It’s 1864, and the Civil War is raging. But southern secession isn’t the only danger threatening the Union. The U.S. has plenty of other enemies, foreign and domestic. If they got their way, this is what the formerly united states would look like – not two, but four nations jostling for space and supremacy on the land mass between the Pacific and Atlantic.
The map title reads: “Our Country as Traitors & Tyrants Would Have It; or Map of the Disunited States”. It was published in New York by H.H. Lloyd & Co. In blue, it shows a maximalist version of the Confederate States of America (CSA).
The core of the CSA was composed of seven Southern, slave-holding states who seceded following the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and South Carolina. After the Civil War began in April 1861, they were joined by four more slave states, this time from the Upper South: Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. The CSA later tried but failed to expand its authority over Missouri and Kentucky, which never formally declared their secession.
The map shows all these states but one as part of the eventual CSA, with Confederate Missouri only going up to the Missouri River, which transects the state. The Confederacy also gets New Mexico, the Indian Territory (now known as Oklahoma), West Virginia (which had seceded from Virginia to remain in the Union), Maryland and Delaware – and presumably also Washington DC, now stuck deep in blue territory.
The rest of the U.S. is divided into three states. The Atlantic States (in orange) are the smallest of the four entities, and it consists of the six New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island), plus New York state, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The border between Pennsylvania and Ohio is now an international border, with the so-called Interior States (in yellow). It emerges on the southern shore of Lake Erie and runs south to an international tripoint (CSA, Atlantic States and Interior States) at Wheeling (a.k.a. Fort Henry) – lopping off the northern tip of West Viriginia’s northern panhandle and granting it to the Interiors.