During the royal era of Hawaii, while the American mainland was engulfed in the Civil War, countless patriotic covers were issued and became a cultural phenomenon of the time. Let us momentarily set aside Hawaii and embark on a journey into the world of patriotic covers.
A Donkey in a Lion’s Skin-and a Very Bad Pun
Civil War patriotic covers didn’t just carry letters. They carried opinions.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Americans did what Americans do best: they turned their rage into merchandise.
Printers across the North rushed out patriotic envelopes — covers printed with flags, eagles, slogans, and sometimes, biting political cartoons. Soldiers sent them home. Wives sent them to the front. Everyone, it seemed, had something to say.
Meet the donkey
The image shows a creature that can’t quite decide what it is. It has the body of a lion — shaggy mane, dramatic pose — but the ears and face of a donkey. It rears up proudly beside a Confederate flag, braying at the world.
Beneath it, a poem:
When Southern fools depute an Ass,
In Lion’s skin, to bray their cause,
And fancy that the world, en masse,
Will give the long-eared beast applause,
Why, all must say that such a master
Will to them prove a sad dis-Ass-ter!
Yes dis- Ass-ter. Someone in 1861 was very pleased with themselves.
What is Actually Going On Here
The cartoon is a jab at Confederate leadership — specifically the idea that Southern politicians were dressing up a weak cause in borrowed dignity.
The lion’s skin is the Confederacy’s grand rhetoric about honor, sovereignty, and Southern civilization.
The donkey underneath is what the North thought of it.
The Confederate flag in the image is telling too. In 1861, Confederate symbols were still new and politically charged. The flag in the image was not decoration.
It was part of the argument.
Northerners mocked the banner along with the cause it represented.
The printed copyright line reads: “Entered according to act of Congress, A.D. 1861, by W. Ridenburg, in the Clerk’s Office for the Southern District of N.Y.”
Someone filed a copyright for a donkey pun. 1861 was a different time.
This cover is not from Hawaii, but it belongs in the same larger story: the nineteenth century was an age when paper traveled faster than people, and envelopes carried not only addresses, but identities, loyalties, jokes, insults, and entire political worlds.
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