Issued fourteen months after Pearl Harbor, this stamp was the U.S. Post Office's direct response to Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech - a wartime declaration of what America believed it was fighting for.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Catalog Number: Scott #908

• Denomination: 1 cent (1¢)

• Date of Issue: February 12, 1943

• Printing Method: Rotary Press, Engraved (Intaglio)

• Perforation: 11 × 10½

• Color: Bright Blue Green

• Subject: Allegorical figure of Liberty with torch, referencing Roosevelt's Four Freedoms

CONDITION ANALYSIS (Seller-Assessed)

• Status: Used

• Grading: Extremely Fine

• Postmark: A horizontal wavy-line machine postmark is present. The postmark falls across the stamp without obscuring the profile of Liberty.

• Obverse: Design remains clearly visible and intact throughout. No major tears or surface losses observed.

• Reverse: No original gum present, consistent with postal use. Back is clean with no visible tears, thinning, or repairs.

• Centering / Margins: Perforations clear of the design frame on all sides.

• Perforations: Intact on all four sides. No visible tears or missing perforations observed.

HISTORY

On January 6, 1941, nearly a year before the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union address to Congress and articulated what he called the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. He framed them not as American ideals alone but as the foundation of a world worth fighting for. The speech became one of the defining statements of Allied purpose in the war that followed.

The U.S. Post Office Department issued Scott #908 on February 12, 1943, as the country was fully at war. The design depicts an allegorical figure of Liberty holding a torch, rendered in the engraved intaglio style of the era, with inscriptions referencing the Four Freedoms directly. The bright blue green color was unusual among contemporary definitives and gave the stamp a visual distinctiveness that matched the gravity of its subject.

The 1¢ denomination placed this stamp at the lightest postal rate, meaning it circulated in enormous numbers across wartime America as a supplemental and makeup rate stamp. Millions of pieces of wartime correspondence carried it - letters to servicemen overseas, government communications, civilian mail moving through a country fully mobilized for war.

STEVEN SAYS

Roosevelt gave the Four Freedoms speech in January 1941. Pearl Harbor was eleven months later. This stamp came out in February 1943, in the middle of everything. The Post Office knew exactly what it was doing with this one.