Maps

[Specster]

It seems that Lee knew that cartography would be critical in lands he had no familiarity with and he brought a first rate talent in Jedediah Hotchkiss. By contrast Hooker got tangled up at Chancellorsville by being unfamiliar with the terrain and Grant did little better in the Overland campaign. A good cartographer was worth his weight in gold then and now. Sun Zu goes over this in detail in "The Art of War"....over 1500 years prior to the ACW. I dont know if his book was part of the curriculum in the 1840s at West Point but it would not have been a bad idea.