#101-CIVIL WAR SALE: UNIQUE & RARE 'WALLPAPER' NEWSPAPER, VICKSBURG, JULY 2, 1863
The Civil War brought incredible hardships to everyone and every business in the South, not just to the Confederate Army and the often ill-equipped soldiers. The South was effectively blockaded by Union ships, denying European shipment of goods to reach Confederate ports.
Just one of the myriad shortages in the South was paper/newsprint and many newspapers were forced to shut down or to print either infrequently or with reduced pages. One temporry solution, used briefly in Mississippi, was to take rolls of colorful wallpaper and print abbreviated editions of a newspaper on the blank backs of those rolls.
After the initial date of publication some editions actually reprinted some of the wallpaper newspapers for souvenirs during the war; it provided a small bit of revenue and like so many businesses in the South, publishers relished even a few dollars in added income as they struggled to stay in business. This Vicksburg paper was printed on the back of a roll of colorful blue patterns on a light background that was destined for the interior walls of some Mississippi home.
While wallpaper was a solution, it was a very short-lived one. There wasn't an endless supply of wallpaper which could be purchased by the newspaper and it was an impractical means of continuing to publish daily or even less frequently. Southern publishers constantly looked for alternatives to ceasing publication and what newsprint was available in the South naturally increased in cost dramatically making it a very expensive and often unaffordable option, but wallpaper and dimished supplies of newsprint at least allowed some newspapers to continue albeit on a very limited basis.
Printing on wallpaper was only used briefly and not by most newspapers, but it was a temporary option to halting publication. The number of surviving wallpaper papers in very small; they are rarely seen for sale or even in major auctions. I have not seen another in more than 20 years and then on just one occasion. Because of the extreme rarity there is no established "value" and the last sale I saw at the end of the 1990s in a large auction sold for $6,000. I carefully monitor examples of selling (and asking) prices for the items I sell. I certainly could have missed a sale, such as in a small or obscure auction or other sale, but these are simply incredibly rare.
The last photo is a closeup of the wallpaper design. I do not recall what the wallpaper pattern was when I previously saw a wallpaper newspaper. This design seems very typical of interior walls of Southern mansions during the war era.
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