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, printed in New York, depicts Jefferson Davis “as he is,” the powerful leader of the Confederacy, and “as he should be,” digging cotton under the hot sun under the watchful eye of an African American master.