Month: March 2015

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Civil War Stamp Dedication

WHAT First-Day-of Issue stamp dedication ceremony for the Civil War 1865 Forever stamps. The ceremony will take place in front of the McLean House where Lee surrendered to Grant. The public is encouraged to attend this free event.
 
WHEN 1:30 p.m., Thurs., April 9 (note: April 8 overnight encampment on-site; April 9 events begin at 7:30 a.m. There will be a reenactment of Lee surrendering to Grant at the McLean House that starts at 1 p.m.) 
WHERE Appomattox Court House111 National Park Dr.

Appomattox, VA 24522 (Although travel time is several hours from LaPlata, MD, anticipate significant traffic congestion upon entering the Appomattox area April 8-12. The National Park Service will provide shuttles from satellite parking areas.)
BACKGROUND  With these two stamps, the U.S. Postal Service concludes its series of ten stamps commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Pre-order the stamps now via usps.com and search for “Appomattox” and “stamp.”  Expect delivery shortly after April 9. 

Since 2011, souvenir sheets with two stamp designs have been issued for each year of the war (1861-1865). On the 2015 souvenir sheet, one stamp depicts the Battle of Five Forks, near Petersburg, VA, on April 1, 1865. The other stamp depicts Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9.

Art director Phil Jordan selected historic paintings for the stamp designs. The Battle of Five Forks stamp is a reproduction of a painting, circa 1885, by French artist Paul Dominique Philippoteaux (1846-1923). Philippoteaux was best known for his massive cyclorama (360-degree circular painting) of the Battle of Gettysburg that drew large audiences when it was first displayed in Chicago in 1883.

 

The Appomattox Court House stamp is a reproduction of the 1895 painting “Peace in Union” by Thomas Nast (1840-1902), depicting Robert E. Lee’s surrender. Nast, a political cartoonist for most of his career, devised the donkey as a symbol of the Democratic Party and the elephant to represent the Republican Party.

 

The background image on the souvenir sheet is a photograph of a number of Federal rifles stacked in the vicinity of Petersburg during the siege. The 12-stamp souvenir sheet includes comments on the war by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and Union General Joshua L. Chamberlain. It also includes lines parodying the lyrics of Patrick S. Gilmore’s famous Civil War song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”
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April 2015 Southern MD Civil War Round Table Meeting

April 14, 2015

The Southern Maryland Civil War Round Table is pleased to announce that its next meeting will take place on Tuesday, April 14, 2015 at 7:00pm at the College of Southern Maryland’s Center for Business and Industry, Chaney Enterprises Conference Center, Room BI-113, at 8730 Mitchell Road in La Plata, MD.

Guest Speaker:  Michael Kauffman

Local author, Michael W. Kauffman, author of “American Brutus: John ...

Michael Kauffman, author of the best seller “American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies” will speak to the Southern Maryland Civil War Roundtable about the Booth conspiracy and how it was built largely around Southern Maryland politics. Booth was often described as a Southerner, but in fact, he was a Marylander — and so were almost all of the people who were drawn into his plot.  The people of Southern Maryland lived on the fault line of national politics, in a Border State, where politics had grown intensely personal through the war, and where the phrase “Brother vs. Brother” was literally true for many local families. Its geographical position — nearly surrounding the nation’s capital — gave it a strategic importance far beyond that of any other state that remained in the Union.

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In the fall of 1864, John Wilkes Booth set out to recruit a band of conspirators for his plot against the president. Booth knew little about the area, but he knew how the people here felt about Lincoln. He was a master of manipulation, and he took full advantage of the political climate to build his plot. When he looked for cohorts, a sympathetic ear, and a secure route of escape, he knew where he would find friendly territory. Southern Maryland was his only option.

MICHAEL W. KAUFFMAN is a political historian and graduate of the University of Virginia who has studied the Lincoln assassination for more than thirty years.

Taking a full-immersion approach to his research, he has rowed across the Potomac where Booth rowed, leaped to the stage in Ford’s Theatre, and for a time he even took up residence in Tudor Hall, the Booth family home in Maryland.

Kauffman has written for Civil War Times, the Washington Post, American Heritage, Blue and Gray, and the Lincoln Herald, among others. He has lectured throughout the United States, and has appeared in more than twenty television and radio documentaries, including programs on A& E, The Learning Channel, the History Channel, National Geographic Channel, and the Discovery Channel.

His works include a modern edition of Samuel B. Arnold’s Memoirs of a Lincoln Conspirator, as well as American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, which was named as one of the best non-fiction books of 2004.His latest book, “In the Footsteps of An Assassin” is a 161-page book which guides the reader with maps, rare photos and an accompanying CD through the sites Booth encountered on his flight from Washington to the Garrett Farm, the site of Booth’s death.