After defeat and the degradations of Reconstruction, the South went out of it’s way to celebrate the Confederate heritage. The national government had the good sense to allow it and the foresight to be respectful, as with this stamp. So slip on your smoking jacket. fill your pipe. take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
The visuals of todays stamp would have been familiar to postal patrons of the day. Two years before there had been a similar stamp in a different color celebrating the last Union Army veterans camp. Only the color the acronyms of the respective organizations and details on the veterans uniform differ. What a great way to treat the two sides equally so many years later and if you think about it, a tremendous act of charity on the part of the victor toward the defeated.
Todays stamp is issue A445, a 3 cent stamp issued by the United States on May 30, 1951. It was a single stamp issue that celebrated the United Confederate Veterans last camp in Norfolk, Virginia that year. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether it is mint or used.
The United Confederate veterans formed in 1889, twenty four years after the Civil War ended in 1865. The numbers grew rapidly as local clubs or “companies” affiliated with the group, The group would organize regular camps for the veterans where a southern city would go all out to welcome them and their families. In 1911, Little Rock, Arkansas hosted a camp that was over twice the cities then population.
Over time the camps got slightly smaller as the veterans were then dying off. From the stamp issue, we can see that the Southern veterans camps outlasted the Union Army veterans camps. Civil War nostalgia being a Southern thing for the most part.
The last camp in Norfolk in 1951 hosted three veterans. One of whom, John B. Salling, later proved to be a fraud. He claimed to be born in 1846 but the 1860 census listed him as 4 years old. The last verified Confederate veteran, Pleasant Crump died at age 104 on December 31, 1951 having served as a young Private in the 10th Alabama Infantry Regiment.
There as been a push to expunge Confederate history by the removal of monuments. Every monument may not mean something to everyone but it is enough that it means something to some. A few years back a Confederate statue in North Carolina was torn down by a Vietnamese LBGT political activist whose parents came to America as a boat people in the 1970s. Civil War Heritage only offends her, but that she thinks she has a right to take it away from someone else, is severely misguided. Unfortunately the modern world proved her right as the local prosecutors did not press charges even though her crime was on tape. What a bunch of losers. End rant. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.