This conference paper emerged from a new piece I am working on for a forthcoming anthology on the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898 in Omaha, Nebraska, a world’s fair that is less scholarly traversed than the 1893 and 1904 fairs of that period.  When researching the making of this fair for my book, From Liberation to Conquest: the Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish-American War of 1898 (UMass Press, 2011), I sought to analyze how fair representations reflected evolving attitudes toward American’s new colonies acquired in the war with Spain of the same year.  One set of representations I found fascinating, but did little with in the book, was a set of commemorative stamps that the Post Office issued in 1898 to celebrate and promote the Omaha world’s fair (the second commemorative series in our nation’s history!).  My paper will examine this set of nine stamps closely, attempting to ascertain why certain images were selected to appear in the stamp series and why others were not chosen.  This process of selection illuminates the collaboration of fair organizers and government officials in constructing an image of the West in line with the nation’s evolving ideas of expansion and empire. 

For the purposes of this blog, I thought I would say a little about one of the nine stamps in the series, by way of previewing the ideological work of these compact, visual statements in selling a fictionalized narrative of the West.  Third Assistant Postmaster General John A. Merritt intended for the commemorative stamp issue, like the exposition itself, to celebrate the pioneering, exploring, and settling of the Trans-Mississippi region.  This iconographic direction fit the prescription of historical mythmaking of the American West, underscoring themes of inevitability and entitlement at the expense of chronicling the actual negotiations and displacement transpiring there.  This endeavor, at times, came at the expense of historical accuracy, as in the case of the $1 stamp in the series, titled “Western Cattle in Storm.”  Based on a painting by British artist John MacWhirter, its depiction of a cattle herd represented a quintessential ranching scene on the Great Plains.  But the Post Office Department incorrectly labeled the setting, and to the dismay of Merritt, it later came out that the image was actually of cattle in the Scottish highlands, not the American West.  The Post Office Department formally apologized for the misrepresentation to the owner of the painting, Lord Blythswood of Scotland, inviting less than laudatory publicity for the fair.  Despite the carelessness of the choice, in choosing the image the Bureau of Printing staff as well as fair promoters sought to celebrate the Western sublime as well as promote its commercial possibilities.

By examining the selection of visual material for the stamps in relation to the wider historical and cultural currents of the 1890s, the intent of my paper is to frame the different ways that government officials, fair organizers, promoters, and collectors engaged in larger conversations about regional, national, and imperial identities through their production and consumption of this widely acclaimed commemorative stamp series.

   - Bonnie M. Miller, Associate Professor of American Studies, UMass Boston