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 cover depicts a Black man dancing to celebrate his “contraband” status— in 1861 Union General Benjamin Butler decreed that enslaved people in Southern states who made it to Union lines were to be declared “contraband of war” and not returned to their enslavers.