Kentucky and Alaska are the subjects for today’s #stampoftheday.
The first is a 3-cent stamp issued on June 1, 1942 to mark the 150th anniversary of Kentucky, which had been part of Virginia, becoming America’s 15th state on June 1, 1792. Kentucky joined the nation as a slave state but because its land didn’t lend itself as well to the large plantations found in other states, it became major source of slaves sold elsewhere in the United States particularly after 1808 when Congress outlawed the African slave trade. As a result in the decade before the Civil War about 16 percent of more than 250,000 enslaved African Americans in Kentucky were sold and taken out of the state.
Despite this legacy, Kentucky did not secede from the Union and join Confederacy. However, after the war, the state legislature rejected the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments (which banned slavery, provided for equal protection under the law, and guaranteed the right to vote). Nevertheless, the state (supposedly) had to implement them when they were ratified. And, of course, in the decades after their adoption, segregation was legal and violence was common. Segregation, technically is not legal. However, as we have again seen in the last week, violence is still all too common.
None of this, of course, is depicted on the stamp which pictures a mural by Gilbert White from the capitol building in Frankfort. Instead, it shows Daniel Boone, one of the first white men to explore the state, and three others looking across the Kentucky River to the shore where Frankfort, the capitol city, is located.
The Alaska stamp is a 2-cent stamp picturing William Seward that was issued on June 1, 1909, the day that the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition opened in Seattle, Washington. The fair was an initiative of the Alaska Club, a group of Seattle-area businessmen with ties to Alaska interested in spurring migration to and investment in Alaska. As planning progressed, the scope of the exposition expanded to include Canada, where the original Klondike gold strikes had occurred and the Pacific, to honor the Oriental trade.
The fair opened on June 1, 1909 with performances by Army and Navy bands. At 3 p.m. Seattle time, President William Howard Taft opened the exposition “by touching a gold [telegraph] key, studded with gold nuggets taken from the first mine opened in the Klondike region.” Once the telegraph spark was received in Seattle, a gong was struck, the US flag unfurled, and there was a 21-gun salute.
Over 3.7 million attended the fair before it closed on October 16, 1909. Popular exhibits included the largest log cabin ever built at that time, a scale model of a major coal mine, a building showing the role women played in settling the West and a reenactment of the Civil War Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack (an event now mentioned in three of the last four #stampoftheday postings). And there was an early flying machine that William Boeing, the future founder of Boeing, said was so inspiring that it spurred his lifelong interest in aviation.
The fair’s major physical legacy was the planning framework from the fair which continues to shape the University of Washington campus. The Rainier Vista and Drumheller Fountain, which were the central focus of the fair’s design (prepared by the famed Olmsted Brothers firm of Brookline MA) and today are the central focus of the university’s Science Quadrangle. While most of the fair’s buildings were temporary, in keeping with organizers’ agreement with the state, several were permanent structures that were converted into academic buildings. The fair’s Fine Arts Palace (now known as Architecture Hall) became the University’s primary facility for teaching chemistry, then became the home of Architecture and Physiology, and survives today, albeit with extensive renovation and restoration. The building that housed the women’s exhibit is Cunningham Hall, which houses various educational and other programs related to women. Several other buildings were used for many years but were later replaced, including the Hoo-Hoo House, a recreation facility for lumbermen, that served as the university’s faculty club until the late 1950s.
The original design for the stamp honoring the exposition featured a seal on an ice floe. But the exposition committee, fearing potential visitors would believe Alaska was always cold, opted instead for a portrait of William Seward, who as secretary of state under President Abraham Lincoln, had negotiated the purchase of Alaska from the Russians for $7,200,000 – less than 2c an acre. Believing the new territory was a wasteland of snow and ice, many Americans considered the purchase a foolish one, and Alaska came to be known as “Seward’s Folly,” “Seward’s Icebox,” and “Iceburgia.” (A statue of Seward originally erected for the fair now stands in Seattle’s Volunteer Park.)
There we have it for June 1, 2020, another day when it feels like our history keeps catching up with us. As William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Stay safe and be well.