Missy Knee

One hundred and fifty years is only a tiny time frame in the history of mankind and yet it is only within the last 150 years that the ownership of human beings has been outlawed in the United States. And rather than repugnance over the moral outrage of slavery being the cause of its abolition, it took a Civil War and the deaths of nearly 600,000 Americans to end it (this was in a nation with a population of a little over 30 million-mortality at this rate would have produced over six million American casualties if the war was fought today). In the civilized English speaking world (with the exception of the United States) slavery was outlawed before stamps were issued. One of the most interesting stamps issued on this subject is the Jamaica Abolition of Slavery issue of 1921.

 Slavery, like the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide still has its deniers. They typically work to ensure that slavery

The hobby of philately just like everything else chages and adapts along with time. Several years ago, I had a real treat. I had a chance to work on a collection in which the last stamp was put in the album in 1921. The Collector died in that year and his great grandchildren decided to sell the stamps some eighty years later. Collecting styles have changed over the years and working on this collection brought back memories of the old times. A collector in 1921 was never content with having one example of a stamp. This collection had no less than 20 5c 1847s were as well as a number of 10c. But the real interest began with the 1861 issue where collectors of that bye gone era collected numerous shades and better cancels. The 1861s contained Civil War Patriotics, the 1869s fancy cancels and used in Japan and the Banknotes had a plethora of interesting and specialized subsections that were a pleasure to behold.
This collection was especially interesting

Collectors of United States stamps in the 1920-1950 period had a dilemma. The days of varieties were gone. The papers and printings of the Bank Note issues which span over 80 major Scott numbers were over as were the wild early days of the Washington-Franklins that spawned nearly 200 major numbers. Stamp issuing policy was conservative and the definitive set of the period-the Presidentials- had few varieties. Stamp collectors need new issues and less expensive stamps to add to their collection or they lose interest. So American collectors gravitated to plate blocks. It's not that other countries lacked marginal markings-both German and British stamps have plate numbers and French stamps have marginal numbers called millesimes- it is just that plate block collecting caught on in the United States to satisfy this desire for more newer issues to collect.

The reason why Americans esteem their marginal markings more than other countries' philatelists is simple. In Britain the desire