- Historic Sites
A Postage Stamp History Of The U.S. In The Twentieth Century
Here is the federal government’s own picture history of our times—and it tells us more than you might think
December 1982 | Volume 34, Issue 1
There are some fifteen hundred stamps in the national album, more than three-quarters of them issued in the last half-century. From the very first issue of two stamps in 1847, until 1893, they carried portraits of Presidents, Founding Fathers, and military men. (Seven 1869 stamps showed contemporary and historical scenes, but they were considered vulgar and were replaced within a year.) In 1893, to mark the Columbian Exposition, sixteen stamps were issued depicting scenes from the life of Columbus. They were the first “commemorative” stamps and they inaugurated our age of numerous issues.
New issues increased yearly from then until Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, when they soared. FDR was an avid stamp collector and he made the Post Office do his bidding: he liked lots of stamps, attractive stamps, stamps of his own design, and he was the first to use stamps for immediate propaganda purposes (such as the one that hailed the National Recovery Act). Stamp policy has remained essentially the same—a mixture of officially approved events and personages depending on historic importance and political concerns.
The stamps on these pages are arranged in order of what they commemorate—historical order. But if they were arranged by the year of issue (which is shown in parentheses at the end of each caption), they would reveal that we tell our history differently in different eras. Some notable events aren’t commemorated at all—Benedict Arnold’s treachery is, of course, unmentioned—and some only after passions have cooled and attitudes mellowed: the nation hailed the Union generals of the Civil War as they died, but left Robert E. Lee in limbo until 1937.
Historical women were slow to appear on our stamps (see box, page 59), American Indians and blacks slower still. While our postage now admits all ancestors, no matter what their origins—so long as their deeds are distinguished and respectable—it still remembers the past selectively. Stamps tell the best of history: they recall atoms for peace but not the atomic bomb, and they forget the Korean War entirely but celebrate the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.
Wilson’s successor in the White House was either venal or weak. But when Harding died in office, he was promptly memorialized with, of course, no hint of the malfeasance in his administration. The entirely honest Calvin Coolidge waited five years before the Roosevelt Post Office mourned his passing. The Great Depression is marked obliquely by Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act stamp (page 55), which was said by the suspicious to malign business by showing its representative out of step with forwardstriding working men and women. Other reminders of our troubled economic times are depictions of the huge public works of the decade.
Roosevelt issued three National Defense stamps in 1940 showing Liberty, an antiaircraft gun, and the Torch of Enlightenment. On July 4, 1942, they were followed by stamps depicting the Four Freedoms, the Nations United for Victory, and an eagle with “Win the War” emblazoned on its breast. When Roosevelt died, he was memorialized on no fewer than four stamps. We celebrated the fledgling United Nations but passed over the Nuremberg Trials. John Foster Dulles steered us sternly through a perilous world and was commemorated at his death. Adlai Stevenson gained honor as the loyal opposition. Joseph McCarthy passed unmourned.