The 1869 Pictorial Issue is a series of definitive United States postage stamps released during the first weeks of the Grant administration. Ten types of stamp in denominations between one cent and ninety cents were initially offered in the series, with eight of these introduced on March 19 and 20, 1869 and the two greatest values being distributed somewhat later. During May, however, the Post Office began distributing a revised version of the 15-cent stamp, in which the original, poorly aligned frame had been modified (a diamond shape was added above the vignette); and collectors consider this eleventh stamp an integral part of the Pictorial Issue. The two 15-cent stamps were assigned separate Scott Catalogue numbers: 118 and 119.

The term "pictorial" denotes a revolutionary aspect of the 1869 series. Here the designers rethought the concept of what constituted an appropriate stamp subject, changing the established convention that U.S. postage stamps should present images only of dead statesmen. Such statesman-portraits appear, in fact, on only three values of the pictorial issue: the 1-cent Franklin, the 6-cent Washington and the 90-cent Lincoln. The other seven denominations contain a variety of images. Three stamps illustrate means of postal transportation: delivery on horseback (2 cent), by locomotive (3 cent) and by steamship (12 cent). Two others present historical tableaux drawn from famous paintings of crucial hemispheric events: John Vanderlyn's Landing of Columbus (15 cent) and John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence (24 cent). The 30 cent was designed to be similar to the 15 cent and 24 cent stamps. It was to use a vignette that showed the British surrender after the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. The Post Office decided at the last minute not to annoy the British and so used the 10 cent Patriotic Eagle and Shield design again with the addition of flags. An innovation no less striking of the 1869 pictorials was the introduction of the first two-color stamps of U.S. postal history, on the four denominations of 15 cents and greater. Each color had to be printed separately; and on a few sheets of the 15-cent, 24-cent and 30-cent stamps, the paper was placed in the press upside down for the second printing, resulting in America's first invert errors. These error stamps command high prices: at an auction in early 2011, used copies of the three inverts realized a total of a quarter of a million U.S. dollars.

During the past century, the pictorial series has enjoyed warm praise in philatelic commentaries: some have expressed admiration for the boldness of its concept and the skill of its miniaturistic engraving by James Smillie, others, affection for the period charm of its illustrations. The 12-cent value, with its image of the S. S. Adriatic, is described often as a particularly beautiful stamp. The S.S. Adriatic was the Concorde of her day. Very fast across the Atlantic, subsidized by the government, but still an economic disaster. By 1860, the ship had been sold to the British. Still others writers cite the nostalgic associations of the pictorials, noting that for most collectors of American stamps, the 3-cent locomotive—a common item of which many cheap copies are available—was the first issue of real antiquity they were able to collect, in the otherwise empty early pages of their albums. Most other values in the series, by contrast, are rare, especially the greater denominations, and for this reason as well the issue is venerated by many collectors.

Quite different, however, was the reception the pictorials faced in the months after their release during 1869. Early philatelic reviews were favorable, but soon severe criticism began to appear in the press, and the stamps rapidly became disreputable. As early as September, newspapers announced that the Post Office was planning a new definitive issue to supplant the unpopular series, and the replacements went on sale during April 1870 — less than thirteen months after the pictorials had first been vended. The new issue cost the taxpayer nothing, for the National Banknote Company's contract for U.S. stamp production required it to furnish — as the Postmaster stated in a written report — "new designs and plates ... at the pleasure of the Postmaster General, without additional cost to the department". The remarkably brief tenure of the pictorials meant that relatively few stamps could be printed, which accounts for their scarcity.

Many accounts characterize the strident criticism that greeted the pictorials as a spontaneous, broad-based public reaction, motivated by the patriotic conviction that national heroes were the only acceptable subjects for U.S. stamps. The truth, however, seems to be more complicated, for the tone of much of the press commentary about the pictorials suggests that an organized campaign was attempting to discredit them. To liken the design on the 30-cent stamp to "a bunch of rags hung out of a junk shop" as least raises an aesthetic issue; but the statement that the 2-cent stamp represented "Booth's Death ride into Maryland" is surely defamation pure and simple, indicating an agenda that has little to do with the question of stamp design.

That the pictorials had been created by the widely reviled Johnson administration was scarcely likely to win them adherents. Grant's postmaster and his team were constrained to issue them without having had any say in their design or production, and thus had no reason either to like or to defend the new issue. Moreover, even before the pictorials appeared they had already acquired enemies as a result of the previous year's unusually contentious competition for the contract to produce the 1869 U.S. stamps. The designs and printing proposals offered by the National Banknote Company during June 1868 had been chosen by the Post Office, despite the fact that another company—Butler, Carpenter—had submitted a lesser bid. The deciding factor may have been that National had the rights to the patented apparatus used for incising stamps with grill-patterns, a procedure the Post Office had recently adopted in hopes of making it impossible to clean the cancellations from stamps and reuse them. Nevertheless, Butler, Carpenter strenuously protested the rejection of their low bid and mustered an array of allies in a protracted attempt to have the contract reassigned to them—even contriving to have an investigation begun by a Congressional committee, which delayed the actual signing of the contract with National until December.

In this climate of ill will, a set such as the pictorials—an issue that avoided moderate solutions—was particularly vulnerable, for features of the new stamps that were unfamiliar could easily be characterized as hopeless flaws by opponents who had been involved with the Butler, Carpenter fight. The pictures, in fact, were only one unusual factor. The stamps were smaller in dimension than previous ones and nearly square in format, in contrast to the oblong shape that had been customary. The reduced size enabled National to fit 150 stamp-images on a pane instead of the normal 100, and Butler, Carpenter had characterized this shrinkage as a penny-pinching short-cut that reeked of unfair competition. It is perhaps not a coincidence that public criticisms frequently deplored the small size and unfamiliar shape of the pictorials.

Not all objections, however, can be dismissed as illegitimate. It was surely impolitic to oust Washington from his accustomed place on the normal first-class-letter stamp and replace him with a Baldwin locomotive. The New York Evening Mail fulminated: "Our old three cent stamps were as perfect as they well could be.... They were National and American, as they ought to have been. The head of Washington was venerable.... But now think of the miserable, confused looking thing, with its wretched printing, that the Post Office has given us for the present three cent stamp. It is neither historical, national, [nor] beautiful.... What is there in a big chimney on a railroad carriage to indicate the nationality of our postal system[?]." Some critics registered complaints about poor quality gum, which may have been justified. Deriding the small size of the stamps, "[t]he comic papers exhibited caricatures in which the people were looking for their stamps in their pocket books with powerful microscopes." And the designs were particularly vulnerable to being rendered unattractive or even risible by the poor quality control exercised by the still infant stamp production industry. Only collectors of exceptional affluence are able to afford well-centered copies of the pictorials; less fortunate hobbyists must often settle for lopsided examples that must have been even more displeasing to those who bought them at post offices during 1869.