A striking map of the young United States, issued in London in early 1783, just after the signing of the preliminary Treaty of Paris. Only the fourth known example of any state or edition. The preliminary Treaty, signed on January 20, 1783, recognized American independence, set the boundaries of the new nation, and marked a formal end to the Revolutionary War. There was naturally enormous interest in the Treaty in Britain, and contemporary mapmakers rushed to produce maps of the United States to meet this demand and explain the geographical terms of the treaty. Those first to market simply dusted off and slightly reworked existing plates to produce their maps, with Carington Bowles winning the race and publishing a map on February 4th, closely followed on February 9th by Sayer and Bennett. Unlike those retreads, this finely-engraved image by John Wallis is an original work, almost certainly designed and engraved after word of the Treaty reached London. It incorporates a simple oval map of the new nation, the southern states clearly bounded by the Floridas and the Mississippi River, though the limits of the northern states are unclear. The map is flanked by full-length portraits of General Washington and master diplomat Benjamin Franklin, arguably the two most significant figures in the struggle for independence. Washington is accompanied by an allegorical figure of Liberty and Franklin by those of Justice and Wisdom. At the head, an angel bearing a laurel wreath blows a fanfare on a trumpet. The publication in London of a map celebrating American independence might seem puzzling, but for decades there had been a strong strand of Whiggish sentiment running through the British governing class and commentariat. In issuing this map Wallis no doubt expected to find a ready market. There exists a second state of the map, bearing John Wallis’s imprint, dated March 18, 1783 and the imprints of engravers Thomas Jones Woodman and Henry Mutlow. The only known impression of this is held by the British Museum. The map was also re-engraved by an unknown engraver, with the Stars and Stripes added above the map and the Wallis, Woodman and Mutlow imprints replaced by several lines of verse. Per McGuirk this too is known only a single example, in the New York Public Library’s McAlpine Collection. Yet another variant of the map is often encountered on transferware jugs offered at Sotheby’s. The great rarity of Wallis’s map is likely explained by the fact that on April 3rd, 1783 he published the much larger, far better known “The United States of America. Laid Down from the Best Authorities. Agreeable to the Peace of 1783.” This map was entirely new, much larger, and more detailed, though for the cartouche Wallis used very similar portraits of Washington and Franklin.