The Confederate States stamps lack the excellence of engraving and printing of the United States stamps, a deficiency due to the difficult conditions under which they were produced in the country or imported from England. But what they lack in this respect is more than amply compensated by their historic significance and associations. The home produced stamps were prepared under the stress of invasion; the foreign manufactured ones and much of the material for the local productions had to be brought through the blockade. In the annals of philately there are no more exciting records than those which tell of the capture of a ship bearing three De La Rue plates and 400,000 dollars worth of Confederate States stamps, which the agent of Davis's Government managed to throw overboard, or of the despatch (preparatory to the evacuation of Richmond) of printing press, dies, plates, and stamps to Columbia, in South Carolina, where they arrived only to be destroyed in the holocaust following upon General Sherman's capture of the city. The different designs of the successive issues of Confederate
stamps are shewn in Figs. 287-295; their history we have dealt with at length in "Confederate States of America: Government Postage Stamps."[7]
[7] Melville Stamp Books, No. 19. Stanley Gibbons, Ltd., London, 1913.
Some bogus stamps purporting to have been used in various temporary services are illustrated ([Figs. 296-299]), including one showing a fort at Charlestown, and another which purports to prepay "blockade postage" to Europe.
The postmasters of a number of towns in the Confederate States found it desirable pending the receipt of stamps from the Confederate Government to prepare and issue provisional stamps of their own to denote prepayment of postage. Among these are some of the rarest postage stamps known to collectors; the best authenticated issues emanated from:—
Athens and Macon in Georgia; Baton Rouge and New Orleans, in Louisiana; Beaumont, Goliad, Gonzales, Helena, Independence, and Victoria in Texas; Bridgeville, Greenville, Grove Hill, Livingston, Mobile and Uniontown in Alabama; Charleston and Spartanburg in South Carolina; Lenoir in North Carolina; Danville, Emory, Fredericksburg, Greenwood, Jetersville, Lynchburg, Marion, Petersburg, Pittsylvania, Pleasant Shade and Salem in Virginia; Kingston, Knoxville, Memphis, Nashville, Rheatown, and Tellico Plains in Tennessee; and New Smyrna in Florida.
300 301
The war with Spain produced a considerable effect upon stamp issues; but the war tax stamps which were very popular with young collectors by reason of their bearing a picture of the battleship Maine (Figs. 300, 301) were in no sense postage stamps, though often affixed to letters as small contributions to the war funds. Throughout the campaign there were many United States military postal cancellations used in Cuba ([Fig. 302]), Porto Rico ([Fig. 303]), and the Philippines ([Fig. 304]), and United States postage stamps were later overprinted for these and other former Spanish colonies, e.g., Cuba, Guam, Philippine Islands and Porto Rico ([Figs. 305-307]). These have since been replaced by definite issues for the Republic of Cuba, and for the Philippines.