On Slavery and the War between the States

I'm reading an interesting book on Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign. Since moving to the Valley in 2002, I'm fascinated by its history which attracted me to Stonewall in the Valley by Robert Tanner when I was browsing the shelves of our little independent library in Woodstock. Initially I just planned to look up all the entries on Woodstock, but when I read the first chapter I was hooked.

One paragraph that leaped out at me referred tangentially to slavery. It described Jedekiah Hotchkiss, the famous mapmaker of the Confederacy. If you've ever seen samples of his maps you were no doubt impressed by their accuracy. A satellite map can hardly compare. The man had a great gift for "seeing" the lay of the land. A few years ago, Larry and I saw a display of his work at Winchester's Museum of the Shenandoah Valley. Wow! How could anyone on horseback with little opportunity for a bird's eye view make maps so detailed and so accurate? And to think it was a hobby. At any rate, Hotchkiss's profession was education and he began a number of schools in the Valley, the New Yorker's adopted home.

Here's the paragraph that impressed me: