{"product_id":"1856-sketch-of-the-public-surveys-in-the-state-of-kansas-nebraska","title":"1856 Sketch of the Public Surveys in the State of Kansas \u0026 Nebraska","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis important government survey map captures Kansas and Nebraska at the beginning of a transformative period of settlement and political upheaval in the American West. Prepared under Surveyor General John Calhoun in 1856, only two years after the Kansas-Nebraska Act created the two territories, the map records the extension of federal public land surveys westward from the Missouri River. Its expanding rectangular grid represents the first step toward dividing the land into townships and sections that could be sold, settled, farmed and developed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eSurveying a New American Frontier\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe surveys were organized around the Sixth Principal Meridian and the 40th parallel, which formed the boundary between Kansas and Nebraska. Completed and proposed surveys are concentrated in the eastern portions of both territories, clearly illustrating the westward progression of organized settlement. Equally significant are the large areas where the grid stops, including numerous Indigenous lands associated with the Omaha, Otoe, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Delaware, Sac and Fox, Shawnee and other peoples. The map consequently records both the federal organization of western lands and a landscape still substantially defined by Native American territories, many of which would soon be reduced or opened to settlement.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eKansas and the Crisis Over Slavery\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe timing of the map is particularly significant. The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed settlers to determine whether slavery would be permitted through popular sovereignty, prompting competing pro-slavery and antislavery settlers to enter Kansas. By 1856, violent confrontations had erupted across the territory in the struggle remembered as Bleeding Kansas, an important precursor to the Civil War. Against this background, the orderly survey grid takes on greater historical significance. These were the lands being opened to settlement while the political future of Kansas and increasingly that of the nation was being contested.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"New World Cartographic","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43601595695165,"sku":"13404","price":175.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0390\/9705\/files\/13404a_Kansas_Nebraska_land_survey_map.jpg?v=1790895345","url":"https:\/\/nwcartographic.com\/products\/1856-sketch-of-the-public-surveys-in-the-state-of-kansas-nebraska","provider":"New World Cartographic","version":"1.0","type":"link"}