Civil War stamps for 1863--that is to say, 2013

I've been absent from the blog for over six months, mostly due to a mild case of exhaustion--not fatigue or burnout, just an accumulated period of sleep deprivation.  I'm all rested now, I've made some permanent changes to my schedule and one thing I missed blogging about back in May when it was news was the release of this year's Civil War stamps.  Every year during the sesquicentennial the Postal Service issues two stamps, each commemorating a key military event from 150 years earlier.  The 2013 stamps commemorate, inevitably, the siege of Vicksburg and the battle of Gettysburg, the twinned events that turned the course of the war toward Union victory during the first week of July 1863.  The Vicksburg stamp is taken from a Currier and Ives print published while the seige was still ongoing; the Gettysburg stamp is from an 1887 painting of the battle done by our old friend Thure de Thurlstrup, whose painting of the battle of Antietam was the basis for one of last year's stamps and who also painted "Sheridan's Ride." 

The specific event portrayed by Currier and Ives was summed up in the caption they gave their engraving:  "Admiral Porter's Fleet Running the Rebel Blockade of the Mississippi at Vicksburg, April 16, 1863."  Here's the original, via the Naval Historical Center:

The script under the headline caption gives these details:

"At half past ten P.M. the boats left their moorings & steamed down the river, the Benton, Admiral Porter, taking the lead -- as they approached the point opposite the town, a terrible concentrated fire of the centre, upper and lower batteries, both water and bluff, was directed upon the channel, which here ran within one hundred yards of the shore. At the same moment innumerable floats of turpentine and other combustible materials were set ablaze. In the face of all this fire, the boats made their way with but little loss except the transport Henry Clay which was set on fire & sunk."

Fun fact to know and tell:  Admiral David Dixon Porter was the brother by adoption of Admiral David Farragut, whose capture of New Orleans was depicted on one of last year's stamps. 

The Thurlstrup painting upon which the Gettysburg stamp is based depicts a moment of Pickett's Charge, perhaps the climax of the whole war.  Specifically, it shows General Winfield Hancock overseeing the devastating Union defense against the charge.  Thurlstrup had been commissioned to paint twelve Civil War battles by L. Prang and Company, the commercial printer who popularized the Christmas card.  Prang paid for careful research, and preliminary sketches were vetted by survivors of each battle depicted. 

Thurlstrup's (or perhaps Prang's) title for the painting was "Hancock at Gettysburg," though today it's more often called simply "Battle of Gettysburg."  A further indication of how much Hancock's Civil War fame has faded is that the Library of Congress makes a rookie error in its listing for this painting:

Shows Major General George Hancock leading the attack popularly known as "Pickett's Charge."

"George" is Pickett's first name, not Hancock's.  And of course Hancock is not leading the charge, he's defending against it.

One other thing:  I want to stress just how great this whole series of stamps is.  Compare them with two other Gettysburg commemoratives.


The one to the left was issued in 1963 as part of the Civil War Centennial.  Nothing wrong with it, of course, but it doesn't even attempt the richness of historical detail or the sheer  gorgeousness of  the stamps we're getting now.  It is, however, miles above the cheesiness of what they issued in 1995, shown on the right.  This one purports also to show Pickett's Charge, but except for the stone wall it could almost be any generic Civil War battle.  And, for crying out loud, Brenda Starr had better artwork. 

The art designer for the Civil War Sesquicentennial stamps is Phil Jordan, and if the budget sequester hasn't eliminated his contract, he should renegotiate for
more money.  I learn from the website for something called Knottywood Treasures that he was art director for Air and Space, the magazine of the Smithsonian Institute's Air and Space Museum, for fifteen years and has designed over 250 stamps for the USPS on a contract basis since 1991.  He designs a lot of air-and-space-related stamps, commemorating things like the first moon landing and classic American aircraft.  He also did the great Thornton Wilder stamp, which I'm inserting here because I find playwrights more interesting than airplanes.

New Civil War stamps! Wonderful pictures for 45¢ apiece.

If the US Postal Service stays in business long enough, it will issue a pair of Civil War commemorative stamps for each year of the sesquicentennial.  The two 2011 stamps (the firing on Fort Sumter, and First Bull Run) commemorating 1861 were gorgeous, and the USPS has just announced the 2012 stamps commemorating 1862, which become available in April (after the first class letter rate goes up a penny).

As you can see above, they commemorate the capture of New Orleans and the battle of Antietam.  The New Orleans stamp uses as its illustration a detail from this Currier and Ives lithograph alternately titled "The Splendid Naval Triumph on the Mississippi, April 24th, 1862" and "Farragut's Naval Triumph on the Mississippi, 24th April, 1862," published shortly after the event.  Farragut's splendid triumph on this day was that he made it past Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, both of which guarded New Orleans, thus making its surrender to Union forces inevitable.

The Antietam stamp's illustration is a powerful choice.  It's an 1887 painting called "Battle of Antietam" by Thure de Thulstrup, the Stockholm immigrant who also painted "Sheridan's Ride."   It shows the charge of the Iron Brigade of the West early in the morning on the day of the twelve-hour battle, the bloodiest day in the history of  American combat and without a doubt the most important military event of 1862.  According to the authoritative Fox's Regimental Losses, the Iron Brigade of the West, composed of five regiments from Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan, suffered in proportion to its numbers the heaviest losses of any Union brigade in the war.

Look closely at the white building behind the fighting.   It's Dunker Church, house of worship for a pacifist anti-slavery sect of full-immersion Baptists (hence "dunkers") that lay in the midst of the battlefield.  Over 12,000 men would die that morning in the immediate vicinity of this building.  Here it is in an Alexander Gardner photograph taken two days after the battle, a photograph that Thulstrup may well have studied when making his painting 25 years later.

The Dunker Church that is today part of Antietam National Park is a reproduction; the original was destroyed by a storm in 1921.