available of it.  With its clear, color-coded presentation of the alignment of forces, plan, three-day battle has been compressed in this map into a single image; it still stands as one of the most accessible and attractive plans of the battle ever produced.  Despite the limitations imposed by this format, the map effectively captures both the enormous scale of the sweeping battle as well as its shifting troop positions, from the preliminary encounter on July 1st in the hills northwest of the town to the climactic “Pickett’s Charge” against the Union center on the 3^rd, along with intervening events. George W. Childs, founder and editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, states in a testimonial in this work: “I have examined the map and compared it with some others of the same locality, and think it much the best.  My opinion is shared by several officers who were in the battle.”

This is the second state of the work, which was first published in Philadelphia in 1863.  The map in the present edition adds the statement of the work’s official Library of Congress entry just below the plan itself. 

An exceptionally well-preserved example of a work, which, as its inscription reveals, played an integral role in the historiography of one of the most critical battles in the history of the United States.

Stephenson, R. Civil War Maps, no. 331; Nelson, C. Mapping the Civil War, pp. 96-97.

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