Civil war stamp duty; Photography as a revenue source

Abstract

For a two-year period, between 1st August 1864 and 1st August 1866, American photographers were required to affix adhesive revenue stamps to their ‘sun pictures’. This stamp is discussed briefly in the standard books on the history of photography, for example by Taft¹ and Gernsheim² and, most recently, that by William Welling³. With the very sketchy information at their disposal, collectors and historians have used the presence of such tax stamps to aid them in dating old photographs. If a tax stamp appears on the back of a carte-de-visite, one can say with certainty that it was sold between 1st August 1864 and 1st August 1866, and this is about as far as the familiar sources go.