- Most pictorial envelopes approximately 3 x 5 1/2 inches. Printed or embossed with caricatures, allegories, slogans, portraits, etc. relating to Civil War events and personalities. The vast majority is Union-oriented, for example of George Washington, Jefferson Davis, Benjamin Franklin, or Abraham Lincoln. State seals figure prominently, as do flags. Other significant topics in the collection are animals (especially the eagle), liberty, soldiers, sailors, and Uncle Sam., The New-York Historical Society's Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections owns approximately 3,000 unused envelopes dating from the Civil War years. Of these, 490 were scanned for this project. Most were produced by New York printers between 1861 and 1865. Some are quite crude; others are beautifully designed and executed, many in color, some gilt. Some envelopes show portraits or caricatures of politicians. A significant New York printer, Charles Magnus, is represented by thirty-six envelopes, many showing Civil War camp scenes derived from photographs.
- The forty-two color ink drawings presented here were made in 1864 by a Confederate prisoner of war at Point Lookout, Maryland, the Union's largest Civil War prison camp. The drawings highlight the concerns and experiences of prisoners of war; most scenes show prisoners playing cards, buying food, or engaging in barter with food vendors. All of the prison guards depicted are African American, and encounters are recorded between these guards and the Confederate prisoners. The album into which these sketches were pasted also includes photographs of commanding officers at Point Lookout, printed orders to prison guards about the treatment of prisoners, and letters from prisoners to President Lincoln asking to be released. The volume is part of the Naval History Society Collection, which was donated to the New-York Historical Society in 1925 by James Barnes. James Barnes was the son of the Naval History Society's founder, John S. Barnes, whose own father, Brigadier General James Barnes, commanded the Point Lookout prison. John S. Barnes found the album among his father's papers after his death in 1869., Manakee, Harold R. 'Omenhausser's Confederate Prisoners of War Sketch.' Maryland Historical Magazine (June 1958): 177-179 and cover.