The National Stamp Collection, consisting of nearly 4,000 items selected by experts for their representativeness, belongs to every American and is held in trust by the museum. The carefully crafted collection, a permanent cornerstone exhibit of the William H. Gross Stamp Gallery, tells the history of the United States in a new way—a story told by the images on stamps, stamp production, postage rates, and markings on mail. For display purposes, curators divided the collection into ten historically based eras, with stamps and mail matter chronicling those periods, beginning before the American Revolution. Professor Richard R. John of Columbia University, the country’s leading academic historian of communication technologies, has described the collection as illuminating the nation’s political, cultural, and economic history. Further, he says it provides “visitors with an authoritative, nuanced, and engaging contextualization of these remarkable artifacts” (Figure 32).
Before colonists declared independence in 1776, England provided a postal service that facilitated transatlantic exchanges rather than intercolonial communication (Figure 33). Within decades of the revolution, a postal system united the former colonies. To serve constituents, congressional representatives’ mail went free of postage, and the cost of mailing newspapers was low. High rates for letters limited other correspondence. Those receiving the correspondence generally paid the postage, which a postmaster at the sending office had handwritten or stamped on the envelope. Private carriers delivered the mail and collected the fee.
Western expansion and the Civil War created other demands, prompting changes within the Post Office Department, which streamlined service by extending the web of postal roads, lowering postal rates, and, in 1847, introducing the first prepaid U.S. postage stamps. The stamps honored the nation’s first postmaster and first president—Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. On 31 May 1861, after the South’s secession, the Union suspended postal service to the Confederate States of America and soon issued new stamps. The Confederacy issued a stamp of its own in October. Confederate stamps featured images of great Southern leaders (Figure 34). Even though citizens swore allegiance to one side or the other, their letters often crossed lines into enemy territory. The patriotic cachets and markings on Civil War mail tell stories ranging from friendship to adversity.
Postwar industrial progress allowed the Post Office to experiment with new machinery, and much lower rates ignited a communications revolution that provided the backdrop for other changes, including the necessity to better serve the business sector. Rural Free Delivery, Parcel Post, and the standardization of universal postal rates undergirded the industrial boom, giving people worldwide access to the nation’s manufactured products. To accommodate commerce, new formats such as coils and booklets appeared. A period of prosperity saw the popularization of leisure activities such as stamp collecting. In 1893, the first commemoratives stamps appeared to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the New World (Figures 35 and 36). The next year, the Post Office Department granted an exclusive contract to print stamps to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
During the twentieth century, the rise of corporate America, wars, the economic depression, technology, and cultural transformation all affected the Post Office Department and the stamps issued (Figure 37). Corporate communications, catalog sales, and direct marketing demanded a response from the Post Office, which made changes in its products and services. The rush of immigrants from southeast Europe and Russia prompted the issuance of stamps with images of American power and progress, a form of history lesson. During the Great Depression and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s early presidential administrations, redesigned, streamlined stamps suggested hope and national endurance (Figures 38 and 39). Airmail, formally introduced in 1918, filled a crucial need during World War II, connecting loved ones on the battleground and home front (Figure 40). Stamps bore designs with patriotic themes, and designs reflected the influence of politicians.
The cultural and technological changes following the Vietnam War and continuing into the twenty-first century are profoundly evident in postal services and the subject matter depicted on postage stamps. Although at one time only the images of famous Americans—presidents, scientists, and educators—appeared on stamps, now stamps produced by commercial printers rather than the Bureau of Engraving and Printing reflect America’s more diverse population and colorful popular culture.
The National Stamp Collection Index and Stamp Icons. (a) 1750–1847, Early America, 10¢ St. Louis Bear Type 1 postmaster provisional, 1845; (b) 1847–1861, Reform and Expansion, 3¢ George Washington, 1851; (c) 1861–1866, Civil War Era, 15¢ Abraham Lincoln, 1866; (d) 1867–1893, Industrial Revolution, 3¢ Steam Locomotive G Grill, 1869; (e) 1894–1908, American Century, 5¢ John Fremont on the Rocky Mountains die proof;
FIGURE 32 continued
(f) 1908–1916, Rise of Corporate America, 1¢ Benjamin Franklin, 1908; (g) 1917–1932, Boom and Bust, 2¢ Warren G. Harding imperforate, 1923; (h) 1933–1940, New Deal, 5¢ National Parks Yellowstone, 1934; (i) 1940–1947, World War II, 3¢ Win the War, 1942; (j) 1948 to present, Modern America, $1 Rush Lamp and Candle Holder invert error, 1979.
Benjamin Franklin, as deputy postmaster general under Britain’s Parliamentary Post, enjoyed free franking privileges—that is, free postage. He signed this 1766 cover “B Free Franklin.”
(a–c) This copper printing plate consisting of 400 subjects bearing the image of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in 5¢ denomination survived as a spoils of war. In 1862, the American federal warship Mercedita drew alongside the British steamer Bermuda, a blockade-runner. The boarding party found this plate and a consignment of some five million stamps printed for the Confederacy by Thomas De La Rue & Co, Ltd, London. The collection has a complete set of Confederate stamps.
The Post Office Department issued its first commemorative stamps in 1893. This wrapper bears a complete set of the sixteen stamps illustrating the story of Columbus and issued in conjunction with the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago, Illinois.
Certified plate proofs are the last printed proof of the plate before printing the stamps. Many philatelists consider this $1 Trans-Mississippi Western Cattle in Storm, printed in 1898, to be America’s most exquisitely engraved stamp.
In 1930, the Post Office Department issued three stamps depicting Germany’s LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin to subsidize its Pan American flight to South America, North America, and back to Germany. The Washington, D.C., post office postmarked this envelope on 19 April, the first day of issue of the three stamps before the cover flew on the entire round trip.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt, an avid stamp collector, saw the model for the 3¢ Susan B. Anthony stamp of 1936, based on a marble bust by sculptor Adelaide Johnson, he sketched a revision and added a dark oval frame around the portrait of the women’s rights activist.
Mailed by a U.S. sailor, this cover was postmarked 7 December 1941, Honolulu, 8 a.m., the moment the Japanese air raid targeted Pearl Harbor.
