Vintage 1961-1963 Civil War Centennial DIXIPEX IV Embossed Cacheted Cover ✉️ Postally Used Envelope

These are postally used covers, mailed decades ago, so they vary a little one to the next in toning and handling.

📜 DIXIPEX IV and the Civil War Centennial cachet

Every cover in this listing carries the same cachet: raised metallic gold lettering reading CIVIL WAR CENTENNIAL / ACTS OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT over a navy woodcut-style vignette of a starred battle flag above a domed, columned building, with 1861 - DAVIS - LEE - STEPHENS - 1865 beneath it and DIXIPEX IV CIVIL WAR SERIES at the foot. DIXIPEX was a stamp show held in Birmingham, Alabama — DIXIPEX II in 1959, DIXIPEX III in 1960, and DIXIPEX IV in June 1961, right as the Civil War Centennial got underway. The show's name kept going afterward as a label for a whole run of cacheted covers, this "Acts of the Confederate Government" design among them, used across several centennial anniversary mailings from 1961 into 1963.

📮 A different town, a different date, on each one

What makes these worth having isn't just the cachet — it's that each cover was actually carried through the mail from a town on the date being marked:

• Mesilla, N. Mex. — AUG 1, for August 1, 1861, the day Lt. Col. John R. Baylor proclaimed the southern half of New Mexico Territory a Confederate territory and named Mesilla its capital. Franked with the 4-cent 49-star flag stamp of July 4, 1959.
• Bowling Green, Ky. — DEC 9, from the town a Confederate provisional government of Kentucky had chosen as its capital that November; Kentucky was admitted to the Confederacy on December 10, 1861. Franked with the 4-cent 50-star flag stamp of July 4, 1960, and cancelled with a PRAY FOR PEACE slogan die — a Post Office slogan authorized by Congress in 1954 and in use from 1956.
• Richmond, Va. — NOV 6, for November 6, 1861, the day Jefferson Davis was elected to a full six-year term as Confederate president; he was inaugurated the following February.
• Baton Rouge, La. — JUL 9, the centennial of the surrender of Port Hudson on July 9, 1863, a 48-day siege that ended with the Mississippi under Federal control. These two covers are franked with the 5-cent Civil War Centennial "Gettysburg" stamp, issued July 1, 1963 — so they're dated 1963, not 1961, even though they belong to the same DIXIPEX IV series as the others.

🖋️ The Gettysburg stamp

That 5-cent stamp on the Baton Rouge covers came out of the first nationwide contest in which the Post Office Department invited professional artists to design a U.S. stamp. Roy Gjertson's winning design prints "1863 1963" right across the face — a stamp that dates itself, which is exactly what pins these two covers to 1963.

🎨 The hand-colored cover

One of the two Baton Rouge covers has had the flag colored by hand in orange over the printed cachet. Hand-coloring like this was a long-running habit among cover collectors and cachet makers — a plain printed design finished one envelope at a time, so no two turn out quite alike. The other Baton Rouge cover in this listing is uncolored, so you can see the same cachet both ways.

📜 What you're actually holding

A cover is an envelope that's done its job — the cachet is the printed design at left, and the stamp and postmark at right are what turn it into postal history rather than stationery. The gold lettering here sits raised off the paper. Each cover is sold as the single town and date named, and they're a hard one to find.