During the Civil War, the anti-war Democrats in the North, particularly in the Old Northwest, went by the name of "Copperheads." Their period of strength was from late 1862-early 1864, and the most well known of them was Clement Vallandingham. Their name was a double entedre. There is, of course, a poisonous snake called a copperhead. But the people of this particular political persuasion wore as lapel pins the obverse head of the old large cents - hence "copper heads."
Yup. They usually took the large cents to jewelers to get just the head of the penny cut out, and wore them as lapels. I find it really interesting. I have an 1854 era large cent that would have been in circulation during Bloody Kansas, that would have been before the copperheads came about. I love civil war history, especially when it comes to stuff like this. I really like to get a hold of the stuff that was being used in that time period. Sorry for bringing up an older thread, I just recently learned about this while doing homework for a civil war class I am taking, and thought that this thread deserved an up since no one else had replied to it.
Money, or really the lack of it, also had quite an impact during the Civil War, greatly affecting the ability to carry on everyday business transactions. Imagine common coinage being so scarce that banks would pay a 20% premium over face to obtain it. Several new mediums of exchange were tried out to meet the merchants' need to make change (such as plain postage stamps, encased postage stamps, fractional currency), but the most successful were the Civil War tokens. Those tokens were also called copperheads, and were so widely accepted that they influenced the government to replace the copper-nickel cents with copper ones. I also really like to get a hold of the stuff that was being used in that time period. Here is my favorite.
