Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1893 — CONFEDERATE CASH. [ARTICLE]

CONFEDERATE CASH.

UNIQUE COLLECTION OK PAPER MONEY OWN ED BY UNCLE SAJI. How the Notes Were Made—A Big Business In Counterfeiting—Depreciation of the Notes. Hidden away among the archives of the Treasury Department is a curious volume which few people have ever looked into. Though nothing more nor less tlian a scrap book, it is filled from cover to cover with money. Altogether it holds not les9 than 3200,000. The contents are real currency of legitimate issue, and yet the whole of them would not be aoeepted to-day in payment for a bag of flour or a box of soap. This is because Confederate notes and bonds, which com pose the collection described, are worth at present nothing more than their value as waste paper, save in so far as certain specimens nre in demand hv collectors. Nevertheless the volume is extremely interesting bv reason of the fact that it represents the most complete existing assemblage of the “shinplasters” put in circulation as promises to pay by the government of the South during the Civil war.

Looking over the pages of the scrap book, the various issues of currency being arranged in chronological order, one follows front start to finish the history of the greatest civil conflict that the world has ever seen. The story of a nation is always told most interestingly by its money. “Two years sifter date the confederate "states promise to pay,” reads the inscription on the earliest notes, but very soon this is replaced by a more conservative legend, setting the date of payment at “six months after the ratification of a treaty of peace between the confederate states and the United States,” and this latter fotdn holds up to the end of the war. The money is patterned pretty closely after Uncle Sam’s, but the clear lines of steel engraving are feebly imitated by the processes of photolithography. "Why this method of printing employed is quite an entertaining anecdote in itself.

It will be remembered, perhaps, that Charles 6. Mepiinger of Soutli Carolina on taking office as the first secretary of the confederate treasury made a contract with the American Bank Note Company of New York for a supply of paper notes for SI,OOO, SSOO, SIOO and SSO. The order was filled, a considerable quantity of the currency being shipped to Richmond and safely delivered. The goods being found satisfactory the bank note company was requested to send on the engraved plates. This was done, but the United States government was cfn the alert and succeeded in capturing the plates on board of the vessel which was conveying them to Richmond. A few years later this matter was brought up in Congress very effectively as an argument against employing the American Bauk Note Company to print United States money, its action in lending such services to the confederate government being denounced ns disloyal. Now, nt the time when the war began, the American Bank Note Company had a branch establishment at New Orleans, which was conducted by a man named Schmidt. Subsequent to the event just described plates for SIOO, SSO, $lO and $5 notes were engraved there and printed from. This did not last long, however. Blanton Duncan, lieutenant colonel of a Kentucky regiment, started a private establishment at Richmond for producing paper currency by lithography, obtaining contracts to supply the confederate treasury. Other shops were set up later on for the same purpose, and the rivalry for government contracts being very great, they all united against Schmidt. At this period any northern man residing in the south was an object of suspicion, being regarded as au enemy and presumably an abolitionist. Accordingly the governor of Louisiana, yielding to public sentiment, swooped down upon the branch office of the Bank Note company, and confiscating all the material in the shape of plates, tools, etc., distributed it among the lithograph printers. About half a dozen of these lithographic establishments at Richmond and at Columbia, S. C., continued to print .paper money for the confederate treasury up to the close of the war. From the beginning to the end of the conflict not fur from $1,500,030,003 in shinplasters of various denominations were turned out and pat into circulation. Looking over the curious scrap book described one notices that each note is actually signed in pen aud ink with the names of the treasurer and register of the treasury, the serial number being put on in like manner. This was accomplished by employing clerks to sign for those officials. They were arranged to work in pairs, one signing for the register and the other for the treasurer. The numbers were added by a third person. At the beginning this labor was performed by men, but they were in such demand for fighting purposes that women were substituted later on. Altogether 244 women and'6B men were engaged in this task during the war. They did the signing and numbering of the notes by sheets, which were afterwards cut up.

One complaint that was made against Schmidt was that he was horribly slow, dnd this was a very serious matter where there was an immediate necessity for almost unlimited supplies of a negotiable medium. The lithographic establishments imported the paper and other material in immense quantities by blockade runners from England. They also obtained from Great Britain their workmen, nearly all of whom were Scotchmen. The firm of Keating A Ball, at Columbia, survived ali the other moneyprinting concerns, and toward the end of the war they had all the contracts and were the official engravers for the confederate treasury*. Their factory was destroyed by Geueral Sherman on "his famous raid of 1805. In 1864 because of the continued quarrels among the different people who did the printing of the currency, the treasury appointed an officer with the title of superintendent, whose duty it was to conduct dealings with the lithographic engravers and to superintend all matters respecting the production of the paper currency. As if there had not been other causes sufficient to depreciate the value of the confederate currency that government was still further embarrassed by the counterfeiting on an enormous scale of its issues of paper money. Gangs of accomplished forgers in the Bermudas and in the north devoted much attention to the production in immense quantities of fairly accurate imitations of the notes and bonds of the southern states. It is certain that these criminals actually employed the services of lithographers in the money-printing establishments which supplied shiuplasters for the support of the war, and in this way they were able to secure impressions made on paper matrices from the original lithographic stones. Thus they had no difficulty in reproducing the bonds and notes by the simplest mechanical means in sac simile, the ouly difference being that the counterfeits were apt to be a little bigger than the originals by reason of the stretching of the paper matrix.

At the beginning of the war the coo* federate pajier money was current at par. It soon began to depreciate, however, and by 1803 its market value had fallen to about 50 per cent. Toward the end of the war it was worth so little thatono had actually to be a millionaire in order to live at all. Milk cost S4O a quart, and in one recorded iustancc a southern gentleman with a fair appetite paid $lO5 for a very modest lunch at a restaurantsuch a meal as one could get for about 45 cents in Washington now. At the fall of the confederacy the currency passed for 1 cent and a fraction on the dollar. An ex-colonel of volunteers, located in Washington, told the writer an odd story of an incident which occurred when the army of the Potomac was in full pursuit of Lee’s forces. As fast as the wagon tratus of the enemy were overtaken they were pillaged and in one of them were found the funds of a military paymaster. About $50,000 of the confedrate money seized was crammed into a gunny-sack and delivered to the officer quoted. In response to a request he gave the entire sum to a sergeant, who afterward informed him that lie had been able to dispose of it at the rate of $5 oy SIOO to coufedrates, the presumption being that the latter expected to be able to use it profitably in parts of the south where the currency had not yet dropped to nothing in value, —[Washington Star.