Postal Cover Illustrated with Scenes from Uncle Tom's Cabin
Ackermann & Co., London; Oliphant & White, Glasgow; Johnstone & Hunter, Edinburgh; B. Theobald, London, (n. d.), circa 1853. 3 x 4-3/4 inches. Light grey paper envelope printed in black to verso (flap side). Light soiling to recto and edges; printing a bit light on right edge, slightly affecting readability of publishers' names. Never mailed. Very Good.
A rare British antislavery postal cover featuring scenes from Uncle Tom's Cabin, engraved and designed by J[ames] Valentine, of Dundee, Scotland, who printed at least one other antislavery envelope. The French philatelic magazine, Le Timbre-Poste, No 70, October 1868, lists it in an article on imitations of Mulready envelopes, and attributes it to the Society for the Abolition of Slavery (p. 79), although it is unclear if that is in reference to the Edinburgh Society for the Abolition of Slavery or a different group of the same name. Mulready stationery was first issued in 1840 in Britain; we date this envelope to circa 1853, around the time that "Uncle Tom mania" begain in the UK.
The envelope is illustrated with six vignettes, including images of Tom being sold away from his children, being flogged by an overseer, and reading the bible on board a steamboat; and of Eliza fleeing from slave catchers across the Ohio River. They are separated by printed ribbons bearing biblical text: "The eye of the Lord God is upon you," "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you do you so unto them," "Ye who take freedom from men how will you answer it to God," and "Fear not for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by my name thou art mine". (It is worth noting that the printer appears to have been short some "Y"s and "G"s, such that the first line in fact reads, "The eve of the Lord Cod is upon you".) In the right margin is printed the publishers' names and locations, and in the left the designers and the prices of the envelopes. Should the recipient wish to order some, they could be purchased in packs of 30, 50, 100, or 250 for 12, 16, 24, or 48 pennypost stamps each, respectively.
Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the vignettes are almost uniformly graphically violent, with the exception of the one of Tom reading the bible. In the background of Tom's sale, slavers whip newly arrived enslaved men and women standing on the shore, pry open their mouths to check their teeth, and march them in neck shackles while whipping them. As Sarah Meer notes in Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s, British depictions of Uncle Tom's Cabin were often reinterpreted as much more forceful, and much more violent, critiques of the U.S. institution of slavery than Stowe's novel was, in part as a way to mark the distinction between the two countries. Using dramatizations as her example, Meer writes, "Uncle Tom's Cabin made a useful cause for British self-congratulation, based on a peculiar image of America that was refracted and distorted by the conventions of melodrama. And, as with all judgments on somewhere else, the plays reveal something of the judges. The London plays incorporated some peculiarly British responses to slavery, to minstrelsy, and to Uncle Tom's Cabin" (p. 141).
That these scenes were printed on envelopes meant for everyday use and sold for stamps rather than money -- a common enough form of currency at the time, at least according to contemporary newspaper advertisements -- presumably so that more envelopes or other antislavery literature could be sent out, speaks to the way in which the antislavery movement successfully "mobilized sentimental consumerism," as Teresa Goddu describes in Selling Antislavery: Abolition and Mass Media in Antebellum America. Those who sent mail in such envelopes were displaying their commitment to the cause as well as donating to it and spreading its message, but, despite their ephemeral nature, the envelopes represent complex attitudes toward slavery and abolitionism. Using antislavery fairs in the U.S. as an example, at which antislavery artifacts were sold, Goddu notes, "[w]hile they harnessed consumption to antislavery's progressive political project, enacting a type of commodity activism, their markets and media objects remained mired in capitalism's unequal structures. Through their complex acts of racial subordination and appropriation, the fairs and their speaking objects reinforced inequality even as they proclaimed freedom" (p. 107).
All in all, a fascinating piece of antislavery ephemera, applicable to several areas of research. OCLC locates one possible holding at the National Library of Scotland, described only as "[Engraved envelope with anti-slavery messages and illustrations, by James Valentine of Dundee]" and lacking Oliphant as a publisher.
