Perhaps you E-Sylum readers are smarter than a NOVA kid. The question: Having shown them encased postage stamps they asked whether letters were delivered by postmen across the Mason-Dixon divide between North and South during the Civil War. Eric fielded this question with an answer that sounded right, but the way we all looked at one another, the kids probably caught us crossing our fingers behind our backs. For really great stumpers like that I think next time we should award an entire uncut sheet of auction bucks, a real collectible! So what would be your answer?

Here is what the United States Postal Service has to say (in a nut shell) on the matter:

“The United States banned the exchange of mail between citizens of the North and South in August 1861, although smugglers often carried mail illegally across the lines. Prisoner-of-war mail was exchanged between North and South at designated points under a flag-of-truce. Citizens could also send letters via the flag-of-truce system, although like prisoners’ mail, their letters were read by censors and rejected if the contents were objectionable.”

The entire article can be located at: http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_civil-war-mail-history.pdf

For a much more exhaustive examination of the issue, see the following article (a great read!), “American Civil War Postage Due: North and South,” by Harry K. Charles, Jr., Ph. D., Postal History Symposium, Nov. 2012, at: http://stamps.org/userfiles/file/symposium/presentations/CharlesPaper.pdf