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 envelope depicts a man holding a “contraband” baby up for admiration. Union General Benjamin Butler decreed that enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were “contraband of war” and thus would not be returned to their enslavers.