Featured Small Change During the Civil War

Since many of us are house-bound or at least semi-house-bound, I have decided to dust off some my old articles that I write for my local club and post them here. Since I am going to add a fair number of pictures, it might take a few posts to mount the entire article. It may take me a while to post all of this article, but bear with me.


At our February meeting, someone asked about what people used for small change in the Confederate states during the Civil War. That brought up a longer discussion about what Civil War citizens used, both North and South. At that moment I realized that I had never covered this topic during all of the years that I have given educational presentations to the club. Although I don’t have a large collection of this material, I decided that it might be interesting to cover it this month.

At the beginning of the Civil War, most people on both sides thought the conflict would be short. Northern politicians thought that they could put down the rebellion quickly. Southern Rebels thought that the North would give up without much of a fight and allow them to go their own way. Neither side figured on the determination of Abraham Lincoln to preserve the Union. After the Southern rout of the North at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, and the bloody Union victory at Shiloh in early April 1862, it became obvious that the war was going to be long and difficult.

At first the Union side paid for the war with gold. That policy is reflected by the high mintages, for the period, of 1861 gold coins for most denominations. The South paid for the war with fiat paper money from the beginning. The early Confederate notes stated that they would redeem their paper six months after a peace treaty was signed with the North. Later they extended it to two years.

1861 $5 gold piece



Early Confederate States of America $100 note, variety T-5




As it became obvious that the war would not end any time soon, citizens began to hoard gold coins. By the end of 1861, gold coins had disappeared from circulation. One could acquire gold pieces, but only if you paid a premium, over their face value, in paper money. In the spring of 1862, the Union Government began to issue demand notes that were not backed by silver. Silver coins disappeared from circulation in short order. By mid-summer, people were even hoarding the copper-nickel Flying Eagle and Indian Cents despite the fact that their face value exceeded their melt value. Some merchants offered to pay a 20% premium for cents. In New York City, a building collapsed under the weight of the cents that were stored in it.



"Coppers 20 Pr Ct Premium"




This left the average citizen with no United States coins to use for their day to day living expenses, which prompted them to seek alternatives. The scope of those alternatives provides the basis for an interesting collection of monetary replacements that the public and private sectors provided.


Postage Stamps

One of the early monetary substitutes was postage stamps. These government issued scraps of paper had value and were available in convenient denominations from 1 to 90 cents. In July 1862 the Union Congress passed a bill that allowed stamps to be used as currency. The problems were that they were made of fragile paper and had glue on the back which made the stamps a sticky mess if they come in contact with moisture. Another problem cropped up when people purchased large quantities of stamps which resulted in shortages.

One alternative was to use small pre-printed envelopes which had denominations printed on the outside. These rare pieces came in amounts like 25 or 50 cents. There were two drawbacks to this. First, if the envelope happened to get wet, the stamps could be ruined. Second, it was a good idea to check to see if the envelope really did contain the amount in stamps that was stated on the front.

The most innovative of the “stamps used as money devices” was encased postage. American entrepreneur, John Galt, invented these token-like pieces. They consisted of a two-piece brass frame (front and back) with a window in front that was made of mica, a clear silicon-based mineral. The stamp was folded and encased in the frame with its face value showing. The possible denominations for the stamps were 1, 3, 5, 10, 12, 24, 30 and 90 cents. Most encased postage pieces contain stamps valued at 10 cents or less. Any piece that contains a stamp worth more than 12 cents is rare and might well be a “manufactured rarity” with a replacement stamp inside. An encased postage piece can be opened and re-sealed, but it is very difficult to avoid leaving evidence that its seal has been broken.

Galt made his income by producing encased postage pieces with merchant advertising on the back. Galt charged 20% over the face value of the stamps in his holders and an addition amount for a customer advertising message on the back. This made Galt’s invention more expensive than the other money substitutes. In addition, a shortage of postage stamps limited Galt’s ability to produce his product. For these reasons, the encased postage series was short-lived.

Today all encased postage stamps are scarce, and many of the individual merchant varieties are rare. The Ayer’s medicine company of Lowell, Massachusetts is by far the most common merchant. The best known merchant is Lord & Taylor, whose encased piece is quite scarce.

Civil War era postage stamp



Five cent encased postage piece issued by inventor, John Gault.



To be continued ...

 

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Fractional Currency

In August 1862, the Union Government introduced the first issue of fractional currency, which is also known as Postage Currency. The idea grew out of discussions between the Post Office and Treasury Departments. The result was an agreement to issue stamps in a larger, more convenient size without the gum on the back. U.S. Treasurer, E.F Spinner, made some prototypes by gluing some stamps on Treasury Department letterheads. These notes were technically illegal because they went beyond the authority Congress had authorized in its July 1862 legislation. No one complained because they were badly needed in the economy.

Postage Currency was issued in four denominations, 5, 10, 25 and 50 cents. The 5 and 25 pieces were mustard colored with brown printing. An image of a 5 cent stamp appeared on the five cent piece, and five overlapping five cent stamps were on the quarter dollar. The 10 and 50 cent pieces were green and white with 10 cent stamp images appearing on those pieces.

Like virtually all paper money, fractional currency was printed in sheets. Like stamps, some pieces had perforations around each note which was intended to facilitate the separation of individual notes from the sheet. After the perforations proved to be less convenient than they might have seemed, the notes were cut apart in the conventional manner. The notes with the perforated edges are scarcer with the 50 cent piece especially so.

Postal Currency 50 cent note, perforated edges



Postal Currency 40 cent note, plain edges




Counterfeiting was a problem with Fractional Currency. In October 1863, the Union Government introduced the second series of Fractional Currency. All four denominations had the same design on the front. It featured a riverboat to the left and some freight, a wagon and a mid-19th century steam locomotive on the right. A portrait of George Washington was in the center. The only difference in the design on the front among the four denominations was the value which was shown on either side of the Washington portrait and in the four corners. The reverses were brown for the 5 cent, green for the 10 cent, purple for the 25 cent and red for the 50 cent piece.

All of the notes had an oval halo, an anti-counterfeiting device, around the Washington portrait that looked like gold when it was new. The oval was actually made of finely ground copper. Like a copper cent the oval turned brown when it oxidized and under the right conditions, could corrode and turn green. Counterfeiters were never able to duplicate “the golden oval,” but they did place a brown and even a green oval around the Washington portrait on their illicit products.

The “golden copper,” anti-counterfeit ink also appeared on the back of these notes. The denomination in large digit(s), appeared in the center and so-called “surcharges” which were letters or numbers, appeared on the four corners on some notes.

Fractional Currency, "second issue," 5 cent note




The third series of Fractional Currency, authorized in June 1864, was that last group that the Union Government issued during the Civil War. A 3 cent note was added and a 15 cent note was proposed but never officially issued. Each note was a different size with the dimensions increasing with the face value of the piece. Many intricate design elements were added to these pieces to discourage counterfeiting. Some pieces also included the “golden copper” overprints that had been used on the previous Fractional Currency issue. After the war, the government placed two additional series of Fractional Currency into circulation. The last fractional notes were issued in 1876.

Third Issue Fractional currency, 25 cent note.



To be continued ...

 

Confederate Fractional Notes

Several Confederate cities and states issued fractional paper money. It was often printed on cheap paper, and sometimes the paper was re-cycled from old or never issued notes. Remnants of the designs on the old notes are visible on the back of these pieces. I have notes issued from Alabama, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina in my small collection. I also have one 75 cent note that was issued by the City of Richmond, Virginia. These pieces are often seen at the shows and may be found in an array of designs.

The Confederate States of America issued 50 cent notes in 1863 and ’64. Those notes featured a profile portrait of Jefferson Davis. The designs were the same for the two years except for the date. They are fairly common, and are usually in decent condition. During the last two years of the war, inflation had made the 50 cent notes almost worthless.

North Carolina 25 Cent Note



Confederate States of America 50 Cent Note





Northern City and Town Issued fractional Notes

In addition to the notes issued by the Federal Government, Northern cities and towns also issued fractional notes. My collection includes a 5 cent note from Wilmington, Delaware and a 10 cent note from Jersey City, New Jersey. There are many more notes available in addition to these pieces.





Business Script

Some businesses issued factional notes printed with their name on them. Since no one, other than the business that issued them, had an obligation to honor them, these notes played a limited role in the economy. The values were often the conventional 5, 10, 25 and 50 cent denominations.

I have a few of these privately issued notes in my collection. The most interesting one is a 20 cent note that was issued for the Mount Pleasant Apothecary Store which was located in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Elliot Woodward, one of the foremost coin dealers and auctioneers of the 19th century, owned this pharmacy. Woodward conducted 108 coin auctions from 1862 to 1890. During his career he sold a Brasher Doubloon and an 1804 Dollar. He was also sold stamps, books, antiques and other collectables, and he published reprints of rare books. In 1870 his estate was valued at $330,000, which was a considerable sum at that time.

Elliot Woodward ran a drug store and was also one of the leading auctioneers of old U.S. coins in the 19th century.




Southern Fractional Business Script

Southern merchants and businesses also issued fractional pieces. The most interesting southern note in my collection is a 50 cent piece that was issued by The Western & Atlantic Railroad. This note brings to mind one of the most daring capers of the Civil War.

On the morning of April 2, 1862, James Andrews, a Union spy, and his men stole The General a railroad locomotive that was owned by Western & Atlantic Railroad. The Western & Atlantic, which was owned by the State of Georgia, ran a line between Atlanta, Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was one of the most important railroad arteries in the South. Andrews and his men, who were dressed in civilian clothes, planned to destroy as much of the track as they could to disrupt service.

The General had stopped and was left almost unattended that morning at Big Shanty Station so that the passengers and crew could eat breakfast. As soon as he saw that the train had been stolen, conductor William Fuller set off after The General. Fuller ran on foot until he could get a handcar. At Emerson, Georgia Fuller commandeered a locomotive, the Yonah, which took him to Kingston. There he grabbed another locomotive, the William R. Smith, which took him to within two miles of Adairsville where he had to stop because Andrews raiding party had torn up the tracks. Back on foot, Fuller ran to Adairsville where he grabbed a third locomotive, the Texas.

In the meantime, Andrews and his party were having more problems than they had anticipated. Although they had been able to cut some telegraph lines, they had been unable to do as much damage to the tracks as they had planned. A light rain prevented them from setting fire to the timbers on the roadbed and bridges. They had chopped up a wooden boxcar for fuel, but they were running out of wood to power the General.

Undaunted, Fuller continued his pursuit of the Union raiders. The Texas was facing in the wrong direction when he commandeered it, but that did not prevent Fuller from chasing after The General running in reverse at full steam.

Finally Andrews and his raiders ran out of wood and had to abandon The General. They scattered into the countryside, but Confederate forces captured most of them. Andrews and seven of his men were hanged as spies ending one of the most colorful chapters of the war. Today The General and Texas locomotives are on display in Georgia museums.





Civil War Tokens

By far the most common of the Civil War substitute currencies were the Civil War tokens. These pieces were most often made of copper or brass although some varieties were issued in lead, white metal, German silver and even hard rubber for general circulation. Most Civil War tokens had the diameter of a cent and were usually traded as cents. Some varieties are larger, in some cases half dollar size or greater, but those pieces are unusual.

Some Civil War tokens are made of silver, but those pieces were mostly made for contemporary collectors and were often struck over dimes. The most common silver Civil War token is a piece that was made at the June 1864 Philadelphia Sanitary Fair. Those tokens were struck on a Philadelphia Mint coin press that had been moved to the floor of the exposition and were sold for 50 cents apiece. Bronze pieces sold for ten cents. A few token varieties, that were sold to collectors, are gold plated.

There are no genuine Civil War tokens that are made of solid gold, although a few fabrications have been made to fool collectors or satisfy their demands over the years.



Civil War tokens are divided into three major categories:


The Patriotic tokens cannot be attributed to a specific merchant. Some of them carried pro- and anti- Union messages. Many of them had designs that might have made people think they had value. Those included a resemblance to the coins one might see, like an Indian cent or a design similar to the liberty heads that appeared on gold pieces. Some pieces read “Not One Cent,” “I.O.U. One Cent” or had a phrase like “Our Cent” which looked similar to “One Cent” at first glance. All but one Civil War token reverse die, did not copy to the Federal coinage of the period. If such copies of Federal coinage had been issued, charges of counterfeiting would have been the result.




The Civil War Store Cards can be attributed to a specific merchant. They often had the address of their place of business included in the design. Most merchants had a custom die made for their business and paired that with a stock die that was used for other merchants’ and Patriotic tokens. There are far more Civil War store card varieties than Patriotic varieties. Most Store Cards had an implied value of one cent, but there were a few pieces that had higher denominations. For example, Tuttle’s Restaurant in Boston, Massachusetts issued 5, 10, 25 and 50 cent tokens. All of them were the same size, but had different values marked on the reverse in the center of the piece.

A rare salamander press token, issued by Joseph Merrium.



To be continued ...

 

Sutler Tokens were issued by merchants who supplied goods to soldiers in the field. These merchants traveled with the soldiers in wagons and sold goods to them, often at inflated prices. Their products included coffee, tea, tobacco, candy, cakes, sugar, canned goods and on rare occasion, alcohol. On a few occasions, sutlers opened storefronts when a regiment was stationed in a fixed area. Each sutler was officially commissioned by the War Department. The sutler tokens had values that were frequently in the usual 5, 10, 25 and 50 cent denominations. Many sutlers also issued paper or carboard script. All sutler tokens and script range in rarity from very scarce to rare.




The Civil War tokens were the most popular monetary substitutes during the Civil War because they were cheap and durable. If a merchant could get his customers to accept them at a cent apiece, he made a profit because his costs were lower, sometimes considerably lower, than that. There are over 10 thousand varieties and probably three million or so surviving pieces. As a group, they are common, but there are many rare varieties.

In 1864, Congress passed legislation that outlawed the use of Civil War tokens. In their place, the legislators reduced the size of cent to a coin that is similar to the piece we have today. They also authorized the bronze Two Cent Piece and the three and five cent nickel pieces to relieve the coin shortage. The nickel five cent piece is still issued today.


After the war the silver and copper coins returned to circulation, ending the shortage of small change. It would take more than a decade for parity to be restored between gold coins and paper money.

The Civil War left many scares on our nation. Well over 620,000 men were killed. Hundreds of thousands more were maimed for life. Sectional animosities continued for several generations.

The shortage of small change subsided with the end of the war, and unlike the war itself, there were no long lasting negative consequences. In fact America ended up with the nickel five cent piece which would become a staple for the five and dime store industry which came on the scene later in the 19th century.

The End

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gault

 

TLDR, but thanks for posting.

 

Rats.

 

Not likely.

I've a lively respect for two John Milton's......One of times past and one of times present.

 

Perhaps we'll be trading slabs of ASE's in the post corono era?

 

TLDR?

 

"Too long; didn't read." The lament of the Internet-raised mind.

 

I agree that it can become tedious to read long posts, but I am not going to spend a lot of time re-writing these articles.

I could post many more pictures. I presented samples here. My collection is starting to scare me from the financial perspective (especially after this week), but enjoy them all. I have a lot more examples. Posting lots of pictures involves a lot of effort. I am just try to make “the quarantine” a bit more livable.

 

You're doing God's work. If somebody wants tweets, they should go to Twitter.

 

Double click on the "word", right click and choose "search Google"

 

Sorry that my attempt at levity fell on deaf ears. While not even close to a wall of text, many great pictures!, and broken up into several posts, it's a lengthy read for my old eyes on my monitor. I'd rather read this on physical paper. Maybe when things are back to normal I'll run to staples to buy some ink and print this out.

 

Great thread John. They could be a mile long and I would still read every word. I learned most of this back in my school days but forgot most of it.
These threads take me back and make me think of the teachers I had in those days. They had passion when they taught the class and all the kids were glued to every word. You show that same passion John. Thanks for being here.

 

Yeah, I'm sad about my own aging eyes, too. The new high-resolution monitors make a big difference, though; reading on a modern iPad or high-res laptop is just as comfortable as reading from paper, at least for my eyes. (Still working on the rest of the ergonomics.)

 

Here is little addendum to the previous article.

The North added some pieces of small change to the mix toward end and just after the Civil War. The first one was the Two Cent Piece. It was issued to relieve coin shortage. The mintages were high at first and then declined until Congress did away with it in 1873. Still it’s interesting to note that even the later dates saw a lot of circulation. When I was working are circulated set of Two Cent Pieces many years ago (Which I sold not long after I finished it.), I was surprised at the number of well worn pieces I found from the late 1860s and early ‘70s.

Here is a nice example of the 1864 Small Motto variety. These coins were made from a leftover pattern die that the mint put to use. Believe it or not, I have cherry picked some of these from dealers who didn't both to check the coin out in "The Red Book." This variety is scarcer than the Large Motto, but it's not rare by any means.





The Third Issue of Fractional Currency included three and five cent notes. These tiny pieces of paper became unsightly while they were in circulation, and some government officials were embarrassed by them. That led Congress to look for substitutes that would stay in circulation given the fact that people were hoarding any coin that contained silver.

Here is a three cent Fractional Currency note with a light background behind Washington’s portrait. There is also a dark background variety that is scarcer.




Here is the Third Issue five cent note. The fellow pictured on the front of this note is Spencer Clark. He was very much alive when these notes were issued. He was an innovative bureaucrat who developed a way to print paper money via the wet process.

He almost got fired for putting his picture on this note. Of course, he probably didn’t think there was anything wrong with doing that since his bosses were also putting themselves on the paper money as well. A fellow named Spinner, who was the treasurer of the United States, put himself on the 50 cent note, and Salman Chase, the secretary of the Treasury, had his portrait on the larger notes as well. It’s worth noting that Chase had presidential aspirations and actually dreamed that he might wrestle the Republican nomination from Lincoln in 1864.

The moral is a boss can get away with more stuff than an underling can.

Oh well I’ve gone about presidential politics in 1864. Here is the five cent note with Spenser Clark on it.




The replacement for the three cent note was the Nickel Three Cent Piece which the mint introduced in 1865. Yes, the mint was also making a Silver Three Cent Piece at the same time, but that coin would not circulate because of its metal content.




In 1866 the mint introduced the nickel five cent piece to redeem and replace the five cent note. The mint was still making half dimes, but, of course, they contained silver and were not circulating. People found the nickel to be more convenient to use, and it eventually replaced the half dime completely in 1873.



Thus ends our little tour of small change during the Civil War.

 

An interesting post and topic and not too long after all.

I wonder what the situation was in California.

I have never heard of a California Civil War token or encased stamp and I suspect that many foreign coins continued to circulate as small change despite the US 1857 coinage legal tender repeal law.

Greenbacks did not circulate much in California as the merchants preferred gold and would discount or refuse greenbacks.


United States $20 1864-S (San Francisco)