USPS to Take Part in 2012 Congressional Stamp Exhibit

We are very pleased to announce that the U.S. Postal Service has teamed with the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum, the American Philatelic Society, and Stamp Camp USA to bring you the Congressional Stamp Exhibit! The exhibit, which is perfect for all ages, will be held July 24-26 at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C.

Come see philatelic items from the personal collections of U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and U.S. Representatives Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Robert Aderholt (R-AL), William Lacy Clay (D-MO), Joseph PItts (R-PA), and Silvestre Reyes (D-TX). Collectors and non-collectors alike will enjoy the unique philatelic material that has never before been seen by the public.

To introduce the hobby of stamp collecting to non-collectors, Stamp Camp USA will host an activity station called “Stamp Collecting 101.” Activities and items for children will include a scavenger hunt, “eye-spy” game, and a table where children can create their own mini-album page. This collaborative educational program for children ages 8-14 will teach stamp collecting basics, including the proper care of a stamp collection and the use of cool stamp tools.

USPS will have its own display of current stamp-related products, literature, and educational items for stamp enthusiasts of all ages. And to commemorate the event, there will be pictorial postmarking for guests who cherish collectibles. “It’s a pleasure to help demonstrate the unique role stamps play in our culture,” Stephen Kearney, Executive Director of Stamp Services, said. “This exhibit showcases how stamps help tell our rich American story.”

Admission to the Congressional Stamp Exhibit and educational program for children is free. Registration for the children’s stamp camp is required. More information about the exhibit and registration information is available on the National Postal Museum’s website.

See you on the Hill!

Mary Chesnut’s Civil War

Confederate diarist Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut (1823–1913) wrote one of the finest literary and historical works of the Civil War. Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, as the collection of her diaries is known, describes life on her plantation in South Carolina and recounts many key events that occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, during the war.

The Civil War: 1862 Commemorative Folio (click to order)

Chesnut provided more than just what the editor of her diaries described as “a vivid picture of a society in the throes of its life-and-death struggle”—because her husband had been a U.S. senator before the war and a Confederate congressman and aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis during the war, Chesnut was in a unique position to witness the events of her day and offer valuable insights to the people and workings of the Confederate government. Her stamp was issued in 1995.

Disenfranchised Women Fight for Their Rights

With the passage of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 1920, American women were, for the first time in the nation’s history, allowed to vote—a right which was a long time coming. The seeds of the 19th Amendment were planted in July 1848 at a women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. On the morning of July 19, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott unveiled a Declaration of Sentiments and 11 Resolutions, proposing that “woman is man’s equal,” and that she should “secure to [herself her] sacred right to elective franchise.”

The movement unleashed in Seneca Falls received a giant push when Stanton met Susan B. Anthony at an anti-slavery gathering in 1851. A Quaker abolitionist and temperance worker, Anthony became a willing and able adherent to the suffragist cause. “As I passed from town to town,” Anthony remembered, “I was made to feel the great evil of women’s utter dependence on man . . . Woman must have a purse of her own, and how can this be, so long as the law denies the wife that right?”

Anthony, whose death in 1906 prevented her from witnessing the success of her work, inspired troops with her final public utterance: “Failure is impossible.” The suffragists lobbied on, receiving a needed boost during World War I, when the value of women in the war effort was well recognized. The 19th Amendment was introduced on January 20, 1918, by Jeanette Rankin, the first woman to be elected to Congress. By the war’s end it had cleared both houses of Congress and was sent to the states for ratification. It took less than a year to gather the 36 necessary states for ratification of the 19th Amendment.