No offense intended but let me remark a little more historically on this:
Sex -- the overwhelming majority of U.S. stamps which featured individuals have featured men and that is likely to continue. There is little to no refusal or even reluctance to showing men on stamps. If you think there is, why not count them and find out?
Skin color - The Black Americans series of the Postal Service, now quite long (nearly 50 stamps), has sought to remedy the prevalence of mainly white people on U.S. stamps which, as they say, is a "bad look" for this country -- as well as including American Indians, Hispanic-Americans and others. This is a good thing, but I'm not sure what the problem with this is? Because Emily Dickinson gets a stamp, as she should, and Rosa Parks does also, has no bearing on whether or not a white male gets a stamp.
Sen. Charles Sumner was a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts who in the 1850s spoke out strongly against slavery. After one such speech in the U.S. Senate, he was nearly caned to death by a South Carolina congressman who objected to Sumner's criticism of owning other human beings and tried to murder him. In protest, the state of Massachusetts refused to fill Sumner's Senate seat with a replacement, letting his empty desk serve as a symbol of the South's violence in defending slavery. Sumner was heroic in that sense and probably should get a stamp in his honor.
Political Party - I have no idea what this means, but let me make a guess. Sen. Sumner was a Republican in the era when the new Republican Party was very reform-minded, particularly about stopping the spread of slavery and, later, emancipating all the slaves and ending slavery forever. Both were considered liberal and even "radical" ideas at the time. How things change over time, eh? The most "extreme" Republicans who favored emancipation and compensation to former slaves were labeled "Radicals" by those who thought these things were unacceptable. Republicans also supported many other things, including a better national banking system, a transcontinental railroad, free land for those willing to settle the West, protection of the rights of Immigrants who were badly needed to help build the country, and a number of other reforms to modernize the nation. We would call these "progressives" or even "liberal" today -- especially since the Democratic Party at this time supported slavery and opposed large economic spending programs, being generally the much more conservative of the two parties.
However, a strange thing happened which many people do not seem to be aware of. By the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the two parties swapped philosophies. The Republican Party abandoned its concern with racial equality and supported corporations, favoring the restrictive gold standard and high tariffs which benefited corporations. Republicans opposed agrarian reforms to help farmers ("Socialism!"), lowering tariffs, a more flexible currency, rights of laborers and labor unions, and so on. The Republican Party became a much more conservative party in rejection of its original ideals. Today, it bears no resemblance to its original "radical" roots. Democrats gradually became the reform party by the years of the Great Depression and into the 1960s.
There will be a quiz on all this.
Assisting Colonization - In the mid-19th century, many Americans supported the rather strange idea of sending Blacks "back to Africa" (as did a few free Blacks), a particularly strange idea for people born and raised here who were often second and third generation Americans. This included young congressman Abraham Lincoln who supported the American Colonization Society, thinking it would be better for Blacks to be back in Africa. However, over time, most people who came around to the idea of ending slavery also supported full political and legal equality for the former slaves and "colonization," as it was called, seemed increasingly silly. Lincoln abandoned colonization as did most other people. |
Posted 02/02/2026 4:19 pm
