CSA 11, 10¢ light blue (4 large to enormous margins including right sheet margin and pre-use crease) used with pen cancel and “Junction Va May 20/63” on homemade cover to Doct Bagbie (sic), Southr Literary Messenger, Richmond, Va.  Ex John Vagnetti.$130.

George William Bagby MD (1828-1883) was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School who never really practiced as a physician. He was more known as an editor, journalist, essayist, and humorist. He is the editor who turned the Southern Literary Messenger, a respected literary journal, into a propaganda tool endorsing secession and the Confederacy. He had brief military service as a private for a few months in 1861 in Company A, 11th Virginia Infantry. As the Richmond correspondent of the Charleston Mercury during the war, Bagby covered the politics of the war and made a reputation for Hermes, his pen name, as a fearless writer who would criticize Gen. Robert E. Lee as easily as Confederate President Jefferson Davis.