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@captain-oswin-things

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By June 1861 an “Envelope Mania” had taken hold of the Union, which, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, was an economic boon for engravers, stationers, and printers who had “no cause to complain of a lack of business” while others struggled to adjust to the new wartime economy. This collecting fad was made possible by recent innovations to methods of graphics printing. Civil War–era printers in the North fed the frenzy by producing patriotic, sentimental, and satiric illustrations that covered the entire fronts of wrappers and rendered them nearly unusable as anything other than collectors’ items. Consequently, many of these pieces never made it into circulation, but rather were saved in the scrapbooks of “collectors of curiosities” like Philadelphian John A. McAllister (1822–1896), who gave his collection of Civil War ephemera to the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1886. 

These envelopes, engraved and lithographed with images of soldiers engaged in heated battle, enslaved African Americans depicted as human contraband, and the stoic visage of Abraham Lincoln, appeared within weeks of the start of the conflict. Over 6,000 envelope designs flooded the market during the war; the majority (about 4,000) between 1861 and 1862. These “queer devices” (as described by the Inquirer) that proved an economic windfall for Northern stationery printers and purveyors not only document the politics of the nation, but also provide valuable information about mid-19th-century consumer and visual culture and the social and technological changes that impacted it during this critical period in our nation’s history. #MagnificentCollections

Browse our McAllister Collection of Civil War Envelopes & Stationary.