Image: Depicts a white baby suckling his African American mother's exposed breast., Caption: The probable source of the aspirations after Kingly State and Royal splendor arising among the "C.S.A."--Cotton States Aristocracy, Provenance: McAllister, John A. (John Allister), 1822-1896, collector
Image: An African American man, wearing a striped jumper, is crawling with a whip in his right hand. The proportions of his body are grotesquely distorted., Verse 2716: "Whar's Jeff Davis?", Provenance: McAllister, John A. (John Allister), 1822-1896, collector
Image: A monkey wears glasses and reads a large book with backward letters and jumbled words., Verse 1157: Jeff's a NEGRO-MAN,-SIR: he seeks to know the "bitter end," and finds confusion and ruin only. Everything wrong side up., Provenance: McAllister, John A. (John Allister), 1822-1896, collector
Image: A skeleton sits on top of a whiskey barrel holding a scythe in his right hand and a goblet in his left hand. Two snakes are wrapped around the barrel. A skull and crossbones sit on the floor in front of the barrel., Verse 2178: "The key to the Southern Rebellion.", Provenance: McAllister, John A. (John Allister), 1822-1896, collector
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.”, 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.
Date
1861-1865
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Civil War envelopes - African Americana [various]
