Postal Service Accepting Pre-Orders for the Emancipation Proclamation’s 150th Anniversary Forever Stamp

U.S. Postal Service

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service will honor the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation with a commemorative stamp in early 2013.

The Emancipation Proclamation Forever Stamp will be issued early next year at a yet to be determined location. Customers may pre-order the stamp this afternoon at usps.com/stamps or by phone at 800-Stamp24 (800-782-6724) for delivery a few days following the dedication ceremony.  Orders for limited-edition posters will be fulfilled immediately.

The 16” x 23” poster features the same art used on the stamp. Using the traditional letterpress printing process that makes each one unique, only 5,000 were produced. Visit this link to view the process. Each poster also bears a limited-edition number. To add to their collectability, the first 1,000 posters will be autographed by graphic designer Gail Anderson and fulfilled with the lowest numbers first in the order in which orders are placed.

Item #       Description                                                            Price

470367     Letterpress poster numbered                              $29.95

470377     Letterpress poster numbered and autographed    $49.95      

The phrase “Henceforward Shall Be Free” is taken from the Emancipation Proclamation. Art director Antonio Alcalá of Alexandria, VA, worked with graphic designer Gail Anderson of New York City to produce the stamp. To evoke the look of posters from the Civil War era, they employed Hatch Show Print of Nashville, TN, one of the oldest working letterpress print shops in America.

Lincoln’s Proclamation

Issued nearly two years into the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation declared that all slaves in the states of the Confederacy “are, and henceforward shall be free.”

Not until July 1862, after exhausting all other alternatives, did Lincoln in his capacity as Commander in Chief resort to a “war powers” proclamation to free the slaves. Secretary of State William H. Seward, however, persuaded Lincoln to delay its release until after a Union victory on the battlefield. Finally, on Sept. 22, 1862, after Union forces defeated the Confederate army at the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that on Jan. 1 slaves in the states still in rebellion would be legally free.

As a war powers order, the Emancipation Proclamation could not free slaves in the four border states still loyal to the Union, and actual freedom for slaves in the rebellious states depended on future Union military advances into the South. Still, for the first time, the Emancipation Proclamation allowed Lincoln to make freedom for slaves an explicit goal of the war. As he put it in his annual message to Congress, “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.”

Customers may view the Emancipation Proclamation Forever Stamp, as well as many of this year’s other stamps on Facebook at facebook.com/USPSStamps, on Twitter @USPSstamps or on the website Beyond the Perf at beyondtheperf.com/2013-preview. Beyond the Perf is the Postal Service’s online site for information on upcoming stamp subjects, first-day-of-issue events and other philatelic news.