Map prepared to accompany Gen. Chamberlain’s centennial address: Maine in History

Created to accompany General Joshua L. Chamberlain’s Centennial Address, delivered at the Centennial Exposition on “Maine Day” (and later, the following year, for the Maine Legislature), this map served as both a history lesson and an appeal to a nation still mending after the Civil War. In his lengthy speech, Chamberlain urged Americans to “revive and confirm the sentiment of nationality” and heal lingering divisions from the Civil War and Reconstruction. The map, as well as Chamberlain’s speech, places Maine at the center of the continent’s early struggles, spotlighting sites like Pemaquid and Monhegan as the “historical beginning of New England.” It charts the fierce Anglo-French rivalry, with “New France” pressing against English claims, and casts Maine as the critical “frontier” and “flying- buttress” of English settlement, while leaving out any mention of the Wabanaki presence in the region–both in the colonial era, and during Chamberlain’s present. This historical struggle of the Revolution, Chamberlain argued, was foundational to the eventual creation of a unified United States, one he was not sure, so soon after the Civil War, would live on to see its bicentennial.