Even though South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860, and the Confederate States of America (CSA) created its own post office department the following February, mail stamped with U.S. stamps traveled north and south until June of 1861. But by October of that year, the CSA began to issue its own stamps.

Unlike Union stamps, which were essentially high-quality prints taken from engraved plates, the first CSA stamps were simply lithographed. Between 1861 and 1865, 13 different stamps were issued and used. Some were printed by more than one printer in more than one color, and a 14th stamp depicting South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun was printed but never issued.

The first piece of CSA postage, issued on October 16, 1861, was a green, five-cent stamp bearing the bust of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. More than nine million... of these stamps were printed by Hoyer & Ludwig of Richmond, Virginia. Less than a month later, the same printer produced 1.4-million ten-cent stamps featuring Thomas Jefferson—though dead since 1826, Jefferson was a Virginian and a slave owner, so the CSA claimed him as a son of the south.