Patriotic covers were a popular form of visual propaganda and became a collector’s item during the Civil War. Produced both in the North and South, these envelopes featured patriotic imagery and slogans, although some—primarily printed in the North-- employed stereotypical and exaggerated images of the speech, dress, and physical characteristics of African Americans.

This patriotic cover was printed during the Civil War to promote the antislavery cause and depicts a white enslaver with a whip amidst a crowd of African Americans rushing towards a building labelled Fort Monroe.