This article appeared in the October - December 2006 issue of the Confederate Philatelist. Posted under a prior agreement with the then journal editors in effect since the early days of this website.

A Wisconsin Confederate Cover? That is just plain silly. Everyone knows Wisconsin was a Union State during the War Between the States and was certainly never part of the Confederacy. The cover shown in Figure 1 is a Confederate internal Georgia usage from Greensborough to Athens and is certainly far removed from Wisconsin.

Figure 1 -- CSA Cover postmarked Greensborough, Ga with a 10c Blue Type I Archer and Daly stamp and addressed to Athens, Geo.

There are many more aspects of Confederate Philately to consider than just the stamp and the simple postal usage. This concept becomes clear when the realm of the Confederate Adversity Cover is explored more deeply. Due to paper shortages within the Confederacy, acquiring envelopes with which to mail a letter was often difficult. The people would construct their own envelopes out of anything that happened to be handy and that could be folded and used to mail a letter. Thus we have adversity covers made from many different items. The most well known of the adversity covers are the flashy covers made from wallpaper. Others are made from ledger sheets, old letters, bills, statements, bank checks, book pages, flyers, advertisements, and the list goes on and on.

Figure 2 shows the Georgia cover folded out to reveal that the envelope was constructed from another favorite item -- an old map most likely torn from an atlas. In this case the map is of the Fox River area of the State of Wisconsin. Thus we have in a manner of speaking a Wisconsin Confederate Cover but with Georgia postal usage. All sorts of interesting findings can still be made with regard to Confederate Adversity Covers.

Figure 2 -- Greensborough, Ga cover folded out to show the adversity usage made from a map of the Fox River area in the State of Wisconsin.