The Civil War Graphics and Ephemera Collection is primarily comprised of the John A. McAllister Collection. The collection includes tens of thousands of examples of printed ephemera, most from the Civil War years, including circa 600 recruiting posters, as well as newspapers, political broadside and leaflets, tickets, trade cards, cartoons, and a complement of ribbons, buttons and other ephemeral items constituting the largest such collection documenting the Philadelphia home front. The collection of graphic items includes lithographs, engravings, cartoons, maps, textiles, drawings, photographs, and about 7,000 patriotic pictorial envelopes. Additionally, mixed media holdings within the collection document sanitary fairs, voluntary saloons and hospitals, generals and leaders, playing cards, verse, and Confederate States ephemera.