c-o-12a
Title
African Americana Civil War envelope collection
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.”, 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]
Véritable extrait de viande Liebig. [graphic] : La case de l'oncle
Title
Véritable extrait de viande Liebig La case de l'oncle
Description
Series of six captioned (in French) trade cards containing scenes from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" to promote Liebig Extract of Meat. Cards depict scenes from chapters 4, 7, 12, 14, 17, and 41. Translated captions include: Aunt Chloe preparing corn cakes; Crossing the Ohio on floating ice, Elisa[sic] escapes from Haley; The fight against slave traders; The slave market; On the verge of drowning, Eva is saved by Tom; and the death of Tom. Scenes show enslaved African American woman “Aunt Chloe” at her brick stove, surrounded by three enslaved African American boys as the white adolescent son of her owner, George Shelby, teaches enslaved African American man and her husband "Uncle Tom" to write; enslaved African American woman Eliza Harris escaping white slave trader Mr. Haley with her son Harry in her arms as she runs across patches of ice on the Ohio River; Eliza Harris’s multi-racial husband George Harris shooting white mercenary Tom Loker in a chasm after departing his and his family’s shelter within a Quaker settlement and for Canada; the market of enslaved people attended by Haley following Eliza’s escape where a young enslaved African American boy stands for sale near a white man mercenary and an enslaved African American woman who reaches out for him; Tom swimming toward the flailing, young white girl Eva St. Clare, i.e. Little Eva, in the water near a dock and a steamboat lined with spectators watching the event; and an adult George Shelby visiting with a dying Tom who rests against a bundle amongst crates and straw within a shed after being beaten at the request of his white enslaver Simon Legree., Most of the African American figures are not caricatured in features or attire. Eliza and George Harris figures are depicted with fair complexions. Also depicts Tom as unbeaten in his "deathbed" scene. Von Liebig, a German-born chemist, who developed a manufacturing process for meat extract in 1840, established the Liebig Extract of Meat Company in 1865. The extract was marketed as an alternative to meat., Series title from items., Cards numbered No. 1 - No. 6., Printed lower right corners: Voir L'Explication au verso., Advertising text and explanation of the depicted scenes and their context printed in French on versos. Includes statement about the cards being distributed gratuitously with the purchase of Liebig extract., Majority of the cards contain a vignette depicting a jar of Liebig extract in the lower right corner. No. 1 contains the vignette in the upper left corner. No. 2 contains the vignette in the lower left corner, Date inferred from circa date of other trade card series issued by Liebig Company., Housed with the Emily Phillips Advertising Card Collection., RVCDC, Description revised 2022., Access points revised 2022.
Date
[ca. 1904]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department trade cards - Liebig [P.2018.49.4a-f]

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