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1847 10c, Scott #2Congress finally provided for the issuance of stamps by passing an act on March 3, 1847, and the Postmaster-General immediately let a contract to the New York City firm of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch, and Edson. The first stamp issues of the US were offered for sale on July 1, 1847, in NYC, with Boston receiving stamps the following year and other cities thereafter. They consisted of an engraved 5-cent red brown stamp depicting Benjamin Franklin (the first postmaster of the US), and a 10-cent value in black with George Washington. As for all US stamps until 1857, they were imperforate. Although a number of philatelists have studied these stamps for years, much remains unknown about the details of the original contract, design process, and the printing of these stamps.

1 cent, 1851, type IIThe post office had become so efficient by 1851 that Congress was able to reduce the common rate to three cents (which remained unchanged for over a century), necessitating a new issue of stamps. Values included a 1c profile of Franklin in blue, a 3c profile of Washington in red brown, a 5c portrait of Thomas Jefferson, and portraits of Washington for 10c green and 12c black values. The 1c stamp achieved notoriety, at least among philatelists, because production problems led to substantial plate modifications, and there are no less than seven major varieties, ranging in price from $100 to $200,000, and sharp-eyed collectors periodically find the rare types going unrecognized.

1857 saw the introduction of perforation, and in 1860 24c, 30c, and 90c values (with still more images of Washington and Franklin) were issued for the first time.

Civil war
The outbreak of the American Civil War threw the postal system into turmoil. On April 13, 1861 (the day after the firing on Fort Sumter, John H. Reagan, postmaster-general of the Confederate States of America, ordered local postmasters to return their US stamps to Washington DC (although it is unlikely that many did so), while in May the Union decided to withdraw and invalidate all existing US stamps, and to issue new stamps. Confederate post offices were left without legitimate stamps for several months, and while many reverted to the old system of cash payment at the post office, over one hundred post offices across the South came up with their own provisional issues. Many of these are quite rare, with only single examples surviving of some types. Eventually the Confederate government issued its own stamps; see stamps and postal history of the Confederate States.

In the North, the new stamp designs became available in August, and old stamps were accepted in exchange until the end of the year. The whole process was very confusing to the public, and there are number of covers from 1862 and later with 1857 stamps and bearing the marking "OLD STAMPS NOT RECOGNIZED".

The 1861 stamps had in common the letters "U S" in their design. The original issue included 1c, 3c, 5c, 10c, 12c, 24c, 30c, and 90c stamps. Several are superficially similar to their earlier counterparts, differing primarily in the design of the frame.

The "Black Jack", 1863A 2c stamp in black featuring Andrew Jackson was issued in 1863 and is now known to collectors as the "Black Jack". A black 15c stamp depicting the recently-assassinated Abraham Lincoln was issued in 1866, and is generally considered part of the same series. Although it was not officially described as such, and the 15c value was chosen to cover newly-established fee for registered letters, many philatelists consider this to be the first memorial stamp ever issued.

The war greatly increased the amount of mail in the North; ultimately about 1,750,000,000 copies of the 3c stamp were printed, and a great many have survived to the present day, typically selling for 2-3 dollars apiece. Most are rose-colored; pink versions are much rarer and quite expensive, especially the "pigeon blood pink" which goes for $3,000 and up.

Grills

In this 3-cent stamp, the grill pattern is visible in the cancel.During the 1860s, the postal authorities became concerned about postage stamp reuse. Although there is little evidence that this actually occurred much, many post offices had never received any cancelling devices, and improvised by scribbling on the stamp with an ink pen ("pen cancellation"), or whittling designs in pieces of cork, sometimes very creatively ("fancy cancels"), and poor-quality ink could be washed from the stamp. A number of inventors patented various ideas to solve the imagined problem.

"G" grill on an 1869 issueThe Post Office eventually adopted the grill, a device consisting of a pattern of tiny pyramidal bumps that would emboss the stamp, breaking up the fibers so that the ink would soak in more deeply, and thus be harder to clean off. While the patent survives (No. 70,147), much of the actual process of grilling was not well-documented, and there has been considerable research trying to recreate what happened and when. Study of the stamps shows that there were ten types in use, distinguished by size and shape (philatelists have labelled them with letters A-I and Z), and that the practice started some time in 1867 and was abandoned around 1871. A number of grilled stamps are among the great rarities of US philately; the United States 1c Z grill is the rarest of all US stamps, with only two known to exist. (See grilled stamp for more details.)

1869s

3-cent value depicting a locomotiveIn 1868 the Post Office contracted with the National Bank Note Company to produce new stamps with a variety of designs. These came out in 1869, and were notable for the variety of their subjects; the 2c depicted a Pony Express rider, the 3c a locomotive, the 12c the steamship Adriatic, the 15c the landing of Christopher Columbus, and the 24c the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

15 centsOther innovations included the first use of two-color printing on U.S. stamps, and as a consequence the first inverted stamps. Although popular with collectors today, the unconventional stamps were the targets of much scorn when they came out, and were superseded by a new issue just a year later.

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