Representing the US

Representing the US in Numbers

The 1870 Census documented the momentous changes ushered in by the Civil War. Maps, charts, and reports conveyed information about the consolidation of the nation—including new states and territories, a transcontinental railroad, and mining surveys.

Also embedded in the census were hints of unease regarding race, religion, and claims to rule. This map showed that while most Americans still lived east of the Mississippi, Native peoples were increasingly confined to Indian reservations in the West. In the next few decades, the US would pursue military, political, legal, and educational measures to further control Native lands and lives.

1870 US Census
Map showing in five degrees of density the distribution within the territory
of the United States of the constitutional population, i.e., excluding Indians not taxed
Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division

Railroad Workers
The transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, linked the eastern seaboard to the Pacific Ocean.
The Central Pacific Railroad Company recruited roughly 15,000 Chinese laborers to build the railroad’s western leg.

Crossing Mountains
To build the transcontinental railroad across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the largely Chinese workforce set explosives, bore tunnels, and labored at precarious heights. Over 1,000 workers died while performing these dangerous tasks.

Beggs
Locomotive and train cars, late 19th century
New-York Historical Society, The Jerni Collection

Representing the US in Art

After the Civil War, Congress funded multiple scientific surveys of western lands. Each survey generated reams of data pertinent to the nation's economic development. But it was the artistic products—created by photographers and artists who accompanied the expeditions—that publicized the West for a national audience.

While surveying Colorado in 1873, photographer William Henry Jackson captured the first documentary image of this 14,000-foot mountain in the Rockies. Its distinctive cross-shaped snowfield had been spoken of as a Christian symbol since the time of Spanish exploration, but few had seen it. Jackson's photograph made the Mountain of the Holy Cross a familiar icon.

Jackson’s photograph also inspired the western landscape painter Thomas Moran to travel to Colorado to create his own version of this natural wonder. Moran's monumental painting went on display in Washington, DC, in 1875, where it would have reinforced the prevailing idea of a divinely sanctioned westward expansion.

Thomas Moran
Mountain of the Holy Cross, 1876
Facsimile
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society

William Henry Jackson
Mountain of the Holy Cross
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society

“The Three Troublesome Children”

This cartoon appeared on an 1881 cover of a San Francisco magazine called The Wasp. It depicts “Columbia”—the female personification of the US—as a maternal figure contending with three unruly children, representing the Chinese, Mormons, and Indians. Uncle Sam—the US government—pays little attention to her plight.

In the consolidated postwar nation, campaigners for Christian homogeneity and cultural sameness decried the increasing diversity around them. They mounted escalating attacks on people they considered heathen, deviant, or alien.

The religious customs of the three groups caricatured here would become the focus of struggles to come.

“The Three Troublesome Children,” 1881
The Wasp (San Francisco, CA)
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

Marriage