Details
Contributor Falen, G.W., publisher.
Harbach & Bro., publisher.
Magee, James, publisher.
King & Baird, publisher.
Magnus, Charles, publisher.
Upham, Samuel C. 1819-1885, publisher.
McAllister, John A. 1822-1896, collector.
Title African Americana Civil War envelope collection [graphic].
Publisher UNITED STATES. 1861-1865
Date 1861-1865
Physical Description 94 items (envelopes) : wood engravings and lithographs ; envelopes 8 x 14 cm (3 x 5.5 in) or smaller.
Description Propaganda envelopes published by various publishers predominately utilizing racist caricatures and satires of African Americans in relation to Jefferson Davis, slavery, and secession to promote Union support of the Civil War. Satires utilize themes of inversion of social roles, retribution, and Northern superiority. Includes envelopes with same graphic and variant text or title; sexually explicit illustrations; images originally published in different media such as cartoons; and one Southern imprint promoting a united Confederacy as the safeguard of slavery. Some caricatures portray African Americans with exaggerated features and speaking in the vernacular.
Includes images of enslaved people seeking freedom, as living "contraband of war," celebrating, or depicted as the shyster character Jim Crow; depictions of the "peculiar institution" of slavery showing a white enslaver in bed with an enslaved African American woman, her breast visible, and who is breastfeeding a white baby; secession equated to African American freedom seekers, economic destruction of the South, and the moral corruption of people emancipated from enslavement; Jefferson Davis caricatured as a traitor in execution and imprisonment scenes overseen by enslaved people; and views of enslaved people working on plantations with text declaring the end of "King Cotton." During the Civil War, the U.S. government declared African American freedom seekers as “contraband of war.”
Notes Title supplied by cataloger.
Date inferred from content.
Some copyrighted by Magee and Harbach & Brother.
Various publishers including: Philadelphia publishers John Magee, S.C. Upham, Harbarch & Bro., and King & Baird; New York publisher Charles Magnus; and Charleston, S.C. publisher G.W. Falen. Other publishers located in New York, Buffalo, Hartford, Cincinnati, and Lancaster, Pa.
See Steven Berry's "When mail was armor: envelopes of the Great Rebellion," Southern culture (Fall 1998).
Probably originally part of a McAllister scrapbook of Civil War envelopes.
RVCDC
Description revised 2021.
Access points revised 2021.
Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Subject Davis, Jefferson, 1808-1889 -- Caricatures and cartoons.
African American caregivers -- Caricatures and cartoons.
African American men -- Caricatures and cartoons.
African American women -- Caricatures and cartoons.
African Americans -- Caricatures and cartoons.
Cotton plantations -- Confederate States of America.
Crow, Jim (Fictitious character) -- 1860-1870.
Fugitive slaves -- Confederate States of America.
Miscegenation -- Confederate States of America.
Racism in popular culture.
Secession.
Enslaved persons -- Confederate States of America -- Social conditions.
Enslaved people -- Satire.
Enslavers.
Free persons -- Civil War, 1861-1865.
Freedom seekers.
Multiracial relationship.
Geographic subject United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865.
Genre Ephemera -- 1860-1870.
Lithographs -- 1860-1870.
Patriotic envelopes -- 1860-1870.
Wood engravings -- 1860-1870.
Printer Falen, G.W., publisher.
Magee, James, publisher.
Magnus, Charles, publisher.
Upham, Samuel C. (Samuel Curtis), 1819-1885, publisher.
Printer Harbach & Bro., publisher.
King & Baird, publisher.
Provenance McAllister, John A. (John Allister), 1822-1896, collector.
Location Library Company of Philadelphia| Print Department| Civil War envelopes - African Americana [various]