The Civil War Cigar Stamps: A Philatelic Detective Story, A Treasure Trove of New Discoveries

Gold Award Winner at the APS 2021 "Great American Stamp Show"During the Civil War, the federal government taxed everything from canned fruit to locomotive parts to fund the Union Army’s war chest. In the summer of 1864, Congress seized on the popularity of cigar smoking by taxing cigars at exorbitant rates, and government-appointed cigar inspectors placed special tax stamps ("Inspectors Stamps") on cigar boxes to indicate they had been assessed for taxation. Less than six weeks after these stamps were first in use, the government learned of collusion between inspectors and cigar makers whose profits were significantly impacted by the high taxes. Before long, a black market developed in the sale of both genuine and counterfeit cigar stamps. And as the year 1865 was coming to a close, a Congressional inquiry began to expose not only the extent of cigar makers' ploys to evade taxes, but how corrupt revenue agents, especially in New York, were shaking them down for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars.The Civil War Cigar Stamps presents the intriguing details behind those events and the equally fascinating, previously unknown story of the production of these early stamps. In fact, this book presents the first in-depth study of the Inspectors Stamps since they were first issued over 150 years ago. It is profusely illustrated with images of rarities that have never been previously published, and therefore unknown to even most advanced collectors.Even rarer than the stamps themselves are period cigar boxes with their stamps still attached, with photographs provided by the foremost collector in the field.U.S. stamp collectors of all stripes will be surprised to learn who actually made the first of these stamps—a philatelic fact not previously known—substantiated with photographs, transcripts, and analysis of newly discovered documents straight out of the National Archives.Readers will marvel at the complex and farcical system instituted by Congress to tax cigars, and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue’s stalwart efforts to collect the government's fair share of cigar taxes despite a mathematically impossible method of calculating them. Read more