Lot 202

[Civil War]

Estimate

4,000 - 5,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

The Daily Citizen. Vicksburg, Mississippi, 2 [but 4] July 1863
Paper, ink

Broadside newspaper (19 5/8 x 11 1/8 in.; 499 x 282 mm). 4 columns, printed on floral wallpaper; light soiling and browning, separations at folds costing a few letters, neatly silked.

Provenance

Walter R. Benjamin Autographs (description card signed by Mary Benjamin, 13 November 1958)

Catalogue Note

An original "Wallpaper" Daily Citizen, with all the points of a genuine copy called for by Leonard Rapport's "Fakes and Facsimiles: Problems of Identification" (The American Archivist 42:1) and the Library of Congress Serial Division Information Circular 3.

The paper stock for The Daily Citizen (and for many other Confederate newspapers) was depleted by the Civil War, and its publisher, J. M. Swords, had substituted wallpaper for six issues in June and July 1863. On 4 July 1863, Vicksburg was occupied by Union troops, who, finding the Citizen issue of 2 July still in type, added a brief note to the bottom of the fourth column and, without changing the date-line, printed a small number of copies with this prescient addendum: "Two days bring about great changes, The banner of the Union floats over Vicksburg. Gen Grant has 'caught the rabbit;' he has dined in Vicksburg, and he did bring his dinner with him. The 'Citizen' lives to see it. For the last time it appears on 'Wall-paper.' No more will it eulogize the luxury of mule-meat and fricassed kitten—urge Southern warriors to such diet never-more. This is the last wall-paper edition, and is, excepting this note, from the types as we found them. It will be valuable hereafter as a curiosity."