united states navy letters from the civil war

Berlin and Jones (formerly West and Berlin) started using such machines in 1857, relegating handmade envelopes to geometry lessons, and making the convenience and privacy of envelopes widely available. One machine could fold about 10,000 envelopes a day. In the United State, Russell Hawes was granted the patent on an envelope folding machine in 1853 and Doctor Hawke added a self-feeder. By the mid 1850s several automatic cutting and folding machines were available in Europe. In the 1850s a drop in postage rates and an increase in letter sending made the time ripe for mechanization. According to Maynard Benjamin in The History of Envelopes by 1855 the New York City manufactory of West and Berlin employed 100 hand folders who made 200,000 envelopes a day using this method. The open edge was left unglued to be sealed with sealing wax. These were then folded and glued by hand. When postage in the US was lowered in the 1840s, small hand crafted envelope businesses began to develop. Twenty-five sheets of paper were stacked up, a stencil placed on top, and then the envelopes were cut out with a pocket knife. Today we rarely post a letter or bill that is not securely hidden inside an envelope. Pre-1830 those with the time could make handmade envelopes for invitations and novelty items or make do with the messy procedure of folding the letter and sealing it with wax. However, rural delivery did not start until the 1890s. But in 1863 free city delivery was initiated in 49 major cities.

Those letters were delivered at first to postal boxes in post offices. The recipient would have to pay the postage when the letter arrived. Because stamps became a wadded mess in soldier’s pockets, in 1863 the post office allowed soldiers to write “Soldier’s Mail” on the envelope.

But for people who earned an average salary of $20 a month or about 90 cents a day and for soldiers earning $15 a month the price was high. Postage was cheap by our standards 3 cents per half ounce which was lowered to 2 cents in October of 1863.

In the Civil War period many soldiers and families wrote letters to each other almost daily. During wartime communicating with loved ones becomes an overwhelming concern.

United states navy letters from the civil war