When Vicksburg, Mississippi was under siege by the Union Army in the spring of 1863, provisions became so scarce that newspaper proprietors used bolts of wallpaper when newsprint was no longer available. Two editions of The Daily Citizen, one for June 23, 1863 and one for July 2/4, 1863 are part of the Dorothy Baker Crum Collection (Collection 1526). Records in the collection indicate that her ancestor, “photographist” George W. Mullen, was granted permission to travel through the Union Army lines near Vicksburg and these papers were presumably acquired by him.

When the city finally surrendered on July 4, the type for the July 2 edition of the Daily Citizen was found still on the press after the publisher abandoned it.  A few lines were added at the bottom of the page suggesting that the newspaper “will be valuable hereafter as a curiosity.”

Indeed, it was such a curiosity that many facsimile editions of this newspaper have been printed. The Library of Congress compiled a checklist to determine authenticity, and the one in the collection meets all the criteria to prove that it is original. These rare items are now on view in the lobby of Library Special Collections. By Megan Hahn Fraser, Processing Projects Librarian