Jedediah Hotchkiss
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Confederate military map maker.
1828-1899
A transplanted New Yorker, Jedediah Hotchkiss became the most famous
of Confederate topographers. After a tour of Virginia in the late
1840s he settled there and founded an academy. In 1861 he gave up
teaching and offered his services as a map maker to General Garnett
in western Virginia. After serving at Rich Mountain and mapping out
General Lee's planned campaign in the mountains, he fell ill with
typhoid fever. In March 1862 he joined Stonewall Jackson in the
Shenandoah Valley as a captain and chief topographical engineer of
the Valley District. Often personally directing troop movements he
took part in the actions of the Valley Campaign and at Cedar
Mountain, Chantilly, Harpers Ferry, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. At
Chancellorsville he found the route by which Jackson was able to
launch his surprise flank attack on the Union 11th Corps. After the
death of his chief he served the next two commanders of the corps,
Generals Ewell and Early, but was frequently assigned to work for
Lee's headquarters. In this dual role he served at Gettysburg and in
the Mine Run and Wilderness campaigns. Accompanying Early to the
Shenandoah, he served through the campaigns there until after the
disaster at Waynesborough. He gave himself up upon notification of
Lee's surrender. By now a major, he was arrested but General Grant
had him released and returned his maps. Grant even paid for the right
to copy some of them for his own reports. Most of the Confederate
maps in the atlas of the Official Records were drawn by Hotchkiss.
After the war he was energetic in trying to develop the economy of
his adopted state. Also involved in veterans' affairs, he authored
the Virginia volume of Confederate Military History. (Hotchkiss,
jedediah, Make Me A Map of the Valley)
