"The Franking Privilege having been abolished, to take effect on the first day of July, 1873, the Postmaster General is required by law to provide postage stamps or stamped envelopes of special design for each of the several Executive Departments of the Government for the prepayment of postage on official matter passing through the mails.
Description.
In place of the heads on the regular stamps, the official stamps adopted for the Post Office Department have conspicuous figures (numerals) to represent the denomination, with the word "Official" above, and the word "Stamp" below.
These printed in black, and resting on an oval shaped background, render the stamps especially distinctive, and leave no good excuse for confounding them with the other stamps. To further distinguish them, the name of the Department is printed across the top in lieu of the words "U. S. Postage." There is also a slight difference in the ornamentation of the border.
In design, the official stamps for the other Departments do not differ materially from those issued for sale to the public, the profile busts are retained but each stamp has at the top the name of the particular Department for which it is provided. Other changes appearing in the border need not be specified.
The stamps for each Department have their own distinctive color, as follows: For the Executive, carmine; State Department, green; Treasury Department, velvet-brown; War Department, cochineal red; Navy Department, blue; Interior Department, vermilion; Department of Justice, purple; Department of Agriculture, straw; and for the Post Office Department, black.
The official stamps will correspond in denomination with the regular stamps except that for the State Department there will be four additional denominations, viz: two, five, ten and twenty dollars respectively. These additional stamps are designed from a profile bust of the late Hon. William H. Seward, and are of double size and printed in two colors.
Official Stamps for Postmasters.
Postmasters at all offices will be furnished with the official stamps of this Department in suitable denominations and amounts as far as they can be supplied. The Department will exercise its own discretion in filling requisitions, and will send only in such denominations and amounts, as the needs of an office may seem to require. The less important offices, say those at which the money order system has not been established, will need only three cent stamps, but comparatively few offices will require stamps above the denomination of six cents. The higher denominations will be supplied to a few of the larger offices only. Postmasters will combine stamps of the most convenient denominations at hand to meet emergencies for which they may have no single stamp exactly filling the rate required."
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