Civil War Soldier's Corrrespondence With Stamp

It is certainly true that demonetization did not happen right away everywhere.

Acceptance of old stamps appears to have been scaled out, by post office, starting August 1861.

By 1862, such usages become quite unusual.

Txstamp - I assume this falls into the unusual use after 1862 category?

Since learned that this fellow is thought to be a Warren Tapley, Assistant Surgeon of the 8th Massachusetts, and that the photo was taken in early 1861 in Elkridge, Maryland. Sorry I did not have that information when I originally posted.

Hope y'all enjoyed it.

Edited with an afterthought: I'm now wondering what the earliest photograph is of someone with a letter with an identifiable (pretty much anyway) stamp.

caper - heh. Fun cover.

Tying it into pandemics - I guess the Spanish Flu probably can't survive 102 years on paper. Or can it?

That makes it an 1857 issue stamp; probably #26.

I'm late to this party but I thought I'd drop an idea no one else brought up. Civil war era photographers were notorious for staging photos. The pipe and letter could well be photographers props rendering dates irrelevant.

I'm not obsessive enough to do it but if you looked through lots of Brady photos you might find many different soldiers reading the same "letter from home". Too bad we can't read the address. if it was M. Brady we could be sure.