Capturing the Civil War

In the midst of the Civil War, stationery could just celebrate the Union. But it could also clearly delineate which site the fates were supporting. To wit: admire the way in which an angel protects the American flag while a devil hovers over the seal of Florida on the envelope below. Poor Florida man doesn’t have a chance in this scenario. And the state of Tennessee seems particularly in the hold of Satan thanks to the bright red devil here captured in its full-color glory.

The damning and lauding of various states is evident on many of the envelopes in this collection. Still, one in particular features one of the most harrowing images I have ever seen associated with the Civil War: an invocation of a hangman’s rope, laid out as a skull, with the simple caption “End of Secession.” Perhaps this would be the stationery you would use to send a note to a friend who was fighting on the front lines. Or perhaps your grief and fury would lead you to send this to a Rebel. The message wasn’t ambiguous.

The Grand Valley Collection, however, is far more than just propagandized envelopes—even though that’s the strange and rather delightful core of the collection. The 596 items made available via JSTOR are probably more known for their substantial Abraham Lincoln-abilia. Lemmon was a Lincoln enthusiast and collected anything he could get his hands on related to Lincoln. While some of the materials are punchy bits of ephemera (an envelope with an illustration of Lincoln kicking Jefferson Davis, for example) or somewhat tenuously connected to Lincoln (an Illinois grand jury indictment of someone for selling liquor without a license, signed by Ward H. Lamon, a former law partner of Abraham Lincoln), others are surprisingly poignant or relevant, such as the letter describing Lincoln’s second inaugural address, written almost immediately after it had been delivered and echoing the “long remembered” language so associated today with Lincoln.