Diagram of the Federal Government and American Union


The Diagram of the Federal Government and American Union is an organizational chart of the Federal Government and the American Union designed by N. Mendal Shafer, and published circa July 15, 1862.
By the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the political landscape was radically altered and the diagram was probably outdated. The diagram eventually ended up in the archives of the US Library of Congress.

Overview

The Diagram of the Federal Government and American Union was intended to show the whole of the US Federal government and the relationships between its different parts. It shows the outline of 42 states and Indian Territory, a Civil War battle scene, and Liberty holding U.S. flag and sword riding on the back of an eagle, Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet representing the "Executive" branch, the Senate and the House of Representatives representing the "Legislative" branch, and the Supreme Court representing the "Judicial" branch of the federal government. Also, its portraits of "The seven builders and leading spirits of the revolution."
The diagram is designed by Noah Mendal Shafer, who was an attorney, counsellor at law and inventor. He held office at Masonic Temple in Cincinnati. Onion interpreted that Mendal Shafer aimed "to end the conflict between North and South through education. 'The object' of the chart, Shafer writes, 'is to make the subject of Government familiar to the masses.' Familiarity, he intimates, would solve the problems that the nation was experiencing; the implication is that secessionists just didn’t comprehend the government’s purpose."
The Diagram was published in two editions:
The map was lithographed by Ehrgott, Forbriger & Co., a manufacturer of American Civil War lithography portraits and other documents, such as diplomas and maps. Later in the 1860s Mendal Shafer moved to the city of New York, where he once more came into prominence for receiving a patent for the invention of "improvements in binders for papers and the like, which allow the whole or parts of the contents to be removed or exchanged" on the 4th May, 1867, and a patent for a washing machine in 1868. The map was published in 1862 by J.T. Pompilly, a life insurance agents, in Cincinnati.

History

The Diagram of the Federal Government and American Union is designed was 1861 at the break of the American Civil War. This civil war was fought from 1861 to 1865 to determine the survival of the Union or independence for the Confederacy. Among the 34 states as of January 1861, seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America, known as the "Confederacy" or the "South".

Similar works in the 1860s

The chart has some of the characteristics of the first modern organizational charts, but it was not the first in its kind. About seven years earlier around 1854 the Scottish-American engineer Daniel McCallum created the first organizational chart of American business, which was drawn by George Holt Henshaw. In the same time, that Mendal Shafer presented his work in Cincinnati and in New York, in Washington the civil engineer John Y. Culyer and assistant to Frederick Law Olmsted designed a modern organizational chart of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. This 1864 diagram was entitled "Diagram illustrating the working organization of the United States Sanitary Commission."
In the early 1860s also different types of political maps had been published. One early example is Reynolds's Political Map of the United States from 1856. This map was designed to exhibit the comparative area of the free and slave states and the territory open to slavery or freedom by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Another example was "Our national chart" was published in 1866 as supplement to the Cincinnati Weekly Times ifor 1866. The print shows on the right side the "illustration of 'The soldier's dream' in which a soldier asleep on the ground during the Civil War dreams of returning home to loved ones; left side illustration shows bust portrait of Andrew Johnson with cameo portraits of the previous sixteen presidents and sixteen generals who fought during the Civil War.

Further developments

Little is known about the dissemination of the Diagram of the Federal Government and American Union. It is noted, that in 1864 Mendal Shafer delivered his Diagram of the Federal Government to the Board of Education of the City of New York, which passed it along to the Committee on Course of Studies and School Books without any further comments. By the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the political landscape was radically altered and the diagram was probably outdated.
For decades the diagram was hardly heard from. Exceptionally, the map was listed in the 1880 Catalogue of the Mercantile Library of Brooklyn, and in a 1904 edition of the Bulletin of the New York Public Library, which listed "Diagram of the Federal government, or the great republic of the United States of America. New York," from 1864. In 1965 American Book Prices Current. William J. Smith reported a "Diagram of the Federal Government and American Union." with a "Description of the functions and duties of the branches of government with vignettes of Lincoln and historical scenes" for the price of $100, and a 1975 book on U.S. Civil War store cards listed the map as well.
In the new millennium the diagram was digitalized by the Library of Congress. It was uploaded the Wikipedia in 2008 and in retouched version became featured article in 2013. Correa and others recognized the diagram as a milestone in the "History and Evolution of Social Network Visualization."

Modern visualisation of the Federal Government

The 1861 Diagram of the Federal Government and American Union didn't set a standard. As information graphic it visualized multiple elements, which later on are generally being visualized separately in different media such as maps, organizational charts, and diagrams. For example:
First, maps of the United States territories and its states have been drawn since its colonisation in the 16th and 17th century. Second, the use of organizational charts to picture public and private organizations has become into use in the first part of the 20th century. It has become common use to chart governmental organizations in multiple overlapping organizational charts. For example, here shown the 2011 Organizational chart of the Government of the United States from The United States Government Manual 2011, was the first of a series of over 70 charts of the Government of the United States. And last diagrams of the political system, which have come in use later on in the 20th century.

The diagram

Topic and aim

On the bottom side of map, Mendal Shafer described the maps topic, its construction and aim of the diagram. He wrote:

Departments of the Federal Government

About the Executive Department Mendal Shafer wrote:
And about the Legislative Department - Congress the text continued:
And about the Judicial Department and U.S. Courts:
And about the Union and State Governments:
And furthermore Shafer wrote in the bottom right corner of the diagram: