A Confederate newspaper printed on wallpaper

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Rare Books, Autographs & Maps

By Doyle

Nov 25, 2025

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• Lot Description
  [CONFEDERATE WALLPAPER NEWSPAPER] The Daily Citizen. Vicksburg, MS: J.M. Swords, June 30, 1863. Newspaper printed on machine-made wallpaper, 12½ x 19 inches (32 x 49 cm). Broadsheet with text printed recto-only; the verso is printed with a red and yellow brocade wallpaper pattern. Paper toned and softened with age, some minor water damage. Creased once vertically and three times horizontally—there is some chipping at each crease and one larger hole of about 1½ x 1 inch in the center of the sheet with loss to text. Some chipping to the edges without loss to text. A scarce "wallpaper edition" of the Vicksburg Daily Citizen. In the summer of 1863, during the last weeks of the siege of Vicksburg, the Daily Citizen's printer, J.M. Swords, ran out of paper. This was a common issue for printers in the Confederacy: the South had been almost entirely dependent on Northern paper mills before the war, so wartime printers had to contend with shortages, even when not working under siege conditions. In order to continue printing, Swords, like about a dozen other Confederate newspaper publishers, began to print on a stock of unused wallpaper. The Daily Citizen printed six known issues on wallpaper, on June 16, 18, 20, 27, 30, and July 2. The paper's reporting was deeply propagandistic, valorizing fallen Confederate officers, suggesting that Union officers were devil-worshipers and imbeciles, and predicting the speedy downfall of the army patiently waiting at Vicksburg's gates. The downfall didn't come; Grant's army prevailed. On July 4, after Vicksburg surrendered and the Daily Citizen's publisher fled, members of the Union army found the type for the July 2 issue standing and ready for the press. At least one of these men must have had printing experience, because Union soldiers reset one column and ran off new copies of the final issue to commemorate the Union's victory at Vicksburg. Because the July 4 issue gained some notoriety, many reprints, facsimiles, and forgeries have circulated throughout the years. Thus, though copies of the July 4 issue, whether original or later printings, come to auction relatively often, any of the June issues are scarce. The June 30 issue of the Daily Citizen is particularly rare. We find only four instances of any June issue of the Daily Citizen having gone to auction on Rare Book Hub, and the June 30th edition hasn't been seen at auction since 1907. See Clarence S. Brigham, "Wall-Paper Newspapers of the Civil War," Hugh Awtrey, "Wall Paper News of the Sixties," and Susan Campion, "Wallpaper Newspapers of the American Civil War."

  Condition

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