NOAA: U.S. Coast Survey Civil War Map Among First to Visualize Slavery, Influence Lincoln’s Strategy

Washington, D.C.–(ENEWSPF)–February 10, 2011.  It isn’t often that a map visually displays a moral issue facing a divided nation and then affects a President’s response. Yet nearly 150 years ago, the U.S. Coast Survey — NOAA’s predecessor organization — produced such a map that, according to historians, President Abraham Lincoln used to coordinate military operations with his emancipation policies.

Created in September 1861, the mapentitled “Map showing the distribution of the slave population of…