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The New Confederate Catalog: a Review
By Ken Lawrence
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Confederate States of America: Catalog and Handbook of Stamps and Postal History by Patricia A. Kaufmann, Francis J. Crown Jr., and Jerry S. Palazolo (Confederate Stamp Alliance, 2012) |
The easiest way to demonstrate the superiority and importance of the new book is to compare it with its most recent predecessor. The New Dietz catalog by Hubert C. Skinner, Erin R. Gunter, and Warren H. Sanders (the three men to whom the 2012 edition is dedicated) appeared 27 years after the last edition edited by Dietz himself. One might therefore consider the new catalog to have arrived on time or even a little ahead of schedule, just 26 years after the New Dietz. To make the comparison meaningful, it’s necessary to recall the controversy that met the New Dietz, which won a gold medal at the Ameripex 86 international stamp exhibition in Chicago before any reviews by knowledgeable scholars had been published. Word spread afterward that Ameripex literature judges were dismayed when a wave of criticism washed over the book in ensuing months as Confederate philatelic specialists and Civil War postal historians weighed in with their commentaries.
| Hear Brian Green talk about collecting the Confederacy in the April 27, 2012, VSC Radio Report. |
A decade after its first appearance, publisher Kenneth R. Laurence, the Florida dealer and Manuscript Society president who died several years ago, published a second edition which, to my casual perusal, appeared identical in content to the original except for the omission of an advertisement for New England Stamp Company, so the critics’ issues were not addressed in the reprint. Hubert was furious; he complained to me that Laurence had neither consulted nor paid him for the 1996 republication of his work, and asked me to help him secure justice and compensation. His complaint never came to the APS Board of Vice Presidents, so I assume he and Laurence settled their dispute privately. All in all, the 1986/1996 New Dietz catalog had a checkered run, yet it remained the standard reference for buyers, sellers, and scholars for a whole generation.
The 1986 book ran 270 pages; the 2012 catalog has 516 larger pages. Previous editions were illustrated in black-and-white, except for an eight-page color signature in the New Dietz that failed to impress Dick Graham. He complained that “color quality is off and some of the photos are blurry.” Brian Green agreed that the quality was poor, and observed that “a cover certified as fake by the PF and conclusively analyzed as such in its 1983 Opinions book (pages 83-85) is among those shown in color.” The new catalog and handbook has color illustrations throughout, and nearly all are clear and of serviceable quality. From the beginning of the book, improvements are evident. An alphabetic Table of Contents by Subject that immediately follows the standard consecutive-page Table of Contents is not a true index, but is probably the next best thing, and is placed where it serves users most easily. The book’s introduction ends with a lengthy commentary titled “Scientific Testing and the Future of Confederate Philately,” which not only glimpses technical improvements that lie ahead, but also strikes a sensitive chord of modesty for a collecting specialty in mid-passage, not yet perfectly formed to mesh harmoniously with other philatelic classics communities, but no longer so eager to sit apart from them.
The 2012 edition has roughly twice as much information as the 1986 edition, and it’s probably safe to assume that the stellar group of contributors fixed most of the problems that plagued the earlier one, but Brian Green might repeat some of his 1986 criticisms: “Omitted from the [prisoner-of-war chapter] (though present in the 1959 catalog) was the special postmark of Andersonville, Ga. prison which is different from the town postmark. I would suggest that future editions illustrate this postmark in the prison section (also under fake postmarks since it has been faked) since its usage is associated with the prison.” The 2012 authors did not heed that advice, nor his suggestion to “include dates of usage for the prisons where known.” He had complained that the color cancel chapter failed to include Woodstock, Virginia, in blue; so does that chapter in the 2012 edition.
On the plus side, to take one improvement as an example, there was recent discussion online about an ATLANTA, GEO. PAID 5 postal marking that had been offered for sale as a postmaster’s provisional. Both 1986 and 2012 editions list and price the marking. The 1986 catalog offered scant interpretive guidance, but Brian Green’s review pointed out that “some of the handstamped paids might well be provisionals and vice versa.” The 2012 edition draws clearer distinctions, and adds this cautionary note concerning the Atlanta marking, echoing advice that Frank Crown, Leonard Hartmann, and I posted online: “Stampless uses are not easily distinguished from provisional uses. Each example must be considered on its merits.” Another footnote advises that dangerous forgeries exist.
The new book invites new controversies too, but on a more beneficial and constructively debatable plane. The table of secession and admission to the Confederacy has corrected six of the dates for the eleven actual Confederate states, and has added dates for the Confederate rumps of Kentucky and Missouri plus Arizona territory and Indian Nations. New Mexico territory has a line, even though not even a rump there claimed to have seceded, because Confederate mail couriers carried letters where Confederate troops occupied Union land. It’s a shame that three footnote superscripts for North Carolina and Texas are misplaced in the table, which had me baffled until I figured out where they properly belonged. The table is in alphabetic order instead of chronological, which offers no benefit but diminishes its usefulness.
The most drastic changes are for Texas, which seceded on March 2, 1861, and accepted membership in the CSA on March 5, thus being an independent state for only three days, not “1 mo. 6 days” as reported in the 1986 New Dietz catalog. The new catalog dates for Texas secession and admission agree with a report I wrote for Linn’s last year, so naturally I’m happy to see them. I suggested that covers postmarked from February 1 to March 1 ought to retain significance even though they are no longer listed as independent state covers: “Texas postal historians should consider creating a new category of mail for the period between Texas’ declaration of intent to secede (February 1) and the date that secession became effective (March 2), analogous to a separation that precedes a divorce... pre-independence secession mail, perhaps.” Dietz himself had not listed and priced covers showing Independent and Confederate State use of U.S. postage; the 1986 New Dietz catalog pioneered that feature, which has matured in the hands of the present generation. The example of Texas highlights an aspect that has potential for continued evolution.
A new seven-page “Confederate Postage Rates” chapter is as comprehensive as one could wish, including basic postage rates (letter postage, waterway mail, international letter mail, books, circulars, handbills and pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, packages, treasury notes and bonds, and private express conveyance), prepayment and exemptions, additional services (advertised and forwarded mail, way letters, and trans-Mississippi mail), and free mail. As wonderful as it is, it’s all the more remarkable because the 1986 New Dietz had no tabular postal rate guide at all.
Chapters that follow on stampless markings, postmasters’ provisionals, and general issues are greatly expanded, based on the latest scholarship, making this a truly specialized catalog. The Madison, Florida, 3¢ adhesive provisionals are in, finally; they were regarded with suspicion and excluded in 1986. Confederate regular issues filled 29 pages in 1986; 59 in 2012, including essays, proofs, unofficial printings, fakes, facsimiles, and counterfeits (but there’s no mention that the forger Dr. James A. Petrie had been a U.S. Navy surgeon). This is not an area of my collecting interest or expertise, but I have every reason to anticipate cheers of gratitude from those who do collect them, and especially from exhibitors and philatelic judges who will be pleased that these listings include a concordance to Scott catalog numbers for easy cross-reference. A friend overseas who has an extensive Confederate collection will have a much longer want-list after he studies these chapters. I’ll follow reviews in the philatelic media with interest.
The 1986 New Dietz included fully illustrated sections showing counterfeit steamboat markings, faked townmarks, faked C.S.A. overprints, and faked prisoner-of-war markings. I don’t understand why the 2012 edition omits those from what ought to become a one-stop reference for evaluating Confederate stamps and covers. The authors wrote in the introduction that “The Confederate Stamp Alliance anticipates publishing a more in-depth book on [Fakes and Facsimiles] in the near future.” Perhaps that will include fake postal markings too. A new chapter on perforated and rouletted stamps benefited from files kept by the late Wilson Hulme. Other chapters include color cancels, atypical or straightline cancels, army camp markings, generals’ mail, official and semi-official imprints, and state imprints.
Next comes the chapter on Confederate patriotic covers, which is one of my interests both as collector and researcher. The authors’ introductory essay repeats the default summary disclaimer that I debunked in my recent Postal History Symposium presentation: “The South did not have the overall printing capability of the North, so such a huge volume of patriotic cover material simply could not be produced at the level that is seen from the Union side.” In reality, although Confederate printers had a big head start and nearly all their creative output occurred before the fall of Nashville and New Orleans, at “a time when the South had no shortage of paper, ink, printing presses, wood engraving materials, or editorial enthusiasm,” to quote myself, the Confederacy’s output of envelope propaganda had effectively all but ended before First Manassas was fought. That’s the true reason why, as this catalog correctly states, “less than 200 different Confederate designs are known and recorded showing postal use.” By the date when Confederate forces humiliated the Federals at the First Battle of Bull Run (July 21, 1861), pro-Union patriots had produced more than 5,000 different envelope propaganda designs, many of them printed and distributed in towns that were hotbeds of sedition and treason. Aficionados of Confederate patriotic covers, which offer a magnificent collecting challenge and opportunity, ought to rethink those premises. They should also consider my other suggestion, published last year in Linn’s, to differentiate pre-Confederate secession envelopes from Confederate patriotics, much as 1860 campaign covers are a separate category from Union patriotics, and they should delete the rare and expensive Lone Star Flag envelopes from Texas, which predated secession. As it stands, however, this is the most comprehensive compilation ever, and the most useful pricing guide.
Next are useful listings of advertising and college covers. In one important respect the 1986 collegiate covers chapter was superior to the 2012 counterpart. The new book has color illustrations, but omits mention of color imprints that are not illustrated; the old listings included color varieties. Later chapters in the catalog beef up the handbook aspect: way mail, Confederate railroad markings, inland waterways mail, Confederate mail carrier services, mail across the lines, private express companies, flag-of-truce mail, trans-Mississippi mail, blockade-run mail, and covert mail. Readers whose appetite becomes whetted by these chapters can follow up by studying scholarly articles and monographs published elsewhere. The book concludes with an excellent glossary and list of abbreviations.
The Westpex show committee will sponsor the APS seminar Collecting Civil War Patriotic Covers taught by Jim Kloetzel and me in San Francisco, April 24-25, 2013, at the Airport Waterfront Marriott Hotel, on the two days before the show opens. The APS Education Committee is accepting applications now. I will add the new Confederate States of America Catalog and Handbook to our reference list, and I’ll look forward to discussions with Confederate collectors there. Meanwhile, the great advantage of this Internet medium is that every reader of this review can show where I am mistaken or unfair right away, lest my errors take on a life of their own in some immutable published form.
Postscript 1:
So what did the author/editors leave out? A reviewer of a 516-page catalog and handbook ought not be churlish, and above all should not review a book that the authors did not write (hence this afterword, leaving the foregoing review to stand or fall on its own), but I wish they had included the greatest Confederate mail and postal history story of all: Confederate mail runner Captain Absalom C. Grimes. That isn’t just my private opinion. The dean of American folkorists, Benjamin Botkin, included Grimes’s harrowing adventure running mail past Union gunboats into and out of Vicksburg during the siege in his Civil War Treasury. Mark Twain fondly recalled, in Private History of a Campaign that Failed: “In one of these camps we found Ab Grimes, an Upper Mississippi pilot, who afterwards became famous as a dare-devil rebel spy, whose career bristled with desperate adventures.”
Grimes was literally a legend in his own time. A November 18, 1862, Mobile Advertiser and Register report from its Holly Springs, Mississippi, correspondent began, “I am pleased to chronicle the arrival, at his request, of Mr. Absalom Grimes, who recently escaped from prison at St. Louis. In August Mr. Grimes left Tupelo for St. Louis with letters from our army for their friends in Missouri. Having delivered his letters, he was returning with replies when he was seized and thrown into prison, and afterward tried and sentenced to be shot as a spy. . . . This makes the fifth time Grimes has been incarcerated in and escaped from Yankee prisons.”
No one has yet proven that a specific letter or cover was carried by Grimes, but Richard A. Hall reported one potential example in the Confederate Philatelist; Stefan T. Jaronski has published criteria for identifying southbound Grimes-carried covers; and St. Louis archives identify the people who hosted and hid Grimes in St. Louis and their clandestine circle of pro-Confederate plotters. If this story were included in a catalog destined to be thumbed by the next generation of happenstance finders of Confederate letters along with collectors and dealers, it might have stimulated a eureka moment, to the great joy of everyone.
Postscript 2:
The 2012 compilers/authors/editors haven’t told us why they dropped the venerated Dietz name from the title, but I’m glad they did. Confederate philately is a tough sell to modern, intelligent, cosmopolitan collectors of means, because it is still burdened by the Lost Cause myth that August Dietz championed. The 1986 New Dietz opens with a frontispiece titled “Confederate Philately” by Dietz and a dedication to his memory. It’s true that Dietz was the pioneer whose labors in these vineyards yielded our rich harvest. I would not deny or minimize that aspect. But his legacy is more than that, and in today’s world that does tarnish and diminish Confederate philately. He wrote on that scroll, “The story of this Republic would be incomplete if it omitted the tragic chapter of the War Between the States.”
Gen. Jubal Early, author/inventor of The Lost Cause, would have approved, even though during the conflict Confederate officials and military men properly called it a Civil War and, as one patriotic cover slogan demonstrates, called themselves Rebels. Mercifully, the authors of both 1986 and 2012 catalogs avoided obfuscation in their respective texts, but the War Between the States provocation is not in the new book anywhere as far as I could see, and that is good. (I did not read every word, but I did pause over and did at least scan and browse every page.) I don’t want to make more of this than simply to take note of it and express my gratitude, but looking to the future, the sooner that Confederate philately can leave the Lost Cause behind, the sooner it will join the mainstream of United States and worldwide classic philately.
Can be ordered directly from the Confederate Stamp Alliance.
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