Pictures From A Distant Country
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Pictures From A Distant Country
Published by Boson Books 3905 Meadow Field Lane Raleigh, NC 27606 ISBN 1-932482-15-6 An imprint of C&M Online Media Inc.
© Copyright 2004 Richard G. Doty All rights reserved For information contact C&M Online Media Inc. 3905 Meadow Field Lane Raleigh, NC 27606 Tel: (919) 233-8164 Fax: (919) 233-8578 e-mail:
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Editor’s Note: The engraving used in currency uses very high detail to discourage counterfeiting. That level of detail cannot be captured unless very high sampling rates are used. In trying to keep the size of this book to one that could be reasonably transmitted over the Internet, we have limited image sampling rates. When increasing or decreasing the size of an image (zooming in or out), the reader may notice aliasing in the form of Moiré patterns. This is a natural occurrence in digital reproduction that is caused by the sampling rate changes in zooming.
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Pictures From A Distant Country
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PICTURES FROM A DISTANT COUNTRY
Images on 19th Century U.S. Currency by
Richard G. Doty, Ph.D. Smithsonian Institution _____________________________________________________
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Pictures From A Distant Country
For Margaret, with All Affection
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Pictures From A Distant Country
Table of Contents FORWARD HOW OUR MONEY GOT THAT WAY A NOTE ON THE NOTES CHAPTER 1 Constructing a National Identity CHAPTER 2 The People in the Way CHAPTER 3 The People in the Middle CHAPTER 4 Temptress, Saint, and Helpmeet: Woman's Identity CHAPTER 5 Childhood and Family CHAPTER 6 Making a Living CHAPTER 7 Whimsy CHAPTER 8 "You Can Trust Me": Images of Worth CHAPTER 9 Progress CHAPTER 10 …An Age Now Ending CHAPTER 11 Epilogue: ...And Then What Happened? LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
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Pictures From A Distant Country FORWARD Everyone knows that there is only one form of American currency, the product of a single issuer. The currency is the Greenback, and the issuer is the federal government. But this arrangement has not always been the rule: for much of the nation's history (including what many would see as its most dynamic period of growth) there was no federal currency in circulation. Instead, there were the products of private banks and other businesses, which had or took upon themselves the right and responsibility to issue currency. We call this private money obsolete bank notes, and they form the basis of this book. The dominance of the private note lasted for approximately three-quarters of a century, roughly from 1790 to 1865. This form of currency was called into being when the national government hesitated to offer the public paper money but positively prohibited the states from doing so. It ended when the federal government decided that there were sound reasons for circulating a national currency (and distinct advantages in driving its private competition from the field). These points will be discussed in due course; for now, we might ask ourselves what a nineteenth-century American private note means. That is, what do we see in this object, and what did people a century and a half ago see in it? The answer depends on who you are and when you are—or were. For us, obsolete notes carry a faint whiff of flimflam, of fraud. Aren't these pieces of private paper also called broken bank notes? Were they not fraudulent from the very beginning, the products of enterprising confidence men who skinned the public, then decamped in the middle of the night? The element of fraud was indeed potential, sometimes actual; and nineteenthcentury Americans were keenly aware of the risk. But they would have replied that money with possible or genuine risk was still better than no money at all—which was what many of them foresaw in the absence of the private bank note. Indeed, to several generations of our people, the private bank note was money, pure and simple. It was how they measured wealth. It represented the difference between comfort and autonomy on the one hand, and misery and scarcity on the other. For the citizens of a distant country, the notes represented far more than wealth and ease. In the images that they bore, images chosen by bankers and businessmen, placed on the notes by engravers and lithographers, these pieces of paper were teaching tools. They brought to the public indelible ideas of what was beautiful, moral, uplifting, worth emulating—and they were the only form of printed imagery which the average citizen was likely to see in the general course of daily routine. Our citizen would pay close attention to the scenes and portraits, because the medium upon which they appeared was money—worth the closest scrutiny by its very nature. In effect, the nineteenth-century private bank note served as a people's primer for anyone coming into contact with it. And there is a strong suggestion that it was intended for such service by those who called it into being. The image-laden obsolete note was a teaching aid for the men and women of the nineteenth century. It can serve their twenty-first-century counterparts too, if we know how to approach it. But our objectives will be different. We are not interested in a BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country particular image as a decorative factor; nor are we interested in it as a didactic tool, at least not directly. What we are seeking is a glimpse into a vanished world, as the people who lived there saw it. This is the Distant Country of the title of the book. The private bank note can give us some of the most revealing images we shall ever possess about this vanished land and its inhabitants, what they thought of themselves; what they thought of each other; how they viewed the issues of the day (and what they thought were the issues of the day: their list would surely differ from ours); how they viewed work, the factory, the farm, the future. It only remains for us to address the material, and draw our conclusions. Pictures from a Distant Country is my response to the evidence at hand. I have worked with obsolete American bank notes for a quarter of a century, first at the American Numismatic Society in New York, more lately at the National Numismatic Collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. I have examined twenty-five thousand pieces over the years, rather more of them in Washington than in New York. My earliest work was simply cataloguing the material and making it retrievable for scholars and hobbyists; but I soon became interested in the beauty of the notes and the interesting scenes they depicted. The next stage was prompted from outside. In 1993, I spent several months in the United Kingdom, finishing research on Matthew Boulton, a pioneer coiner in the British Industrial Revolution. Virginia Hewitt was then putting together a speakers' program for a British Museum symposium on bank notes she was chairing, to take place in the spring of 1994. She asked whether I would be interested in preparing a presentation with an American slant. I immediately thought of the obsolete notes (which were even less-known in Europe than they were in America), and signed on. I already had the germ of an idea. It had struck me that women, Native Americans, and African-Americans were constant representations on nineteenth-century notes—this at a time when most of them were outside the monetary economy represented by the notes. I wondered what was going on—and as I began looking at the vignettes closely for the first time, I discovered a new world. Virginia Hewitt got her presentation (and I got another article, for the British Museum published it and the other papers in The Banker's Art: Studies in Paper Money). And I began seriously thinking of creating a book, based on what I had found and would find. You hold the result. I must make a few comments before we go any farther. This book is not intended solely or primarily for collectors of obsolete currency. It does not offer advice as to value, methods of conservation, or rarity. Rather, it is a highly personal look at our past, using a medium which has been underutilized by historians and numismatists alike. I must stress the personal nature of the quest: it is notoriously difficult to interpret images from a longdead past: even when we have the renditions they left behind, we cannot know precisely what the people were thinking when they created them. I shall undoubtedly come up short, or wrong, many times throughout this book. But I have always felt that it is better to make an effort, and risk criticism, than to play things safe and say and contribute nothing to the conversation.
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Pictures From A Distant Country You may be wondering how all those vignettes got on all that currency. And you may be wondering why we had private money in the first place. The answers to both questions are intertwined, and they go back two centuries.
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Pictures From A Distant Country HOW OUR MONEY GOT THAT WAY Consider: Between 1790 and 1865, no fewer than eight thousand fiscal entities issued currency in America. Most of them were banks; but insurance companies, railroads, turnpikes, factories, hotels, and in one case an orphan's institute were also represented. Most of these entities circulated notes in more than one denomination. Our current mainstays—fives, tens, twenties, and hundreds—were popular, but so were threes, fours, even sevens and nines. The average bank issued currency in half a dozen different values. After the first two decades, pictorial representation became popular, then mandatory. By the 1850s, the average private bank note bore a central vignette, one or more portraits to the left or right of the central scene, and a smaller representation at bottom-center. In other words, the average note bore three to five portraits or vignettes. Bankers changed the appearance of their currency on a regular basis—a minor addition or refinement every three years or so, a total redesign every decade or less. The result was a pictorial richness never approached, let alone exceeded, before or since. The number of scenes and portraits appearing on private American currency between 1790 and 1865 has never been calculated, but it must amount to tens of thousands of images. The total would be still higher were it not for the fact that printers retained Amasters@ of the more successful or popular representations and reused them as required. That said, the wealth of material is still astounding. How did all this come about? It began with a basic shortage: for the first two centuries of America's story, Europeans found everything here except the one thing they most hoped to find: precious metal. The scarcity of native silver and gold annoyed the authorities in London, especially in light of the notable success of their Spanish and Portuguese competitors to the south. But it was more than an annoyance for those who settled in the new English colonies. They had been brought up to believe that precious metals were indicators of wealth, that coins made from them were absolute necessities for expansion and trade. No gold and silver, no coins; no coins, stagnation. All this might not have mattered had the English colonies remained small, their populations modest. But the opposite was true: despite their monetary handicap, New England, the Middle Colonies, and the South were demographic and economic successes virtually from the beginning. Nonetheless, a way around that handicap must be found, and soon. Otherwise, the new lands' limitation would eventually prove victorious. The colonists' response was fascinating: over the next few decades, they experimented with every European solution to monetary scarcity. They devised several solutions of their own, including exchange systems based on tobacco and rice. They borrowed others from the native peoples whom they displaced, most notably wampum. But all of their expedients proved illusory or short-lived; except one. They devised paper money, whose value and validity were guaranteed by the local public authority.
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Pictures From A Distant Country Massachusetts brought out the first notes, in 1690. Other colonies quickly followed suit: paper money could keep pace with growing populations and economies, and that fact that it was public paper money was comforting. Surely, those in power would ensure that the amounts put into circulation were strictly limited to real need; and they would rigorously protect the public money from the attentions of the private forger. (As time proved, neither of these beliefs was well founded: colonies put entirely too much currency into circulation, and forgers were a perpetual problem. But the medium was far too valuable to abandon, so colonies and their citizens complained, but acquiesced in the system.) When the colonies decided to make their bid for independence, they relied on paper currency to purchase supplies, secure troops, and drive an insurgent commerce. The medium had worked well enough in previous emergencies. But it failed them now, when they were most vulnerable. Whether or not anyone realized it, one reason why colonial paper money had worked in the past was that the British Government stood behind it, directly or indirectly. For example, Massachusetts was expected to raise troops and purchase supplies as part of England's ongoing campaign against the French in Canada. If she printed currency for the purpose (which was how she and the others stumbled across the medium in the first place: all of their initial issues were war-related), she knew that she would be reimbursed by the British Government—in cash—at war's end. Obviously, the British could not be expected to pay for this war. The rebels did not expect her to do so. But they also expected their war against her to be short and victorious, in which case their currency system would suffice, with or without reimbursement. Considering the lack of any other, orthodox, means of paying for their bid for independence, Messrs. Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin must have blenched, then prayed for a brief and brilliant campaign. What they got was the exact opposite. The shooting phase lasted for six years, and it was inconclusive up to the very end. Washington and his generals were not strong enough to eject the British. Lord Howe and his successors were not quite strong enough to smash the insurgents once and for all. The currency reflected the nature of the conflict. Colonial (now state) paper money and a new, national counterpart called Continental Currency held their value for the first couple of years—from the spring of 1775 through the summer of 1777. But then, with New York and Boston occupied, with no victory in sight, the currency began to slide. By the end of 1777, a Continental (paper) dollar was worth only two-thirds of the Spanish-American (silver) dollar upon which it was theoretically based. The currency of the states was faring worse, with a four-to-one ratio in most instances. Still, the insurgents would have argued that a shaky currency was a small price to pay for the nation's freedom. They might have loyally added that their money would present no problem—as long as it did not continue to depreciate. But it did continue to depreciate. Month after month, state and federal paper continued their downward spirals, and by the end of 1778, it took six dollars in Continental Currency to buy one Spanish-American dollar, or Piece of Eight (that is, if you found anyone willing to make the exchange). By the end of 1779, the rate of depreciation had quadrupled, and by the middle of 1780 (at which time the Continental BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country Congress simply gave up issuing Continental Currency), the rate stood at forty-to-one. This was also the exchange rate enjoyed by the strongest of the state currencies. But in places like Maryland and Virginia, the situation was far worse: they were issuing twothousand-dollar bills in Virginia in the spring of 1781. They were worth a couple of dollars in Ahard@ money. Washington's victory at Yorktown later that year meant the end of the Revolutionary War. We had won—in spite of our money. But the first few years of peace prompted some very hard thinking on the part of politicians and businessmen. The 1780s would end with a very precise idea about the future nature of American money, about who would be responsible for it—and who would not. The idea would be embodied in the Constitution, written in 1787, in effect by 1789. It is important to consider the economic and political complexion of the men who wrote our new basic law. They were well educated. They tended to live on or near the seaboard, where they were engaged in business and the law. They wanted to increase and ensure the majesty and renown of the United States. They proposed to do so by increasing the powers of the national government—if necessary, at the expense of those of the states. And when they looked back on the fiscal scene of the previous decade, they saw much room for improvement. They saw what had happened to state and federal paper money during and after the Revolution (and the hardships it had wrought on the business community). They resolved that it must never happen again. So they set to work. If they had their way, the new republic would be a hard money paradise, meaning that, whatever other expedients might be adopted from time to time, the basis for all thinking would be a precious-metal coinage. The right to make and circulate such coinage would be exclusively lodged in the hands of the national polity, not shared with the states as had previously been the case. And when it came to paper currency, the men of 1787 had very precise ideas indeed, ideas that they wrote into the body of the Constitution, plain for all to see. By Article I, Section 10, Paragraph 1, states were specifically forbidden “to emit Bills of Credit [paper money]; [or] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” Nor did the Constitution give the national government the right to issue currency. But in this second instance, the framers were disingenuous. They didn't specifically prohibit the new federal government from circulating paper, because they realized that under emergency conditions, national paper might be a necessity. Still, their silence, following on a written prohibition of state currency, should do the trick. And hard money would win out, presumably to everybody's benefit. What the framers wanted and what the country got were two very different things. A United States Mint was set up in the new federal capital, Philadelphia, early in the 1790s, and it made a determined effort to provide the country with coin, and thus to wean it away from currency. But the Mint, and the politicians who had called it into being, had no more success at defying reality than had their predecessors. Supplies of silver and gold remained in annoyingly short supply, while the national economy and population showed every sign of continuing to grow in a most healthy fashion, putting America's monetary reach perpetually beyond her grasp. To recapitulate: the federal BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country government could not provide its citizens with coinage, had prohibited the states from providing them with currency, and had no current intention of stepping into the paper money breach itself. What did that leave? It left the private sector. It left the banks, who took up the slack, providing the country with a private paper currency. The first of them was the Bank of North America, which opened its doors at the beginning of 1782. It had been joined by a handful of others by the end of the decade. These banks, like all those who followed, issued paper money for the public good and for private profit. The establishment of Hamilton's Bank of the United States in 1791 acted as a spur to private issues. By 1800, as the country stood on the brink of its Industrial Revolution, the private notes' potentials for good were becoming fully understood: here was how you built the factories, improved the farms, opened the roads to the New Era. By 1800, the private notes' potentials for harm were also becoming apparent: how could you produce enough of them to fuel the expansion you desired? And how could you keep them safe, immune to forgery? The key to both problems lay in the printing technology then in use. And the solution to both would lie in a new printing technology, about to be introduced. As the nineteenth century dawned, there were two techniques available to security printers. One could print from moveable type, or one could print from engraved plates. The typeset method had much to recommend it: it was fairly easy to master, and it made possible the production of large runs of identical notes. But it was also an easy target for forgers, a boatload of whom had copied Continental notes during the war, in an inspired bit of economic warfare. The engraving or intaglio method was far safer, for it featured a delicate yet precise line, which was very difficult to master. But it was unsuitable for large printing runs. Copper was the metal used for the plates (for no one had yet mastered steel), and the rosy metal was fairly soft, rapidly losing design details as printing went on. The only way to extend the life of a copper plate was to retouch it, re-engrave it; and when that was done, the absolute consistency that is at the heart of any security process was compromised. The solution was to introduce new materials and new processes, products alike of the American version of the Industrial Revolution. And the key person was a Yankee silversmith, inventor, and self-promoter named Jacob Perkins. Perkins was keen to introduce steel into the printing process. He believed that he would have the best of both worlds if he succeeded: he would create a printing material which would wear far better than copper (and therefore create as many notes as the typeset method), yet at the same time would be as safe or safer than copper, because it would feature the subtlety of engraving. The difficulty was to learn how to soften and harden steel at will: once you knew that, everything else became possible. Perkins had mastered that trick by the beginning years of the nineteenth century. But he then took matters a crucial step farther. He mastered the concept of replicating designs on steel. The inventor mainly worked with engine-turned engraving, because he was more concerned with security than artistry, and he reasoned that a precise geometric design would be more difficult to copy than a portrait or scene. He would create his design on a soft, flat steel plate. He would then harden the steel by his special processes. Next, he BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country would clamp the steel plate in the bottom of a transfer press, which he had also invented. The press would repeatedly roll a soft steel cylinder over the hard steel plate until it picked up the plate's design—in relief. Then the roller would be hardened, placed back in the transfer press—and be passed repeatedly over a soft steel plate, which would pick up the original design in intaglio. With appropriate additions, this plate would finally be hardened, and paper currency would be printed from it. Jacob Perkins revolutionized the creation of money. The processes that he developed worked so perfectly that they remained the basis of security printing for over a century and a half. At the heart of Perkins's processes was the belief that all currency should be and would be identical. Only in that way, he reasoned, would the public have an absolute assurance about which note was good and which bad. The designs he devised were therefore lacking in artistry, but infernally difficult to counterfeit. He set up a security printing establishment in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and a grateful legislature gave him a monopoly on all note-printing there and in Maine (which formed part of Massachusetts until 1820). Soon Perkins's homely-but-distinctive products were appearing across New England and well beyond. But the inventor had unleashed far more than he had anticipated. He had assumed that all bankers would flock to his processes and designs. He was right on the first count but wrong on the second. His techniques had become common knowledge within a decade or so of their invention, and everyone agreed that they were the final word in security printing. But agreement ended there: what the bankers wanted (and what a succeeding generation of printers found it expedient to give them) was variety: far from the universality which Perkins foresaw, the bankers envisioned a broad choice of pictorial design, a host of renditions whose artistry and excellence would distinguish their notes from those of their competitors. Perkins's successors, beginning with Murray, Draper, Fairman & Company and ending with the American Bank Note Company, would find that they could give their customers what they wanted, using transfer technology for the purpose. By the mid-1830s, the process was in full swing: the American private bank note was approaching its maturity, and those who created it and those who commissioned it were finding an important new use for their product, beyond the mere buying and selling of goods. They were finding it useful for telling the country about themselves, about itself, about where it had been, where it was going, and who was along for the ride. What they found (and what we can learn from them) will form the remainder of this book.
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Pictures From A Distant Country A NOTE ON THE NOTES All of the notes whose vignettes appear in this book reside in the National Numismatic Collection of the Smithsonian Institution. Some of the images are clearer than others: the Smithsonian Institution has a large assemblage of essays or proofs, printings made on special paper for nineteenth-century bankers and the archives of the American Bank Note Company and other printers. Where appropriate, I have used these images. Other images are less clear, occasionally marginal. But if I deemed them of sufficient importance, I included them in the book. Their very lack of perfection means that they circulated widely, were seen by the inhabitants of the Distant Country—and therefore did what they were intended to do. RGD
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Pictures From A Distant Country CHAPTER 1 Constructing a National Identity Next to its role as an exchange medium, the most important duty of the nineteenth-century private American bank note was to instruct, to teach those who came into contact with it. The bankers had a conscious or unconscious list of things that were important to them, and they instructed their artists and printers to act accordingly. Some of the items on their agenda were obvious, even self-serving (for example, the depiction of ornate bank buildings or American gold and silver coins, placed on the paper in an effort to persuade the public that a bank was strong, its products as good as the coinage of the land). But others went on the paper out of a deep sense of patriotism, a solid pride in the country's accomplishments—a real concern that all of our citizens fully partake in the national idea. In other words, one of the recurrent themes found on our early paper is the construction of a national identity. The work could be accomplished in several ways. The earliest American symbol to appear on the notes was the national mascot, the eagle. Here, the earliest bankers may have sought to stress the close relationship of their wares with the national coinage (which featured eagles by law on gold and silver). The semi-official Bank of the United States, chartered under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton in 1791, depicted eagles on its early notes (1-1);
1-1: Philadelphia, PA, Bank of the United States, 30 dollars, 1791
private banks were doing likewise by the first years of the nineteenth century (1-2). The note from the Warren bank pointed the way: its eagle was perched on an anchor, symbol of Rhode Island. From now on, eagles would stand on, straddle, or fly over a bewildering series of scenes and objects, all of them meant to suggest a close connection between American identity or liberty and the good things of life.
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1-2: Warren, RI, Warren Bank, 1 dollar, 1804. Contemporary counterfeit which was nonetheless sewn together and kept in circulation!
Early artists often put the bird astride a globe, its wings spread over the country in a protective, benevolent way. A proof note from around 1815 cleverly incorporated the name of the bank into the scene (1-3),
1-3: New York, NY, Bank of America, 5 dollars, c. 1815 (proof)
while another proof from around 1845 suggests the coming of Manifest Destiny, which would soon round out the country to the Pacific Coast. It also shows us how far the engraver's art had progressed in the space of three decades (1-4). So does a proof for a bank in Port Jervis, New York, which carried the eagle-on-globe idea to a triumphant conclusion (1-5). Alone or with allegorical figures, the eagle presaged good tidings. A note from Augusta, Georgia featured a tiny eagle surmounting an enticing view of the future (1-6), while one from Washington, D.C. had the same bird, atop a federal shield, flanked by scenes of liberty and prosperity (and labeled accordingly, so that everyone got the point) (1-7).
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1-4: Orange, NJ, Orange Bank in the County of Essex, 1 dollar, c. 1845 (proof)
1-5: Port Jervis, NY, Bank of Port Jervis, 20 dollars, c. 1860 (proof)
1-6: Augusta, GA, Bank of Augusta, 20 dollars, c. 1850 (unissued)
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1-7: Washington, DC, Bank of the Union, 3 dollars, 1851 (unissued)
The eagle was frequently posed in front of scenes of productive American activity. A banker in Lancaster, Pennsylvania asked for and received an odd vignette with an eagle and shield, flanked by two factories (1-8). His counterpart in the District of Columbia employed a standing bird, a scene of agriculture to the left, another vaguely reminiscent of waterborne commerce to the right, both rendered in astonishing detail (1-9). For a banker in frontier Nebraska, the eagle suggested movement and prosperity from the broad Western waters (1-10), while for his colleague in the District of Columbia, the bird suggested exciting technological change. A note from the Government Bank (1-11) shows us the future: here is an eagle with lightning bolts in his talons, symbolic of the Transatlantic Cable, just laid.
1-8: Lancaster, PA, Lancaster Bank, 10 dollars, 1855
1-9: Washington, DC, Bank of the Republic, 5 dollars, 1852 (unissued)
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1-10: Tekama, NE, Bank of Tekama, 5 dollars, 1857
1-11: Washington, DC, Government Bank, 5 dollars, 1862
The eagle was most commonly depicted in close juxtaposition with Liberty, the idea likely being that, with Nation and Freedom firmly in place, all else would come about in due course. The connection was an intimate, caring one: a note from Rockland, Maine (1-12) shows Liberty feeding an eagle (who in turn stands on a cornucopia, from which coins spill, feeding commerce: the engravers of the nineteenth century were masters at combining and condensing several concepts in the same space). A note issued the same year in Boston, Massachusetts showed a true camaraderie: Liberty has her arm around the eagle's neck in an affectionate manner (1-13). A slightly earlier note from a New York bank displayed a similar concept; but this Liberty and her eagle are positioned atop and in front of all the material benefits which they have brought to America (1-14). And the element of the American flag was added to a note from Jamaica, Vermont, enveloping and protecting goddess and bird alike (1-15).
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1-12: Rockland, ME, Ship Builders Bank, 5 dollars, 1853
1-13: Boston, MA, Cochituate Bank, 10 dollars, 1853
The goddess might also appear on her own, or with other allegorical figures, or national heroes. Her pose on a note from Arkansas is reasonably typical: seated, supporting a federal shield, surrounded by symbols of Art and Industry (1-16). The issuance of paper money by a slate company may strike us as distinctly odd; but it would not have appeared so to our ancestors: this was one way to raise capital for further expansion. Others preferred the goddess in a standing pose: despite her pole and Liberty cap, the figure on a two-dollar bill from the Potomac River Bank reminds us more of Ceres than Freedom (1-17).
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1-14: New York, NY, Citizens Bank, 100 dollars, c. 1851 (proof)
1-15: Jamaica, VT, West River Bank, 50 dollars, c. 1855 (unissued)
1-16: Little Rock, AR, Cincinnati & Little Rock Slate Company, 1 dollar, 1854
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Pictures From A Distant Country Still, the figure is promising blessings and benefits, and this was the way most Americans regarded her. The close conjunction between the figure and a train and steamer, both representing Progress, was no coincidence. It was inevitable that Liberty would also be found in close conjunction with real figures from our past, depicted in a symbiotic relationship. She supported them, gave strength to their efforts on behalf of the people. And they supported her, spreading her blessings to all.
1-17: Georgetown, DC , Potomac River Bank, 2 dollars, 1854
Among these worthies, no one was more important than George Washington, victorious general, first president, father of the nation. Washington often appeared with Liberty (and with other allegorical figures, as we shall shortly see). But one of the most striking depictions appeared fairly early, and it came from the frontier Northwest. In 1838, a Michigan banker in the hamlet of Saline asked his printer in New York to pull out all the stops. The result was a skillful if crowded image of the hero, flanked and sustained by Liberty (whose pole and pileus actually bisect the portrait). Flags and the national shield complete the arrangement (1-18). George Washington made his initial appearance on American private notes very early in the medium's story, and his presence dominated it throughout. The first attempt to depict the departed leader occurred within a few months of his death: in 1800, a New BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country Haven, Connecticut engraver and silversmith named Amos Doolittle prepared a fourelement copper printing plate with four simple military busts of George Washington (each slightly different, because each was engraved by hand). His plate was fabricated at the request of the aptly named Washington Bank, doing business in the town of Westerly, Rhode Island (1-19).
1-18: Saline, MI, Bank of Saline, 20 dollars, 1838
1-19: Westerly, RI, Washington Bank, 25 dollars, 1800 (unissued)
This note's denomination suggests an interesting and distinctive facet to early American currency. By our standards, a twenty-five-dollar bill is an absurdity: why on earth would anyone want to issue (or accept) a note in such an odd denomination? The answer lies in the nature of the monetary system in place during the life of the private note. For most of the period, there was little national coinage in circulation, and the supply of foreign coinage (which the government, in frank admission that it could not fill the need, accepted as legal tender until 1857) was never adequate to the needs of a burgeoning people and economy. And so notes worth twenty-five—or three, or seven, or nine, or fourteen, or any other dollar amount you can think of—were launched by bankers and embraced by their customers—to make change. That was the primary reason for the wide spectrum of note denominations; a secondary one was that certain parts of the country liked certain denominations, for reasons now forgotten. Coastal North BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country Carolina favored six-dollar bills, while parts of Georgia liked fours. Those who grew up in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain States in the 1950s, as I did, might recall to mind a similar situation: we used silver dollars, which were a drug on the market almost everywhere else. The years after Doolittle's pioneering effort saw hundreds of representations of George Washington on America's private currency. He might form the centerpiece, as he did on a note from the Presidents Bank, doing business in, appropriately enough, Washington, D.C. The image was particularly apt: the fancy 1's flanking the leader could refer to the value; but they could also have reference to the fact that he was the first president and was therefore the capstone of the Presidents Bank (1-20). There was an inevitable temptation to play the Washingtonian card. The president's image was instantly recognizable, and his presence on paper somehow hinted that the paper was as trustworthy as he had been. He reached apotheosis on a hundred-dollar bill from the Citizens' Bank of Louisiana, prepared a year or two before the outbreak of the civil War. His bust is surrounded a by a bevy of lush ladies (representing allegorical themes, and semi-draped accordingly). He looks faintly pained, struggling to remain above it all (121).
1-20: Washington, DC, Presidents Bank, 1 dollar, 1852 (unissued)
1-21: New Orleans, LA, Citizen’s Bank of Louisiana, 100 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued)
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Pictures From A Distant Country Washington frequently appeared in the company of real, historical figures, either from his own time or from more recent times. Benjamin Franklin was a very popular companion, at least in early days. I suspect this was partially the case because the printers had prepared master engravings of both men fairly early, and hence were able to offer speedy service if those figures were acceptable. A note from the Franklin Bank of Boston, Massachusetts shows a reasonably typical arrangement: statue of Washington on the left, accompanied by a portrait of an aging Franklin; to the right is one of the "new men," the spellbinding orator Daniel Webster (1-22). The presence of the latter two figures suggests a basic reality underlying our private currency: providing a banker thought highly of a figure from the remote or recent past (and providing an image could be found or created from the imagination), virtually anyone might appear on the nineteenth-century bank note. Patriotic worthies abound, some from the period of the Revolutionary War, others from the near past or even from the present. The Marquis de Lafayette was a perennial favorite. A master die of this French nobleman, who had served under General Washington during the darkest days of the struggle for independence, had been prepared by the mid-1820s, perhaps in conjunction with his triumphant return to America in 1824-25. It received heavy use for the next decade and a half: from the number of notes displaying the Marquis, one might have concluded that he, and not Washington, had won the Revolutionary War. A proof from the Catskill Bank (1-23) shows him on a low pedestal, in a somewhat anachronistic pose. The Marquis wears a uniform from the 1770s, yet he is clearly middle-aged or older, not the youth who would have worn that uniform in real life.
1-22: Boston, MA, Franklin Bank, 20 dollars, 1836
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1-23: Catskill, NY, Catskill Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1830 (proof)
Eighteenth-century figures were popular, but they held no monopoly on bankers' affections. More recent leaders also found favor, many of them with military ties. A small portrait of Andrew Jackson, in uniform, graced a dollar bill from the Salem & Philadelphia Manufacturing Company—which despite its name did business in New Jersey rather than Pennsylvania (1-24). The bill dates from the summer of 1828, at a time when the general was running for the presidency and doubtless appreciated the exposure. Another successful military leader (and another successful presidential candidate was Zachary Taylor, whose somewhat disheveled likeness found a home on another dollar bill, this one from 1849. It was highly appropriate that Taylor should have been so honored on this particular piece of paper, for it was a produce of the Miner's Bank of San Francisco, California, part of the vast new domain just wrested from Mexico in a war in which the general had played a prominent part (1-25). By the time this note appeared (and at the place where it appeared), the discovery and exploitation of California gold were suggesting that the need for private paper currency might not go on forever.
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1-24: Salem, NJ, Salem & Philadelphia Manufacturing Company, 1 dollar, 1828
Depiction of favorite politicians was a common way of buttressing a sense of collective identity through most of the era of the private note. The person in question might have legitimate and enduring claims to popular affection, as did Henry Clay, who graced many notes in the years preceding and following his death (1-26). The claims of Millard Fillmore are somewhat less solid (and his depiction with cherubs is difficult to explain); nonetheless, he appealed to a Southern banker, whose fifty-dollar bill he graced (1-27).
1-25: San Francisco, CA, Miner’s Bank, 1 dollar, 1849
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1-26: Buffalo, NY, Hollister Bank of Buffalo, 10 dollars, c. 1850 (proof)
To achieve immortality on an American private note, it wasn't necessary to be a military leader or politician—or even an American, for that matter. The gifted inventor and entrepreneur Robert Fulton achieved apotheosis on a note from a bank named after him: we see his portrait surrounded by gear-work, a steamboat, and a virtuous boilermaker (1-28). And the occasionally international flavor of fame is suggested by a note from a bank in a German-speaking portion of Pennsylvania (1-29), wherein the language, denomination, and portraits (Franz Josef Haydn was an Austrian, but never mind) were those of interest to an immigrant audience.
1-27: Howardsville, VA, Bank of Howardsville, 50 dollars, 1861
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1-28: New York, NY, Fulton Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1845 (proof)
1-29: Northampton, PA, NORTHAMPTON Bank, 10 “thaler” (dollars), 1835
A nation needs a national past. Nineteenth-century bankers realized this, and they acted accordingly. The American Revolution, with its days of shared suffering, its victorious conclusion in which all might take pride, was one of the earliest events to attract the attention of the business community, to find expression on the vignettes they chose for their money. They were having their say by the mid-1820s. A vignette of General Washington on horseback was an early indicator of the coming trend (1-30). At first glance, it appears unexceptional, but a closer look suggests that something important was taking place. The date surrounding Washington's figure is the clue: the Battle of Monmouth took place on that day, wherein the general bested the British army under Sir Henry Clinton. A tiny camp scene behind and beneath the figure was intended to flesh out the story. The engraver, and the banker who employed him, had discovered the commemorative possibilities of the private note, and the way in which they might be used to call attention to a shared national story. They never forgot the lesson.
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1-30: Freehold, NJ, Monmouth Bank, 5 dollars, 1825
The Battle of Lexington was celebrated on a note from Georgia (1-31), the successful crossing of the Delaware on a bill from Lambertville, New Jersey, close to the scene of the miraculous salvation of the Continental Army (1-32) at the turn of the year 1776. These vignettes celebrated what might be called "national" events in the American Revolution. But there was a local side as well: a note from Charleston, South Carolina depicted a dramatic rescue of American prisoners which took place in South Carolina toward the end of the war, adding portraits of two native sons, Generals Daniel Morgan and Andrew Pickens, for good measure (1-33). Its stress on local people and themes is an indicator of a counter-tendency on private bank notes from mid-century on, a suggestion of larger events to come. We shall speak of this countervailing movement in due course, but for now, we observe that the connection between construction of a sense of collective identity and artistic choices on private bank notes was hardly confined to the War of Independence. Later history also received its due, including events from what has aptly been called the Second War for Independence, the War of 1812. Such scenes occasionally possessed a distinct historic immediacy: a bank in Ohio presented a stirring rendition of the Battle of Lake Erie, fought and won in 1813, on a note of 1817 (1-34), while the same institution took a similar approach on land, delighting its customers with an engraving of Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans (one of the first of a flood of portraits of Old Hickory, by the way), prepared only a couple of years after the events it commemorated (1-35). The Battle of New Orleans was the final engagement of the War of 1812, and it received at least one more tribute, on a five-dollar bill from Nashville, Tennessee, circulated in the mid-1850s (1-36). Among other things, this rendition of the battle showed how far American engraving had come in the past four decades.
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1-31: Ringgold, GA, Northwestern Bank of Georgia, 5 dollars, 1861
1-32: Lambertville, NJ, New Hope Delaware Bridge Company, 100 dollars, c. 1835
1-33: Charleston, SC, Bank of the State of South Carolina, 10 dollars, 1861
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1-34: New Salem, OH, Jefferson Bank of New Salem, 3 dollars, 1817
1-35: New Salem, OH, Jefferson Bank of New Salem, 1 dollar, 1817
1-36: Nashville, TN, Central Bank of Tennessee, 5 dollars, 1855
As I mentioned earlier, there was a countervailing tendency in artistic choice on nineteenth-century American private paper money. It developed fairly late in the story of the medium, and it stressed what might be called a numismatic localism, or sectionalism. It should not be overemphasized, but the fact that it roughly coincided with the dismemberment of the Union and the beginning of the American Civil War is worth noting and was hardly a coincidence. BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country We begin encountering local heroes whom we have never met before and whom we would have otherwise never met. Who on earth was George M. Troup? He appears on a goodly number of notes from Georgian institutions, including the Augusta Insurance & Banking Company (1-37), around 1860. A cursory investigation suggests the reason for Mr. Troup's popularity: he was a former governor and a leading advocate of states rights, and would have struck a most responsive chord across the Southern section for that reason. It is unlikely that Lyman Dayton struck a chord with anyone beyond his immediate family: he is only known from the portrait which graces each and every note of the Dayton Bank, of St. Paul, Minnesota Territory. Mr. Dayton's two-dollar bill (1-38) is especially ironic: here is the apotheosis of an unknown man!
1-37: Augusta, GA, Augusta Insurance & Banking Company, 10 dollars, 1860
1-38: St. Paul, MN, Dayton Bank, 2 dollars, c.1853 (unissued)
But there was more at work here than ego: especially in the South, the decade of the 1850s saw a determined shift to sectional depiction on the money. South Carolina led the way—appropriately so, in light of what was to happen at the end of the decade. A five-dollar bill from the Bank of Camden showed two local notables from earlier days, R. I. Manning and H. W. De Saussure (1-39), while a ten-dollar note from Charleston depicted a more recent, and altogether more important, individual, John C. Calhoun (1BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country 40). Calhoun had died at the beginning of the 1850s; his continuing importance lay in his stress on the individuality of the South, perceived to be under a growing threat from the North. This man struck a deep nerve, and he appeared on dozens of bank note issues across the slaveholding states in the years leading up to and just after the section's bid for independence.
1-39A: Camden, SC, Bank of Camden, 5 dollars, 1856
1-39B: Camden, SC, Bank of Camden, 5 dollars, 1856
Elsewhere in the South, there were other approaches to what and whom to put on paper money; but they also marked a shift toward a distinctly "Southern" mode of expression. Richmond, Virginia's Bank of the Commonwealth was organized in 1858, and it became and remained a key financial player for the next several years. Instead of purely allegorical choices, the Richmond bankers asked for and received portraits of great men on their notes—the distinction being that all of the subjects were Virginians. George Washington was there, of course, but so were Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, John Marshall (whose national views had become a trifle suspect by the late 1850s but who was still a native son)—and James Madison, about whom the same disclaimer might be made (1-41). When a newly emergent private bank seeks to curry favor and establish credibility
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Pictures From A Distant Country among its customers by a careful selection of subjects by state, the money is telling them, and us, a good deal more than might have been assumed.
1-40: Charleston, SC, Bank of South Carolina, 10 dollars, 1861
1-41: Richmond, VA, Bank of the Commonwealth, 10 dollars, 1858
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CHAPTER 2 The People in the Way It is tempting to think of the past as immutable, as a distant country that never changes and never changed at the time when it was new. But a cursory look at the American nineteenth century frustrates this temptation: never in our history did the country, and the men and women who lived and worked in it, go through more transformations, more rapidly, more completely. If you doubt the accuracy of this statement, consider one man, Abraham Lincoln. Can you imagine him starting out in our century rather than his? Can you imagine how successful he would be? A person like Lincoln could have only appeared in a young country, for the outstanding characteristic of a young country is that it is a fluid country, where things have not yet completely gelled for all people, for all time. Such was our distant country, the America of the private bank note. The money itself bears witness to the story. As I mentioned in the Introduction, there were three groups which frequently appeared on our early currency, but which played little or no role in the money economy which that currency represented: Native Americans, African-Americans, and women. Their great visibility on bank notes (contrasted with their virtual invisibility in a number of other areas) says a great deal about the mind-set of those who requested, designed, engraved, and used the bills. More thoughtful members of the note-producing and -using group would likely have been aware of some of the deeper meanings of their choice of subject matter. But one they would have probably overlooked was that the depiction of the three groups changed over time, demonstrating a visual progression that mirrored the evolution of the country itself. This and the next two chapters will illustrate the story. We begin with Native Americans. I have called them "the people in the way," in recognition of the fact that, for many nineteenth-century white Americans, that was precisely who they were. The people in the way began appearing on private American currency shortly after the introduction of the medium: for the next six decades, their depiction went through a particularly complex evolution. In the beginning, they were often presented in what white bankers and engravers imagined were "typical" activities. A Michigan one-dollar bill from the 1830s (the state had a large number of banks in the middle and later years of the decade, most of whom closed their doors almost as soon as they had opened them) shows two deer hunters. One has bagged his quarry and is letting the world know about it. The other is taking aim at a second deer, which is fording a stream (2-1). The image of the Native American as hunter persisted throughout most of the era of the private note, but it came to be modified. His skills were still important, but now they flirted with sneakiness: another dollar note, this time from a New York bank, showed him waiting in ambush for two unsuspecting deer (2-2), the implication being that this was not the way a gentleman would go about it. The image became stock, appearing on dozens of notes, always with the same hunter, but with a variety of prey in a variety of circumstances. The Native as Lurker achieved early BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country apotheosis with an image on yet another dollar bill, this one from the Bank of Gibraltar (not to be confused with the Rock of Gibraltar: the bank went out of business within a few months; the rock is still there). Here, the warrior seems to be lurking on general principle, in hopes that something or someone will eventually turn up (2-3).
2-1: Marshall, MI, Bank of Marshall, 1 dollar, 1837
2-2:Canastota, NY, Canastota Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1856 (proof)
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2-3: Gibraltar, MI, Bank of Gibraltar, 1 dollar, c. 1838 (unissued)
With this image, the native's status began to approach that of a passive onlooker, present but uninvolved, inert rather than active. This role would be the most persistent one with which he would be identified by several generations of bankers and printers. Most particularly, the Native American would be confronted with the notion of Progress—and then reject it, in a variety of comforting ways. He might raise his hand in protest, declining the New Order, as he may be doing on a Maine twenty-dollar bill of 1857 (2-4), and as he surely is doing on a Minnesota fivedollar bill of the same era (2-5). On the first note, there is a hint that what he is protesting is the arrival of a new force, that of the railroad. The hint has become more definite on the second note, but the engravers and those for whom they worked were not finished.
2-4: Fairmount, ME, New England Bank, 20 dollars, 1857
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2-5: Maukato City, MN, Merchants Bank, 5 dollars, 1850s (unissued)
For several issuers on the far Western frontier, they created scenes of utter bewilderment: the Native American is confronted by something that is literally beyond his powers of comprehension. On a dollar bill prepared for the City of Omaha, two warriors halt in bemusement as a train rumbles by in the distance (2-6). On two notes of the Western Exchange Fire & Marine Insurance Company, the shock of the new is even more deeply felt if equally incomprehensible: in one case, you can see the tension in the native's stance, as he rears back in confrontation (2-7), while in the other, a native group has been disturbed, its men deciding to pursue that which they cannot understand (2-8).
2-6: Omaha, NE, City of Omaha, 1 dollar, c. 1857 (unissued)
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2-7: Omaha, NE, Western Exchange Fire & Marine Insurance Company, 2 dollars, 1857 (unissued)
2-8: Omaha, NE, Western Exchange Fire & Marine Insurance Company, 1 dollar, 1857 (unissued)
Native Americans as onlookers; unwilling guests at the table. Or far above the table, looking down: a Buffalo, New York two-dollar bill showed a woman (who might be a native, but who might as easily be Columbia, or Liberty) gazing down at a bustling urban scene with mild interest (2-9). A similar approach was taken on a hundred-dollar note from Newburgh, New York (2-10)
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2-9: Buffalo, NY, Buffalo City Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1855 (proof)
2-10: Newburgh, NY, Quassaick Bank, 100 dollars, 1854 (proof)
In many cases, the mood is one of rejection of the scene and all it implies, rather than interest or even incomprehension regarding it. A vignette on a Tennessee note will speak for the members of this category: this person has turned his back on the Nineteenth Century and all it implies (2-11). The bankers would have seen his change of heart as an impossibility; for others, there might still be hope. In those cases, the female members of the native community might add their gentle voices to the argument. The scene on a note from the Eagle Bank is typical, and it was reworked and recombined on a number of occasions (2-12).
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2-11: Cleveland, TN, Ocoee Bank, 10 dollars, 1860
2-12: Bristol RI, Eagle Bank, 1 dollar, 1848 (proof)
There was a self-serving quality to all of this: white bankers and businessmen were concerned with buttressing "American" values as they saw them, and they were unlikely to allow facts to get in their way. At times, their morality scenes went beyond the domain of self-righteousness, entering that of the surreal. A North Carolina twenty-dollar BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country bill (2-13) presented two such over-the-top vignettes. In the central one, we see a Native American male seated in front of a plow, a log cabin in the distance. These were the white man's accouterments, and it seemed only natural that they should be of interest to the person seated before them. But look closely at his expression. It is one of annoyance: he cannot grasp either concept, and knows it. The vignette appeared on notes from a number of places, suggesting that it struck a responsive chord over a wide area.
2-13A: Washington, NC, Bank of Washington, 20 dollars, 1861
2-13B: Washington, NC, Bank of Washington, 20 Dollars, 1861
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The same held true for the second vignette. Here we see two people, one of whom (a seated white woman) is explaining the concept of agriculture to another (a standing Native American woman). The image is self-serving. But it is also surreal: they are apparently discussing the cultivation of the pineapple. In a number of the preceding images, there was an unspoken contrast between two ways of life, extolling the virtues of one, pointing out the defects of the other. Thus the popularity of the Native as Onlooker: he (or she) had to remain uninvolved, were the point of white superiority to be maintained. But the comparisons might be more obviously presented. In time, there would grow up an almost heraldic treatment, natives on one side of a composition, whites on the other, both engaged in activities intended to drive home the contrast between the indolence of the one, the virtuous activity of the other. A two-dollar bill from Michigan presented the scene in a very simple way, at a very early time. This note (2-14) dates from the beginning of 1838, a time when the power of the transfer press was limited, the size of an image carried from master engraving to working plate limited as well. Nonetheless, C. H. Canfield, who presided over the Bank of Chippeway, had a definite agenda in mind: he wanted to contrast Native American apathy with white American drive. The printers did their best, given the limitations of their craft.
2-14: Sault De St. Marys, MI, Bank of Chippeway, 2 dollars, 1838
A native sits at the right (apparently too indolent to notice the deer behind him, ripe for the taking), while a group of whites chugs off in the new conveyance symbolizing modern times and movement itself, the train. Note the fancy downward loop from the "g" of "Michigan." The loop was there for ornamentation. But it was also there to separate the two halves of the scene from each other, thereby underscoring the contrast. By the 1850s, the heraldic nature of the treatment had intensified. Two notes from the frontier will speak for many others. On a five-dollar bill from the Bank of Florence, Nebraska (2-15), the scene is mannered, the figures clearly posed. But a point is made: these are two very different ways of life, and the one on the left featuring "gainful" activity is clearly preferable to the one on the right. But a note from Minnesota goes well beyond it (2-16). This dollar bill from the Dayton Bank presents the most detailed picture of the perceived differences between the two peoples, and it requires two complete and contrasting sets of images for the purpose.
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2-15: Florence, NE, Bank of Florence, 5 dollars, 1858
2-16: St. Paul, MN, Dayton Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1853 (unissued)
We see Lyman Dayton at the center; but we are concerned with the individuals to his left and right, and in the left and right corners of the composition. Flanking him are two groups of females, one white, the other Native American. The white group features a mother teaching her family the elements of geography. The native group is smaller, and it shows a fearful woman who attempts to protect her child (from whom? from the geography instructor? from Mr. Dayton?). The corner figures repeat the contrast: two native males look with suspicion on a pastoral scene (with a train above and telegraph wires overhead, to establish just whose pastoral scene it is). The balance is perfect, and the heraldic contrast would have been quite effective, given the preconceptions of the people who used such notes—who harbored unease about "the people in the way." Their unease (and the unease of those who issued paper currency) might explain a persistent desire to turn Native Americans into simple design elements, or props, things completely outside of time or place, and therefore of no danger to anyone. It might be compared with a slightly more recent object which many of us have seen at one time or another, the "cigar store Indian"; this object, too, has passed from being menacing to quaint, from threat to prop. The Native as design element was a product of the middle and later phases of the private American bank note story, a time when the perceived balance between the original inhabitants and subsequent arrivals had definitively shifted in favor of the latter. A variety of poses and depictions found favor over the years. Females were rather more popular than males, and the manner in which they were portrayed fairly faithfully BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country reflected changing methods of depiction of all females, regardless of race, on a product that was, after all, created and largely spent by white males. So an 1840 note from Macon, Georgia showed a standing native woman in a frankly erotic pose (2-17), while another Georgian note from twenty years later showed a delicate, demure young maiden—wearing a trifle more drapery than her predecessor (2-18). A similar pose (with a similar arrangement of clothing) distinguishes the central prop on a three-dollar bill from upstate New York. Here, the woman conveyed a mixed message: her bow and arrows firmly identified her with the Native American element, but the surrounding frame, flags, and other objects identified her with a larger theme, for a larger audience: she was America (2-19). Another New York product depicted another woman warrior (dressed very fashionably indeed) peering coyly into the distance, in a predictable and therefore comforting pose (2-20), while a maiden on a Tennessee note became an even more obvious prop, her presence required in order to display the value of the note. She also held a grain typically associated with Native Americans—an ear of corn, which apparently did rather well in this part of the state (2-21).
2-17: Macon, GA, Ocmulgee Bank, 5 dollars, 1840
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2-18: Dalton, GA, Bank of Whitfield in Dalton, 2 dollars, 1860
2-19: Mohawk, NY, Mohawk Valley Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1845 (proof)
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2-20: Albany, NY, Bank of the Capitol, 1 dollar, c. 1853 (proof)
2-21: Memphis, TN, Bank of West Tennessee, 10 dollars, 1861
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Pictures From A Distant Country Native American males got turned into props too. One of the earliest attempts featured a warrior with a bow fully drawn back, about to release an arrow. In one version, he was identified as Tecumseh—appropriately enough, for a Michigan town and its bank which both bore his name (2-22). But the image was used in a number of other places in the 1830s and later, bearing a number of other names, or no name at all. Taken with the inappropriate garb of the figure, this variety of identification suggests that it was simply a prop, so engraved and so accepted by its audience. In other cases, oncemeaningful vignettes could be cropped until they filled a particular space, even though they lost their story-telling capabilities in the process. This is what happened on a Medford, New Jersey proof, dating from around 1850 (2-23).
2-22: Tecumseh, MI, Bank of Tecumseh, 3 dollars, c. 1838 (unissued)
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2-23: Medford, NJ, Burlington County Bank at Medford, 1 dollar, c. 1850 (proof)
Native Americans as outsiders; Native Americans as props: these were distinguishing characteristics in the portrayal of a people. But there was another thread to the fabric, one which had a long history, one which acquired growing color and strength as the century progressed, one which finally reflected the dynamic nature of a distant country and those who dwelled therein. This thread observed the native peoples, and it showed them as they were. It favored two ways of doing so. It presented actual, living Native Americans. And it presented actual activities in which Native Americans be engaged, without moral commentary. As America's engravers ventured down this path, they created a new chapter in the story of America's money, and in the story of its art. For the Montgomery County Bank, which opened its doors in 1831, the Mohawk chieftain Joseph Brant—Thayendanegea—held a particular attraction. His portrait graced virtually all of this institution's currency for the first quarter-century of its existence (2-24). The bank's attachment to this person was appropriate: the town that housed it was in the center of Mohawk country. The Windham County Bank of Brattleboro, Vermont placed a nameless, but unquestionably real, person on several versions of its five-dollar bills between 1857 and 1864 (2-25). Similar portraits, distinguished by their realism, may be found on other bank notes of the period, forcing the conclusion that for some bankers
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Pictures From A Distant Country at least there was a growing sympathy with the Native American, once his perceived threat to the larger community had diminished.
2-24: Johnstown, NY, Montgomery County Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1835 (proof)
2-25: Brattleboro, VT, Windham County Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1857 (unissued)
But the depiction of believable people performing actual tasks was more popular, and longer-lived. We can trace it back to the beginning of the 1830s, if not before. The Mohawk Bank of Schenectady was an early player, and a realistic member of the Mohawk tribe in a realistic canoe was a constant feature of its currency, as on a threedollar bill from 1831 (2-26).
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2-26: Schenectady, NY, Mohawk Bank, 3 dollars, 1831
Some of the most notable images concerned a traditional activity, hunting. But now there was a difference: the new generation of bankers and engravers had no particular axes to grind, and they could therefore afford to concentrate of the dynamism, skill, and sheer beauty of the hunt. Two views will show you what I mean. The first appeared on a Nebraska three-dollar bill of 1857, and it is far more realistic than the hunting vignettes we have previously seen, because the bankers and artists were now more interested in presenting a reality than in drawing a moral (2-27). By the second view, we are leaving the realm of money and approaching that of art. A view of two hunters on an unissued note from the State Bank of Michigan is simply magnificent, totally unlike anything seen elsewhere at the time, or at any previous time, on any American private note (2-28). Clearly, the image of Native Americans on the white man's money had progressed over the years. The final commentary may be left to a New York City five-dollar bill from the middle 1850s (2-29). Its message is complex, but hopeful. On the left, we see a standing male offering tribute—either to the eagle, symbolizing America, or to his wife, who is seated with their child at the right. The gravity of the poses, as well as the realistic costume and sympathetic expressions, speak to me of a possible reconciliation, of a possible inclusion of "the people in the way" in a larger, more generous country, one now in process of construction. But there was another set of individuals about whom far less hope could have been expressed, especially in the mid-1850s. These were "the people in the middle," and America was about to go to war over what place, if any, they would occupy in the Distant Country—and in the country we occupy today.
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2-27: Omaha, NE, Western Exchange Fire & Marine Insurance Company, 3 dollars, 1857 (unissued)
2-28: Detroit, MI, State Bank of Michigan, 2 dollars, c. 1859 (unissued)
2-29: New York, NY, Bank of North America, 5 dollars c. 1855 (proof)
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Pictures From A Distant Country CHAPTER 3 The People in the Middle It has sometimes been said that the history of a country is reflected in its money, large events preserved as small mementos. This is true—with the usual disclaimers necessary when discussing any human activity or product. That is, one could largely look in vain for reflections in America's money in the last half of the twentieth century. Cold War, recessions, assassinations, economic, cultural, and social upheavals: all distinguished our story during that period, and all were blithely ignored on the money that we printed and coined. But there have been times when the fit was better, when the money we used served to remind us of contemporary events. The citizens of the Distant Country knew all about such times, and the times' connection with a particular people and their particular status. The people were African-Americans, and their status was slavery. For many generations, they had existed in America alongside whites; and while many of the latter deplored their condition, most simply accepted it as one of those things which happened to someone else—unfortunate, but a matter which was beyond human control and which would therefore either be with us forever or made right in due course. This attitude prevailed during the early years of the nineteenth century, and it explains the fact that, for the first few decades of the private bank note period, African-Americans (who made up perhaps a seventh of the total population), were virtually invisible on our money. They had no voice. None spoke for them. On the evidence of the money, we would be justified in believing that they did not exist. In fact, among the thousands of notes that I have examined at the Smithsonian Institution and elsewhere, I have discovered precisely one image of African-Americans prior to 1850. It dates from around 1820, and the arrangement of its subjects is significant (3-1). We see a broad panorama of activities, in which people of all colors participate. And that is all: there is no suggestion of subordination, no hint as to people of one color existing as the property of another, no idea that one form of labor is superior to another. This image simply seeks to record what was going on in a particular time and place. It will be the last such image we shall see, created independently of larger considerations.
3-1: Augusta, GA, Farmers & Mechanics Bank of Augusta Georgia, 5 dollars, before 1820 (proof)
This is not to say that African-Americans ceased to have a place on private bank notes; far from it. While it is indeed true that they did not appear on private bank notes during the 1820s, 1830s, or 1840s, they had returned to the medium by the beginning of the 1850s, and they would remain a part of it until the end, a decade and a half later. But BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country now they were there as a reflection of larger events, happenings in which they themselves were the main, if reluctant, participants. During the years prior to 1850, the issue of slavery had moved closer into national consciousness. Societies and newspapers had been established favoring the abolition of the institution, and a political party had been set up to fight for its circumscription and eventual repeal. But a flash point had not yet emerged. Slave states and free existed in a somewhat uneasy but apparently permanent equilibrium; the economy, recovering from the hard times of the late 1830s, was set to reach new heights; and Americans had more important (and altogether more reassuring) things to think about than a potential conflict. Indeed, they had just had a victorious war against a decrepit Mexico, and they were now the proud possessors of vast new domains in the West. Enter the flash point: whose institution would prevail in the new lands, the South's or the North's, slave labor or free? A compromise was cobbled together in 1850, but it satisfied no one. Each side thought the other had gotten the better of the bargain. Northerners began seeing slavery and its extension as primary components of a "Southern" agenda. Southerners began seeing the North as a threat to a way of life sanctioned in Scripture, recommended by wise men for keeping races in amicable accord—a way of life which should be of no concern save to those directly involved. From that time forward, there was no peace. And from that time forward, the African-American formed a constant presence on our money. His position there occupied three distinct phases. Each manifested a very close correlation with larger events, both in terms of subject matter, and in terms of the way it was presented. The first phase is the most curious, at least to modern eyes. It was distinguished by a reworking of printing plates, by a retouching of vignettes to make them distinctly Southern, featuring slave workers rather than free ones—turning white into black, if you will. There are no records of the reasons for this revamping of imagery, but common sense suggests an answer. If you were a Northern printer in the antebellum years (and virtually all of the security printers were Northern, centered on New York, Philadelphia, and Boston), and a Southern banker came to your firm, asking for notes with slaves on them, and you happened to have images with white people ready for use—images which could be retouched at will, given the current state of technology—you would be likely to suggest such a course to him, as a way of cutting costs and speeding production. And he would be likely to accept it. The recycling of imagery would become common over the next few years, giving the engravers and printing firms breathing space until a better fit could be created. As an example of white into black at work, consider the next several sets of vignettes. The first appeared on a dollar bill from a Michigan insurance company in 1853 (3-2). We see a solitary rider, who has apparently stopped and is watching a group of white harvesters in the near distance. The scene is matter-of-fact, even trite. Someone in South Carolina liked the general idea and requested the vignette for a bank in Winnsboro (3-3). It had to be altered, of course, and it was: the horseman still pauses, but he has become an overseer, and he is taking stock of the property. The white workers have been replaced with black ones—slaves—and they are picking cotton, not harvesting wheat. But only the middle range of the vignette needed to be retouched; the foreground and background could remain as they were. BOSON BOOKS
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3-2: Adrian, MI, Adrian Insurance Company, 1 dollar, 1853
3-3: Winnsboro, SC, Planters Bank of Fairfield, 5 dollars, 1855
In our second case, the retouching was even less radical. In 1852, the Farmers Bank of Onondaga came into existence, enjoyed a brief and troubled career, and failed the following year. But it had ordered currency in several denominations from a New York firm called Wellstood, Hanks, Hay & Whiting, and it had placed some of it in circulation prior to its demise. For its dollar bill, printer and banker agreed upon a vignette of a young white farmhand carrying a basket of corn (3-4). A few years later, another banker wanted new paper money. This banker was Southern, and he wanted a slave scene. Wellstood, Hanks, Hay & Whiting (who by now formed a part of a new firm, the American Bank Note Company), could easily oblige. They took their white farmhand, blackened his skin, tattered his clothing and added a patch to his shirt—and he now did duty as a slave in Virginia (3-5). This is all quite amusing to us, but it was serious business to the people of the time. For if the country had become so divided that its security printers were required to supply two sets of images, one for each section, matters were passing beyond mortal control.
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3-4: Onondaga Valley, NY, Farmers Bank of Onondaga, 1 dollar, 1852 (proof)
3-5: Howardsville, VA, Bank of Howardsville, 50 dollars, 1861
And the situation continued to deteriorate. Southern bankers requested and soon had notes with distinctive slave scenes, scenes specifically created for the occasion. Most of them revolved around agriculture, and within agriculture, one crop was king: cotton. Currency from the Deep South can take us through the entire experience of bondsman and that which bonded him, from picking (3-6), to carrying from the harvest (3-7), to baling and trundling onto wagons, to carrying it to market (3-8; a marvelously detailed scene, with a cotton plant prominently displayed at the side of the road, so that the viewer was certain to get the point), to its appearance on the Charleston docks, ready for shipment to Europe (3-9). While cotton dominated, other crops also engaged the
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Pictures From A Distant Country attentions of the slave. Sugar cane was one, although it is difficult to imagine its appeal to a banker from Nashville, Tennessee (3-10).
3-6: Selma, AL, Bank of Selma, 5 dollars, 1862
3-7: Morgan, GA, Bank of Morgan, 2 dollars, 1857
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Pictures From A Distant Country
3-8: Chattanooga, TN, Bank of Chattanooga, 50 dollars, 1860
3-9: Charleston, SC, Bank of the State of South Carolina, 1 dollar, 1862
3-10: Nashville, TN, Central Bank of Tennessee, 1 dollar, 1855
Wherever African-Americans appeared during this middle period, their presence was almost always intimately connected with the soil. I know of precisely one vignette of slaves in a factory scene (3-11)—and there was a very good reason for limiting such depiction. Those in the North would be concerned with the wage and class threat represented by such people, while their cousins in the South would be concerned with BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country larger matters still: for if a slave proved intelligent enough to operate a machine, what was the justification for keeping him in bondage?
3-11: Yanceyville, NC, Bank of Yanceyville, 4 dollars, 1857
African-American images were generally connected with work. But not always: a Greensborough, Georgia note has caught a slave couple having a leisurely chat with a man in a cart (3-12). And African-American images were generally related to slavery, appearing exclusively on bank notes of the South. But again, not always: they occasionally took on the guise of free laborers, appearing along with whites on a handful of notes such as a five-dollar bill from Newburgh, New York (3-13).
3-12: Greensborough, GA, Bank of Greensborough, 1 dollar, 1858
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3-13: Newburgh, NY, Quassaick Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1852 (proof)
This second phase of African-American vignettes, with its genuflection to realism, gave way to a third, the shortest and at the same time the most interesting of all. It was the shortest because it was truncated by war. And it was the most interesting because it was an indelible reflection on money of deeper matters convulsing the nation, matters driving its component parts away from each other and toward civil war. The AfricanAmerican stood at the center of it all. He would doubtless have preferred to be elsewhere. Here is what was taking place; and here is why he was at the center of things, and why his portrayal on the money changed, and had to change. The bargain of 1850 had satisfied neither side. In the ensuing decade, event after event convinced each section that the other was incapable of dealing fairly with the slavery issue, but was also incapable of leaving it alone, of minding its own business. The year 1852 saw the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, whose scathing depiction of slavery and sympathetic depiction of slaves had the rough effect of an earthquake on Northern and Southern opinion alike—if for different reasons. The next year saw the Gadsden Purchase—land needed for a southernroute transcontinental railroad, said some, more land for an odious institution, said others. The years after that saw the eruption of difficulties in Kansas Territory, where pro- and anti-slavery interests created a miniature civil war as rehearsal for the real thing. And so it went, year after year. The Northern section looked with increasing disfavor at the Southern section and its "peculiar institution.” The Southern section leapt to slavery's defense. And one of the arsenals at its disposal was the money issued by its private bankers. For there is something about this currency that you should know. While it was issued locally, it circulated nationally. Granted that its value existed in a constant state of flux (against all other notes and against United States coinage), any note could, in theory, circulate anywhere. And if a banker in the South chose to place an image sympathetic to slavery on his currency, Northern as well as Southern people would see that image. Southern convictions would be reinforced. And Northern ones, just possibly, might be BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country reexamined. I cannot prove that this is why the imagery changed, only that it did. But the rapidity of the shift, along with the instant popularity of some images in particular, suggest that they, and the change itself, struck a very responsive chord, satisfied a very deep need on the part of the leaders of the Southern business community. The new depiction continued to center on agriculture. But the visage of the slave changed. He smiles at us from an Alabama note (3-14): surely, he must be enjoying his work, and just as surely, that work must be beneficial to him! A Georgia bill from a few months later has a similar view: this person is likely singing as he performs his task—and again, there is no hint that the task has been forced on him (3-15). In fact, there is now the implication that the bondsman is kept in slavery for his own good, rather than for the value of his labor or as a means of racial separation. The drowsing chucklehead on another Georgia note (3-16) would doubtless be getting into trouble were he left to his own devices. (Incidentally, the somewhat dyspeptic gentleman in the center vignette is Howell Cobb, one of the leaders in the movement for Southern secession; at the time this note was issued, the state and its local hero had made the break.)
3-14: Montgomery, AL, Central Bank of Alabama, 50 dollars, 1859
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3-15: Savannah, GA, Farmers and Mechanics Bank, 2 dollars, 1860
3-16: Macon, GA, Manufacturers Bank, 20 dollars, 1862
The new view of the slave's limitations could be expressed in other ways. Southern notes might display African-Americans working alongside whites, but if so, they always occupied the subordinate, "safe" position. They did so because a depiction otherwise might call into question the natural order of things; but they also did so to underscore the idea that the bondsman (or bondswoman) wasn't capable of decisive or complicated action anyway. Hence a black-and-white combination on a five-dollar bill from Hamburg, South Carolina: there could be no question of who was in charge (3-17).
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3-17: Hamburg, SC, Bank of Hamburg, 5 dollars, 1860
Nor could there be on a note from Savannah, Georgia, although the treatment would be altogether more subtle (3-18). Here, we see two young women, one white, one African-American and hence a slave. She is pointing to others of her race, who are picking cotton in a nearby field. She seems to be asking for her companion's approval of the industrious scene that is taking place before them. The scene is "loaded" by our standards, containing more than the people who designed it and circulated it might have intended. But it pales before another vignette, from another Savannah note (3-19).
3-18: Savannah, GA, Bank of the State of Georgia, 1 dollar, 1861
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Pictures From A Distant Country
3-19: Savannah, GA, Timber Cutter’s Bank, 2 dollars, 1858
We see a slave mother and child. She smiles at her laughing toddler, who is playing with a tiny bough of cotton—which is keeping them both in bondage. The image was engraved in1857. It first appeared on bank notes early the following year, and its significance (beyond its breathtakingly benign view of the bondage of a people) lay in its popularity with Southern bankers and those whom they served. It appeared on notes from banks across the Cotton South within a very short period of time. It obviously generated strong feelings among many people of the day, because it showed them precisely what they wanted to see. This was where matters stood by the end of the decade. The African-American was at the center of sectional controversy that would soon lead to the greatest bloodshed this country has ever known. That carnage would spell the demise of slavery, and the demise as well of an interesting form of private currency, upon which the slave had figured, along with two other economically voiceless members of the community. We have already examined one of them, the Native American. Let us turn to the other. The depiction of women on American private notes went through a particularly complicated evolution, and unlike several other chapters of our story, this one had a happy ending.
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Pictures From A Distant Country CHAPTER 4 Temptress, Saint, and Helpmeet: Woman's Identity Mao once observed that women held up half the sky. I observe that they held court on rather more than half the private bank notes of nineteenth-century America. They were everywhere, everywhen, from the medium's earliest years to its end; and it should come as no surprise to learn that the way in which they were portrayed went through a particularly complex and lengthy evolution. As half the population, they were of abiding interest to the other half—the males who made and spent the money; their perception of women was not static over time, but changing. The chapter title hints at the successive roles played by women on American private bank notes. And I would emphasize the word "successive": while the visual evolution of an entire medium can never be perfectly tidy, each stage obligingly yielding place to the next, the progression in the depiction of women was more orderly than that of Native Americans. And it was a good deal more complete than that of AfricanAmericans, for it lasted far longer. Let's see how it developed. In the beginning (once the transfer process had made the replication of decent-size images possible; say by the middle 1820s), the portrayal of women was allegorical, and it was also frequently provocative, erotic. In theory the line between "art" and soft-core pornography remained uncrossed, due to the figures' allegorical or mythological identity: everyone knew that such figures from were not supposed to be fully clothed: semi- or total nudity was part of the story. (The line also remained uncrossed because the pornograph had yet to be invented; we are talking of the early Nineteenth Century here.) Artistic propriety was the "official" line put forward by the bankers and those who worked for them; but one is rather hard put to come away with anything but a lingering impression that the bathing nude on a twenty-dollar bill from Macon, Georgia (4-1) was there as the 1840 equivalent of a pinup. This was not the sort of thing you would show to your mother—or your daughter, or your wife. The same might be said of a contemporaneous image on a three-dollar bill from Michigan; but at least in this case the nude has an American eagle (and faint hints of an American flag) with which to preserve her modesty 4-2).
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4-1:Macon, GA, Ocmulgee Bank, 20 dollars, 1840
4-2: Tecumseh, MI, Tecumseh Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1838 (unissued)
From these unpromising beginnings, an industry would grow. Undraped allegories appeared alongside draped ones, and from both strains, a third, the femme fatale, was soon in process of development. In fact, she was appearing by the middle 1820s. Peter Maverick was a very gifted pioneer in American security printing. He died at the beginning of the 1830s, but in the middle of the previous decade he had engraved an image for the Greene County Bank of Catskill, New York which was, so to speak, the mother of all seductresses (4-3). We see Maverick's creation posed by a rock beside a lake, BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country pointing to a sailboat but promising a good deal more. Maverick's work wasn't immediately followed up, the drapeless allegory holding sway for some years. But the femme fatale had found a secure niche by the 1850s, and she played a small but vibrant role on our private currency during the remaining life of the medium. She might be a veiled mystery, as on a proof for a bank in Hackettstown, New Jersey (4-4), or an unfathomable, disturbing presence, as on a note from the Western frontier (4-5). But the mystery might be played down, the images now merely beguiling—as they were on notes produced for a bank in North Carolina (4-6) and another in Maine (4-7), which were signed and placed into circulation within a few days of each other.
4-3: Catskill, NY, Green County Bank, 50 dollars, 1825
4-4: Hackettstown, NJ, Hackettstown Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1854 (proof)
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4-5: De Soto, NE, Waubeek Bank, 3 dollars, 1857
4-6: Newbern, NC, Bank of Commerce at Newbern, 10 dollars, 1861
4-7: Sanford, ME, Sanford Bank, 5 dollars, 1861
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Feminine illustration could take odd permutations. An early bank note from Rochester, New York (4-8) featured imagery which managed to be seductive and demure at the same time—a notable accomplishment. But bankers and their engravers ordinarily favored one approach over the other, and by the beginning of the 1840s, both agreed that the feminine quality which now sold was not sex, but sensitivity.
4-8: Rochester, NY, Rochester Canal Bank, 1 dollar, 1840 (proof)
And they hammered home the point for the next two decades. A succession of incredibly sweet (or saccharine, to my jaded eyes) images were the result. One could perhaps say that Woman as Saint was preferable to Woman as Temptress; but the second view was no more realistic than the first. And it may be questioned whether either did anything to advance the fortunes of fully half of the population. But then, that half wasn't responsible for the creation of the money—or its spending, by and large. In any case, the images on the bank notes document the new perception of the female sex, which was now presented in several closely related ways. First, there was the ethereal approach. Women were depicted as impossibly pure, romantic, delicate flowers. A note from Bainbridge, Georgia showed a typical scene, with a spiritual young lady affectionately regarding a beautiful flower—probably a camellia, BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country considering the place of issue (4-9). Other issuers favored women wearing flowers, with or without an accompaniment of doves (4-10, 4-11); the birds were there to emphasize the purity of the subject. Pale maidens of an "interesting" mien also found favor. The woman on a proof from the Essex Bank strikes the viewer as entirely too good for this world (412), while her sister on a note from a Florida railroad appears inconsolable, and possibly consumptive (4-13). This latter image appealed to a good many bankers and appeared on money from one end of the Republic to the other; I hazard the guess that she was how many men viewed women in general—or wanted to.
4-9: Bainbridge, GA, Southern Bank of Georgia, 1 dollar, 1858
4-10: Philippi, VA (now WV), Bank of Philippi, 5 dollars, 1861
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4-11: Smethport, PA, McKean County Bank, c. 1857 (unissued)
4-12: Haverhill, MA, Essex Bank, 50 dollars, 1860 (proof)
4-13: Tallahassee, FL, Tallahassee Rail Road, 3 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued)
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Pictures From A Distant Country In time, "real" women began appearing on American private currency. But their images, too, were often idealized. Thus, Jenny Lind (who had taken America by storm at the beginning of the 1850s) appeared on a number of bills over the next decade or so, and while her portrait might be realistically presented, it was just as likely to be romanticized, as on a note from a Springfield, Massachusetts bank (4-14) that shows the singer in an operatic role (in the opera La Sonnambula by Vincenzo Bellini, to be precise). The same might be said of a number of other images from the eighteen-forties and -fifties. I assumed that the female on a five-dollar bill from the Eagle Bank was made of whole cloth, chosen for her simpering sweetness (4-15). But no: she is Catherine (Kate) Sevier, wife of the first governor of Tennessee (although why she does service on a note from Brighton, New York is beyond me). Similar cosmetic improvement was undertaken on a likeness of Lucy Holcome Pickens (4-16) and on a second portrait, variously identified as that of Rachel Jackson, wife of the president, or of Pocahontas (4-17). Lucy Pickens was the spirited wife of Francis W. Pickens, governor of South Carolina at the time of Fort Sumter; she later gained immortality of paper currency of the Southern Confederacy. In the case of the latter likeness, I opt for Mrs. Jackson but remain open to suggestion.
4-14: Springfield, MA, John Hancock Bank, 10 dollars, 1863 (counterfeit)
4-15: Brighton, NY, Eagle Bank, 5 dollars, 1850 (proof)
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4-16: Huntsville, NY, New-York Security Bank, 3 dollars, 1847 (proof)
4-17: Lawrenceburg, TN, Lawrenceburg Bank of Tennessee, 10 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued)
These images suggest that there was a need on the part of the male community to idealize and romanticize members of the female community. Nowhere was this need more indelibly expressed than in the profession most commonly associated with them, that of the milkmaid. From the simple testimony of the currency, milking cows must have been the growth industry of the Nineteenth Century. We see milkmaids everywhere. We see them singly, either seated (4-18) or standing. In the latter case, a vaguely alpine scene was popular (4-19), although a simpler rendition had its adherents too—among them the Confederate Treasury, which lifted this image from a New York bank and used it on hundred-dollar bills (4-20). Milkmaids might appear in pairs or occasionally in groups (421). You will see them in a variety of poses, occupied with a variety of activities. But there is one activity in which you will very rarely see them—milking cows. A Maryland note from 1862 is thus something of an oddity (4-22).
4-18: Milledgeville, GA, Bank of Milledgeville, 10 dollars, 1854
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4-19: Goshen, NY, Bank of Orage County, 1 dollar, c. 1845 (proof)
4-20: Troy, NY, Commercial Tank of Troy, 1 dollar, c. 1855 (proof)
4-21: Palmyra, NY, Wayne County Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1840 (unissued)
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4-22: Salisbury, MD, Somerset and Worcester Savings Bank, 2 dollars, 1862
Assuming that the Republic was not threatened by a glut of milkmaids, what was going on? A New Jersey note from the beginning of the 1860s provides a clue (4-23). This bill showed a young woman, sans milk bucket, feeding a calf. She was Woman as Nurturer, performing useful labor in the Peaceable Kingdom. She was unthreatening, uncompetitive with men. She was therefore a fit subject for a sex and a class which vaguely knew that change was in the air, and wondered what it might portend. Males were rightly worried, for there was change in the air. It permeated many sectors of society, and it inevitably permeated the money. The portrayal of women began to change, assuming a greater realism than before.
4-23: Egg Harbor, NJ, Egg Harbor Bank, 2 dollars 1861
Women began showing up in plausible situations, performing plausible tasks, behaving as plausible, fully contributing members of a total community. A straw in the wind was a new realism in the choice and depiction of actual women from history, rather than prettified figures from myth. Martha Washington adorned the money from several banks (4-24)—generally in conjunction with her husband, to be sure, but not always. A European opera star, Henriette Sontag, made her American debut in 1852 and shortly thereafter showed up on notes from a bank in East Haddam, Connecticut (4-25). While she was as obviously dressed for a role on stage as was Jenny Lind on an earlier note, there is a world of difference in how the two women were portrayed—and a world of difference in the male attitude. And a third realistic portrait joined these two, a portrait of BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country a contemporary figure who also happened to be a heroine of the Crimean War. This was Florence Nightingale, who appeared on money from Staunton, Virginia and Augusta, Georgia (4-26), among other places.
4-24: Savannah, GA, Merchants and Planters Bank, 2 dollars, 1857
4-25: East Haddam, CT, Bank of New England at Goodspeed’s Landing, 5 dollars, c. 1862 (unissued)
4-26: Augusta, GA, Augusta Insurance & Banking Company, 1 dollar, 1861
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And it was not merely the choice of subject but what they were doing that mattered. For they now entered the mainstream of nineteenth-century life, coming ever closer to being as they really were, rather than as a male banker wanted them to be. The record is still slanted, and we must still be careful; but we can walk with greater confidence now than before. Women now perform useful tasks—occasionally with others of their sex, as on a ten-dollar bill from Canajoharie, New York, where one churns butter while another makes cheese (4-27). But they more often work alongside men—the surest indication yet that times are changing in the larger world. Much of their labor revolves around the farm—as indeed, do the tasks performed by men. On a Georgia note issued in 1860, a woman carries a bundle of wheat to a wagon, pausing to wait for the man with whom she is working (4-28). An earlier Mississippi bill stressed this same mutuality—although one might note that the woman in the scene is still serving while the men take their leave (429).
4-27: Canajoharie, NY, Canajoharie Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1855 (unissued)
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4-28: Dalton, GA, Bank of Whitfield in Dalton, 2 dollars, 1860
4-29: Natchez, MS, Agricultural Bank of Mississippi, 100 dollars, 1839
A certain camaraderie comes to prevail, from a charming, early glimpse of a courting couple taking their leave of the fieldwork for a quiet stroll (4-30), to a later engraving of a farm wife calling her menfolk to lunch (4-31)—and to a later one still, picturing a farmer chatting with his wife, as their small son looks on (4-32). And a tiny vignette on a twenty-dollar bill from Ringgold, Georgia says it all: we see two hands clasping, one plainly male, the other female (4-33). Aspiration or reality? Whichever, the Distant Country was coming closer to our own.
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4-30: Lewistown, PA, Bank of Lewistown, 10 dollars, 1844
4-31: Hackettstown, NJ, Hackettstown Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1855 (proof)
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4-32: Michigan City, IN, Michigan City and South Bend Plank Road Company, 1 dollar, 1862
4-33: Ringgold, GA, North Western Bank of Georgia, 20 dollars, 1861
An important marker along the way: women were now entering the salaried labor force. In other words, those who so frequently appeared on our currency were now beginning to achieve the means of earning it, and spending it. No one knows all of the ramifications of this revolution, for it still continues. But it found one of its first visual expressions on our money. A hint of things to come appeared in New York City around 1815. The war with Great Britain had forced Americans to become more self-reliant for manufactured goods, and the proprietors of the New York Manufacturing Company documented the new autarky with images of men at machines—and in this case, a woman, similarly employed (4-34). Women working in a Maine textile mill were her natural descendants (4-35).
4-34: New York, NY, New York Manufacturing Company, 100 dollars, c. 1815 (proof)
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4-35: Sanford, ME, Sanford Bank, 2 dollars, 1861
They could also be employed outside the factory. A five-dollar bill prepared for a bank in Methuen, Massachusetts features two vignettes relating to woman's work: at the lower left, we see a solitary worker, binding men's hats, while a woman in the main, central scene works with a man. They are making shoes (4-36). The new importance of women in the labor force is underscored by two vignettes on a dollar bill from Providence, Rhode Island—center of America's textile industry. The figure on the left holds a distaff, while the one on the right displays a bolt of finished cloth (4-37). One could say that the primary purpose of these women is still allegorical, still heraldic. But the fact that they appear in modern clothing is significant, and the evident pride which they display is more significant still. Their sex had indeed come a long way in the Distant Country.
4-36: Methuen, MA, Spicket Falls Bank, 5 dollars, 1853 (proof)
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4-37: Providence, RI, Providence Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1853 (proof)
Or had it? While the money proclaims that women worked with each other in factories and with men in a variety of crafts, the majority of those gainfully employed continued to work on the farm, in the field, in traditional occupations. A Pennsylvania note had proclaimed as much in the late 1830s (4-38), and there is little reason to believe that the situation had changed dramatically (at least in terms of sheer numbers employed) by the late1850s.
4-38: Warren, PA, Lumbermens Bank at Warren, 5 “thaler” (dollars), c. 1838 (unissued)
And the notes proclaimed one form of feminine labor, the oldest one of all, sovereign over all the other, "modern" alternatives. That oldest and most important feminine occupation was motherhood, and the notes illustrated it in ways both touching and humorous. For example, a proof prepared at the behest of a bank in Medford, New Jersey showed a sensitive scene of a mother and her child, a rural American Madonna with harvesters in the distance (4-39). A banker in Troy, New York evidently liked the image—then had the engravers transfer it from a field to a dock, where it made no sense whatsoever (4-40).
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4-39: Medford, NJ, Burlington County Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1840 (proof)
4-40: Troy, NY, Merchants and Mechanics Bank of Troy, 1 dollar, (proof)
Mothers adorned many notes, and they were always presented as nurturing, protecting, educating spirits—the better nature and hope of humankind. This flattering portrait cut both ways: it was also the manner by which the male of the species could keep the female within comforting, traditional bounds. Nonetheless, such vignettes as that adorning a three-dollar note from Millville, New Jersey (4-41) were likely the way many women would have chosen to see themselves, regardless of who was responsible for the composition. Motherhood was an important calling, mothers and fathers, children and the family the basic units of society then as now. The confident small boy at lower left beckons us: let us see how he and his fellows, and the families of which they formed the center, fared in the days of the Distant Country.
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4-41: Millville, NJ, Millville Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1857 (proof)
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Pictures From A Distant Country CHAPTER 5 Childhood and Family From the testimony of the bank notes, the Distant Country's children were usually regarded in two different ways, ways that were almost but not quite mutually exclusive. The first way was an idealized one, the rough equivalent of the romantic view of women that we examined in the last chapter. The second way was far more realistic, and it, too, had certain similarities to the ongoing story of the depiction of women: this second perception featured images of real children, engaged in real activities—among them work, on behalf of their families. These images could be combined with depictions of the other members of the family, the resulting views affording precious glimpses into ordinary life long ago. Thus the two main approaches to children and childhood on private bank notes. There was a third approach, one that linked the other two: this was the portrayal of actual, living children, but in a romantic fashion, adapted from contemporary paintings which had found favor with the public. (In a larger sense, this was one of the services provided by those who issued the notes: our private currency functioned as a "people's primer," and there is every indication that this teaching function was there deliberately.) The third way of viewing children was never as popular as the other two, but it nonetheless created some memorable images. As an example of the idealized approach, consider a vignette on a dollar bill from Dalton, Georgia. In the last chapter, we saw images of women with doves; here is one of a child with a family of rabbits (5-1). A New Jersey banker favored two children. If our previous child was adorable, these two were positively ethereal (5-2). We have seen some of their adult counterparts in the previous chapter. The presentation of idealized sweetness continued on money from Georgia and Maryland. The Farmers and Mechanics Bank of Savannah put a little girl on the left end of its five-dollar bill, a little boy on the right. The children wore contemporary garments, but their resemblance to real children ended there (5-3). And a sweet-faced, delicate young girl on a note from the Allegany County Bank contrasted strangely with the vignettes on the rest of the note (54).
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5-1: Dalton, GA, Planters and Mechanics Bank of Dalton, 1 dollar, 1856
5-2: Rockaway, NJ, Rockaway Bank, 1 dollar, 1858 (proof)
5-3: Savannah, GA, Farmers and Mechanics Bank, 5 dollars, 1860
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5-4: Cumberland, MD, Allegany County Bank, 5 dollars, 1860
One of the Allegany County Bank's other products leads us in another direction. The two children seen on that institution's two-dollar bill from the following year (5-5) are equally adorable, equally idealized. But these were real, living children—or had been, at one time. They were adapted from a painting called The Calmady Children, created in 1825 by Sir Thomas Lawrence, the eminent British artist. Why Sir Thomas' subjects should have shown up on a Maryland note over three decades later is unknown. But it would not be an isolated event: many paintings of real subjects would be recycled in a similar way.
5-5: Cumberland, MD, Allegany County Bank, 2 dollars, 1861
A new approach had been suggested: romanticized or not, the two on our Maryland note were real children. But the golden age of the private note happened to coincide with the development of photography, and the realistic possibilities inherent in the new science would carry children's portraiture far from its romantic beginnings. It was doing so within a few years of the invention of the photographic medium. An image of a somewhat glum young girl on a Georgian note (5-6), or that of a solemnfaced toddler on a New Jersey bill (5-7) might not strike us as particularly attractive; but they were undeniably real. Their images were carried uncut and unimproved from daguerreotype to printer's plate—and they still have the power to move us today. These BOSON BOOKS
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5-6: Savannah, GA, Bank of Commerce, 5 dollars, 1857
5-7: Hackettstown, NJ, Hackettstown Bank, 20 dollars, c. 1855 (proof)
We know a good deal about what they did when they were children, because they told us through the medium of the money. We learn that they worked, and that they worked as members of a unit, the family. They mainly worked on the land—as did their parents—and they began young. A Nebraska two-dollar bill shows a toddler feeding an ear of corn to a horse, while a slightly older child sits astride the animal, keeping him docile until the boy's father concludes his conversation (5-8). A vignette on a New York City note shows a somewhat bemused fiveyear-old watching the menfolk sheer sheep. He drags a toy behind him, but wears a protective smock, just in case he is called upon to assist (5-9).
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5-8: De Soto, NE, Corn Exchange Bank, 2 dollars, 1860
5-9: New York, NY, New York County Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1855 (proof)
As farm children got older, their responsibilities grew. They might watch the flock when very young (5-10) and herd it when somewhat older (5-11). Or they might help during harvest time, carrying sheaves of wheat from the field: A Maryland note catches two girls in the midst of such labor (5-12). In time, they would become full-fledged members of the labor force. A five-dollar bill from Camden, New Jersey shows workers returning from a harvest. One of them is a young boy, who struts along proudly, a rake over his shoulder, holding hands with a young female admirer (5-13).
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5-10: Potsdam, NY, Frontier Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1860 (proof)
5-11: Springfield, IL, Clark’s Exchange Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1852 (proof)
5-12: Elkton, MD, Farmers and Merchants Bank of Cecil County, 20 dollars, 1862
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5-13: Camden, NJ, Farmers and Mechanics Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1856 (proof)
Not all children worked on the land. Some worked in factories, some in businesses. I know of no images of children in mills and shops on bank notes from the middle and late periods of the private note, but there are a few from the early years of the medium—a time, I suppose, when the concept of children working for wages had not acquired the opprobrium it had earned in later years. A few of such images come from New Jersey, an early powerhouse of the American version of the Industrial Revolution. A five-dollar bill from Paterson (a center of the American textile industry then and for many years thereafter) showed workers at a spinning jenny, one and perhaps two of whom were children (5-14). A slightly earlier note from Newark shows several children busily at work in a dry goods store, opening boxes and barrels, arranging merchandise prior to the arrival the day's first customers (515).
5-14: Paterson, NJ, Paterson Bank, 5 dollars, 1824 (counterfeit)
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5-15: Newark, NJ, Newark Banking & Insurance Company, 3 dollars, c. 1820 (proof)
From all of the preceding, it should not be supposed that the Distant Country saw the role of children solely in relation to the labor force. Nor should it be concluded that it saw children solely as disconnected individuals. Then as now, children had childish pursuits, and they were children to the precise degree that they related to adults—and to other children. The images on the notes make all this clear, and we come away with the conclusion that Childhood and Family in nineteenth-century America were just as vibrant as they are today, and perhaps more so. Look at the small boy on a note from Fort Edward, New York. He has turned the clown to amuse his sister, while his father, in the time-honored way of all parents everywhere, is thinking, "What on earth's gotten into that boy?" (5-16). Another note from New York shows a father and his son, off on a hunt: the boy looks apprehensive, but his father has no doubts that his child will acquit himself well (5-17).
5-16: Fort Edward, NY, Farmers Bank of Washington County, 2 dollars, c. 1856 (proof)
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5-17: Canastota, NY, Canastota Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1856 (proof)
Other private currency pays homage to the entire family, its members relaxing, reveling in each other's company. Two notes from the estranged sections, one from Maine (5-18), the other from North Carolina (5-19), show these occasions with delicacy and grace. One also wonders what became of these people, once estrangement had led to civil war...
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5-18: Fairmount, ME, New England Bank, 10 dollars, 1857 (unissued)
5-19: Fayettville, NC, Bank of Clarendon at Fayetteville, 10 dollars, 1855
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Then as now, families meant belonging, and voyages short and long, and homecomings. In the middle 1850s, a Tennessee bank broadcast a vignette (5-20) which tells us as much about childhood, and family, and the glue that holds the two together, as we are ever likely to know or need to know: about the citizens of a Distant Country, about ourselves.
5-20: Nashville, TN, Central Bank of Tennessee, 5 dollars, 1855
A soldier has returned from a campaign, perhaps from the Mexican War. He is greeted by his wife and young son (whom he hasn't seen since infancy). The boy has put aside his toy drum on the approach of his father, abandoning shadow for substance. The three will embrace; time will stop. In the background a river flows, a house stands, and a peaceable kingdom beckons.
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Pictures From A Distant Country CHAPTER 6 Making a Living As in our own times, work was an essential economic activity in the Distant Country. It was also a way to give meaning and status to peoples' lives. The various residents of that earlier age might indeed be seen as inhabiting different worlds, as possessing different personalities, likes and dislikes; but one thing that nearly all of them were seen to have in common was an engagement in meaningful, productive activity. Let us see what they were doing. The depiction of work on private bank notes is such a vast field that I have found it necessary to divide those engaged in it into four basic categories. First come those who worked the land—the most important group of the four, from sheer numbers engaged and sheer value of production. Next come those engaged in the mill and the mine—both of which were on the cutting edge, promises of things to come. Then come those who worked in professions and trades, a multiplicity of activities ranging from whaling to carpentry, activities old and new, and all deemed essential at the time. The final category concerns something which I had not expected to see, but which we dare not overlook: this is the depiction of pride in work, the perception of nobility and validity in each task, no matter how humble. If the money bears true testimony, the apotheosis of the working man and woman was celebrated in these times rather than in our own. Let us begin by looking at what was taking place in the field and on the farm. The importance of the land towered over everything: it is hard for us to imagine how intimately connected virtually everyone was to work on the soil, either directly or at a single remove, during the years covered by this book. One worked on the land. Or one had worked on the land, but now worked in town. Or one had been born in a town but had cousins still on the farm. I can remember growing up in Oregon, a half-century ago, when all this was still partly true: but I doubt whether anyone under the age of forty on either coast now has a real idea of what it was like. The land's importance was reflected on our private bank notes from the earliest times, with tentative expression in the guise of small vignettes, expression which acquired confidence and complexity with the passage of time, the improvement of technology. Tiny and simple or large and complex, the same message was always stated: land is the foundation of prosperity. A small scene on a dollar bill from the Newark Banking & Insurance Company makes the point in simple but forceful terms: a farmer plows by a riverside, while an abundance of good things, ranging from the products of the soil (fruits and vegetables spilling from a cornucopia, sheaves of grain nearby) to freedom itself (represented by a cap of liberty on a pole) are ready to crown his work, work which in turn forms their foundation (6-1).
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6-1: Newark, NJ, Newark Banking & Insurance Company, 1 dollar, c. 1815 (proof)
Scenes of plowing enjoyed enduring popularity, for they were the beginnings of all which would follow. At times, they were combined with other essential, early labors in the agricultural cycle. In frank recognition of the limits of printing technology in the mid1830s, the creators of a nine-dollar bill from another New Jersey bank put a small plowing scene on one end of their product, a small vignette of a sower on the other (6-2). Plowing was frequently depicted as a solitary occupation (one of the few activities connected with farming which could be carried on alone), as we see on a five-dollar bill from western New York, which incidentally gives us some useful information on how this labor was actually performed (6-3). But it could be shown as a communal activity as well, either with another worker in the middle distance (6-4), or with one worker in companionable conversation with another (6-5).
6-2: Belleville, NJ, Manufacturers’ Bank at Belleville, 9 dollars, 1836
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6-3: Penn-Yan, NY, Yates County Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1850 (proof)
6-4: Michigan City, IN, Michigan City and South Bend Plank Road Company, 2 dollars, 1862
6-5: Somerville, NJ, Somerset County Bank, 20 dollars, c. 1858 (unissued)
Solitary or communal, the object of all this labor was a bountiful harvest. Harvest scenes had a perennial appeal for the citizens of our Distant Country, and the bankers and engravers responded with enthusiasm, decade after decade. An unissued three-dollar bill from a Kentucky bank had set the scene as early as the 1810s, with a vignette featuring a modish female (Ceres?) and a sickle, with harvesters in the background (6-6). BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country Such vignettes continued to distinguish our currency through the 1830s (6-7), 1840s (6-8), and 1850s (6-9). By the end of the latter decade, hand labor at harvest was becoming augmented (and would soon be superseded) by machinery—the mechanical reaper (610). A new era was opening, whether or not anyone realized it. Whatever the technology, the desired result was an abundance of food, either for the horses and cattle which still provided most of the labor (6-11), or for the people whose vision and venture saw the work to fruition (6-12).
6-6: Frankfort, KY, Frankfort Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1818 (unissued)
6-7: Ann Arbor, MI, Bank of Washtenaw, 5 dollars, 1835 (unissued)
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6-8: Watertown, NY, Henry Keep’s Bank, 2 dollars, 1847 (proof)
6-9: Lyons City, IA, Treasurer of Lyons City, 2 dollars, 1858
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6-10: Lexington, NC, Bank of Lexington, 10 dollars, 1860
6-11: Canajoharie, NY, Canajoharie Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1855 (proof)
6-12: Weston, VA, Bank of Weston, 5 dollars, c. 1858 (unissued)
Of course, there was more than one way to make a living from the land, more than one commodity to grow. Another note from the Canajoharie Bank (6-13) shows men and women harvesting hops (presumably to make beer: beer was at least as popular in the nineteenth century as it is in the twenty-first—and probably tastier); while an 1852 five-dollar bill from a bank in New Jersey displays a worker in a peach orchard—very likely the only time in history when peaches and numismatics came together (6-14). BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country Forestry was another way to take profit from the land—and lumbering must have been one of the growth industries during our nineteenth century, its career matching pace with the growth of our population, of our cities and towns. But our money only hints at its importance: there are a few views of logging, the most popular of which featured a seated worker smoking a pipe, in conversation with another, who is chopping down a tree. We see it here on an Indiana note, but it appeared on money from several other states as well (6-15). And there were a handful of vignettes that featured the finished product. A note from Pennsylvania shows the most popular of these views, as lumber is being loaded onto a canal boat for its trip to market (6-16). But we might have expected more: trees were basic ingredients in America's growth. Their very familiarity may have lessened their appeal to the residents of the Distant Country.
6-13: Canajoharie, NY, Canajoharie Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1855 (proof)
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6-14: Hightstown, NJ, Central Bank of New Jersey, 5 dollars, 1852 (proof)
6-15: Muncie, IN, Fort Wayne & Southern Rail Road Company, 1 dollar, 1854
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6-16: Smethport, PA, McKean County Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1857 (unissued)
If we made our living from what grew on the land, we also made it from the land's other inhabitants, both wild and tame. A succession of notes, ranging from a very early one from a Texas institution (6-17) to a much later one from the appropriately-named Shoe and Leather Bank of New York City (6-18) show intrepid horsemen roping and herding wild cattle, contributors to the creation of that most American archetype, the cowboy. Other images carry the story along, from a group of cowboys guiding their herd to market (6-19), to journey's end, a meat packing plant (6-20). Other animals also had importance, especially sheep and swine. All of these were traditional occupations, whose basic continuity was reflected on the money. But when we turn to other ways of making a living, the story is one of dynamism, of change. This is especially true for the mill: introduced to America at the beginning of the private bank note era, the factory, powered by animal or water power, then by steam, would be achieving dominance by its end.
6-17: Columbia, TX, Commercial & Agricultural Bank of Texas, 2 dollars/2 pesos, c. 1837 (unissued)
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6-18: New York, NY, Shoe and Leather Bank, 10 dollars, 1864
6-19: Dalton, GA, Planters and Mechanics Bank of Dalton, 1 dollar, 1856
6-20: Warren, PA, North Western Bank, 5 dollars, 1861
An early note from Paterson, NJ informs us that change was in the air. We see a worker (perhaps a child, but the poor quality of the engraving on this—counterfeit—note means we cannot tell for sure) at work at a spinning jenny (6-21). Well and good: we saw something like it in the previous chapter. But look closely: the large wheel on the left end of the machine was connected to a belt: this was a powered spinning machine, likely propelled by steam. The Industrial Revolution had arrived!
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6-21: Paterson, MJ, Paterson Bank, 3 dollars, 1815 (counterfeit)
Rather it was on its way; and our money suggests that it had not made a major impact on the popular consciousness much prior to 1850. Some of the products of the industrial era, yes: most notably the railroad train, which became synonymous with Progress itself, as we shall see in a later chapter; but scenes of factories, workshops, or mills, incubators of the new technology, were essentially lacking until mid-century. But then they made up for lost time: and the private bank notes of the next fifteen years were replete with scenes from the new way, impatiently crowding upon the environs of the old. Some of the vignettes depict the activities which we might expect—including textile manufacture, one of the first stages in any industrial revolution. But there are also some unexpected enterprises in the roster, including a glassmaking establishment (6-22; they are probably making window glass, which was blown into large cylinders, then cut, reheated, and flattened). Most of the vignettes, however, share two characteristics. They revolve around metalworking, particularly relating to iron. And nearly all of them appear on notes from Northern banks. (There was food for thought here for those in the Southern section: if secession became necessary; and Northerners opposed it by force of arms; and the ensuing war was fought in an industrial era rather than a preindustrial one: how could the South expect to make good on its bid for independence?)
6-22: Millville, NJ, Millville Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1857 (proof)
Once engravers, bankers, and the public they served turned their attention to the new ways of making a living, a series of marvelous images was created. The scene on a BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country Camden, New Jersey ten-dollar bill from the Farmers and Mechanics Bank made an attempt to be true to its name, to combine Agriculture with Industry: we see a farmer plowing in the distance. But the engraver's attention has been captured by the ironworking scene, and so has our own. We can almost feel the heat of the forge, hear the deafening racket, which is forcing the young boy to flee the workshop 6-23). The same immediacy distinguishes another ten, from another New Jersey bank: we can feel the heat, smell the smoke, hear the clang of the hammers coming down on the iron (6-24).A twenty-dollar bill from the same bank (6-25) shows a similar sense of drama, as men wrestle with white-hot iron, bending it to their will; the creative tension is repeated on a five-dollar note from Camden, New York (6-26). But neither came close to the magisterial scene which graced a bank note from Saugerties, New York, printed around 1860 (6-27): here is what America's version of the Industrial Revolution was all about!
6-23: Camden, NJ. Farmers and Mechanics Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1856 (proof)
6-24: Morristown, NJ, Iron Bank, 10 dollars, 1863
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6-25: Morristown, NJ, Iron Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1858 (proof)
6-26: Camden, NY, Camden Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1848 (proof)
6-27: Saugerties, NY, Saugerties Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1860 (proof)
As I said, most of these scenes made their appearance on currency issued by Northern banks—appropriate, because that section formed our industrial heartland during the private bank note years. But there were a few industrial vignettes on paper from Southern banks, and one in particular must have instilled a sense of pride in those BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country who first saw it (6-28). It comes from the Mechanics Bank of Memphis, Tennessee, and it dates from the middle of the 1850s. It is actually two scenes, nearly but not quite joined together: on the left, a workman (looking surprisingly modern: he would not have been out of place in a factory during the 1930s) controls a large pulley lathe, while on the left, workers pour molten iron into a mold, casting machine parts. The vignette was employed on a succession of ten-dollar bills from this bank, but it stands in rather lonely contrast to what was taking place Up North.
6-28: Memphis, TN, Mechanics Bank of Memphis, 10 dollars, 1855
Dynamism in the mill was only faintly echoed in the mine. Mining scenes were never numerous on American private notes, but they had a fairly long history. We would associate mining with coal, and the black fuel did lie at the heart of mining vignettes. But one of the earliest, if not the earliest, scenes had to do with above-ground quarrying: it appeared on a ten-dollar bill from Newark, New Jersey at the time of the War of 1812 (629), and it apparently involved building stone. Most of the remaining mining scenes did involve coal; as we might expect, they appeared most frequently on notes from banks in Pennsylvania or Maryland (6-30), although the Upper South was occasionally represented as well (6-31). And some of the vignettes did approach the dramatic immediacy we have seen on their counterparts from factories and workshops.
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6-29: Newark, NJ, Newark Banking & Insurance Company, 10 dollars, c. 1815 (proof)
6-30: Cumberland, MD, Allegany County Bank, 10 dollars, 1861
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6-31: Murphy, NC, Miners & Planters Bank, 10 dollars, 1860
Whether dramatic or not, representations of the mine, and the mill, pointed the way to the future. But the sheer comparative preponderance of agricultural scenes on our money suggest that, when all was said and done, this Distant Country was only partly along its path to the present. Most people still drew their sustenance from the land, in one way or another. And if they did not, they probably drew it from the shop. The variety of professions and trades represented on America's private currency is staggering. Think of a way of making a living, unrelated to the factory or farm, and you will probably find its depiction on some bank note, somewhere. We can do no more than to begin to tell the story here. But what a tale it was! It began early in the private paper era. A number of notes from larger population centers were depicting trades as early as the 1810s (including one from Newark, New Jersey, which showed a boot maker at work (6-32). As time went on, the number of traderelated vignettes, and the number of gainful activities displayed, both increased. By the 1850s, they had reached full maturity.
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6-32: Newark, NJ, Newark Banking and Insurance Company, 2 dollars, c. 1815 (proof)
Many of them seem unusual to our eyes; but they make good sense if we put ourselves in the place of an earlier people. For instance, the number of barrel makers, or coopers, seems rather larger than strict circumstances would merit (6-33, 6-34), but we must bear in mind that barrels were the accepted way of preserving and transporting everything from flour to beer to gunpowder: you needed a tremendous number of barrels in those days, and a large number of coopers. A second profession which might bring us up short is that of surveyor: why would one put two surveyors on a twenty-dollar bill, much less make them the center of attention (6-35)? But when we reflect upon it, we have to conclude that the North Carolina banker who chose the vignette knew what he was doing at that: the young Republic had land in abundance, people who wanted to develop it—and a real need for skilled personnel who could tell them where their property ended and another's began.
6-33: Salisbury, MD, Somerset and Worcester Savings Bank, 5 dollars, 1862
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6-34: Augusta, GA, Augusta Insurance & Banking Company, 5 dollars, 1860
6-35: Murphy, NC, Miners & Planters Bank, 20 dollars, 1860
Surveyors also paved the way for the building trades. The latter are wellrepresented on our early paper: masons erect a brick wall in one vignette (6-36), while another has an entire construction site on view, with all its messiness and promise (6-37). Other builders work with stone: one man measures a wall to make certain it is true (6-38); three stone carvers put the finishing touches on the embellishments for a new building (639). Builders and carpenters, unskilled and skilled, make frequent appearances on our early money; and they bear permanent testimony to the sometimes feverish pace of construction which distinguished the age.
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6-36: Jersey City, NJ, Mechanics and Traders Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1853 (proof)
6-37: New York, NY, East River Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1860 (proof)
6-38: Adrian, MI, Adrian Insurance Company, 2 dollars, 1853
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6-39: New York, NY, Eighth Avenue Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1854 (proof)
Other professions come more readily to mind than coopers and surveyors. In an age dependent on the horse for personal transportation and the hauling of goods, it does not surprise us to encounter a goodly (and consistent) number of blacksmiths on our money across the years (6-40). They were joined by other sorts of skilled metalworkers (64 1 ), reminding us that, whatever the promises and pretensions of the new industrialization, most commodities were made as they had always been made, by hand, by gifted craftsmen.
6-40: Freehold, NJ, Farmers Bank of Freehold, 1 dollar, 1851 (proof)
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6-41: New York, NY, Tradesmens Bank of the City of New York, 3 dollars, c. 1857 (proof)
Not all work took place on land. Then as now, a special category of laborers existed who made their livings on the rivers and seas. While both found representation on America's private currency, the greater popularity of mariners over river men removes any doubt as to which profession had captured the minds and hearts of the stay-at-home bankers and those whom the bankers served. A Louisiana two-dollar bill from around 1860 shows two seamen in a typical pose: in their skills and hardihood, they could have represented an entire generation (6-42). Some of their number excited particular admiration, were paid particular homage on the notes. Sailors whose courage and enterprise impelled them to go whaling found immortality (6-43), as did those whom ambition impelled them into the alien and dangerous world of the frozen north (6-44). The heroism of those who risked their lives to help their fellows was also celebrated, against the eternal, elemental backdrop of danger which the sea represented (6-45). To serve all of these men, a flourishing shipbuilding industry had grown up by mid-century, and its workers and their products also found and enjoyed popularity on our money (6-46).
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6-42: New Orleans, LA, Citizens’ Bank of Louisiana, 2 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued)
6-43: Perth Amboy, NJ, Commercial Bank of New Jersey, 5 dollars, 1856 (proof)
6-44: Boston, MA, Continental Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued)
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6-45: New York, NY, Marine Bank of the City of New York, 100 dollars, c. 1853 (proof)
6-46: Portsmouth, NH, Piscataqua Exchange Bank, 3 dollars, 1852 (unissued)
Let us return to the note with the whaling vignette. The Commercial Bank of New Jersey's five-dollar bill contains two other, subsidiary scenes, which we have not examined and I have not mentioned. One of them is pretty if unremarkable: a vessel under full sail, looking rather like a scrimshaw etching. But the second (6-47) is something more, and it introduces us to an entirely new treatment of working people on nineteenth-century notes.
6-47: Perth Amboy, NJ, Commercial Bank of Perth Amboy, 5 dollars, 1856 (proof)
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This second vignette shows a helmsman, hand on the wheel, guiding his ship. The wind whips the ribbons on his hat, as he stares intently ahead, seeking the safe course. Look at the expression on his face: there is a lost world there, a world of nobility, a world of dedication: there is a world there inhabited by free men and women, whose identities and personal worth augment the significance of their occupations, as those occupations increase their significance and worth. The feeling is all around us in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s; but we shall not encounter its like again until the 1930s. It is the nobility of labor. It may have been inspired in part by a painting. Back in the 1820s, an artist named John Neagle painted the portrait of a smith named Patrick Lyons. The smith stood by his forge, his face suffused with the pride of a skilled workman who knew his worth. Neagle's work was an instant success, striking a deep chord of recognition with the public; reproductions of it soon began appearing in a number of places—including paper money. It formed the central vignette on a dollar bill from the Rochester City Bank (648), although a purist might have complained that the train at top-left was a later addition, there being no railroads at the time the original painting was done. In any case, the engraver captured the strength and nobility of Neagle's work; and it—and Patrick Lyons—soon had much company on America's money.
6-48: Rochester, NY, Rochester City Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1840 (proof)
Many of those portrayed were blacksmiths or workers in related trades, such as boilermaking (an essential calling, in this Age of Steam). A Georgia note from 1854 (6-49) captures one of these workers in a moment of repose, standing proudly with his hands on his hammer, symbol of his trade. A Massachusetts bank preferred a boilermaker seated among the tools and products of his craft, looking at all that he and his fellows have created: trains, lofty buildings, factories (6-50). A small vignette from a Jersey City bank speaks volumes about the courage, dignity, dedication of a simple workman with his sledgehammer (6-51).
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6-49: Milledgeville, GA, Bank of Milledgeville, 5 dollars, 1854
6-50: Boston, MA, Cochituate Bank, 2 dollars, 1853
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6-51: Jersey City, NJ, Mechanics and Traders Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1853 (proof)
Nobility is everywhere. A wheelwright looks directly at the viewer on a note from the western prairies: his skill will get the job done, and done right (6-52). Two workers at an East Coast shipyard engage in sincere conversation on one New Jersey note (6-53); a third proudly leans against his charge, a railway locomotive on another (6-54; and his close proximity to the locomotive's decoration, an American eagle, is hardly coincidental). And from Louisiana comes the image of a sailor, leaning against a capstan, confident, capable of everything, ready for anything (6-55).
6-52: Chicago, IL, Bank of Chicago, 3 dollars, 1852
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6-53: Hoboken, NJ, Hoboken City Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1857 (proof)
6-54: Millville, NJ, Millville Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1857
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6-55: New Orleans, LA, Louisiana State Bank, 5 dollars, 1856 (unissued)
Most vignettes in this group depict workers engaged in one trade or another, and most of those depicted are males. There are exceptions to both rules, however. A young farmer pauses to take a drink from a water jug on one note (6-56), while three others hold a conversation on another (6-57). Significantly, each note comes from the Midwest, where farming was the most dominant occupation at the time the notes were printed. And woman's nobility was sometimes celebrated too—either alone, as on one note from New Jersey (6-58) and another from Michigan (6-59), or in the company of men (6-60).
6-56: Keokuk, IA, Keokuk, Mt. Pleasant and Muscatine Rail Road, 3 dollars, c. 1852 (unissued)
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6-57: Ann Arbor, MI, Bank of Washtenaw, 5 dollars, 1854
6-58: Morristown, NJ, Morris County Bank, 20 dollars, c. 1858 (unissued)
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6-59: Marshall, MI, Bank of Michigan, 3 dollars, c. 1862 (unissued)
6-60: Camden, NJ, Farmers and Mechanics Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1857 (proof)
There are two final notes that must be seen before we leave, because they epitomize everything we have been discussing about the nature of work, and its nobility, according to the tenets of the Distant Country. Oddly enough, both notes come from a Jersey City bank. The first was prepared around 1857. We see two groups of standing and seated figures, four on the left and three on the right. The left grouping represents Arts and Industry, while the one on the right stands for Agriculture. All bear expressions of quiet, firm dedication to their callings, callings which ennoble them, and which they in turn honor (6-61). This vignette was also used on notes of the Hartford Bank in the late 1850s and early 1860s.
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6-61: Jersey City, NJ, Hudson County Bank, 50 dollars, c. 1857 (proof)
If the first vignette symbolizes dedication, the second vignette suggests consecration, approbation (6-62). We see three workers—a mechanic, a sailor, and a farmer. The farmer is offering his first fruits to the Goddess Liberty, who extends her hand in benediction. The other two workers wait their turn, and her blessing. The scene is simple, affecting, celebratory. And we shall not see its like again, either in the Distant Country or in our own.
6-62:Jersey City, NJ, Mechanics and Traders Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1853 (proof)
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Pictures From A Distant Country CHAPTER 7 Whimsy From the sublime to the ridiculous. Among the purposes of early American private currency were those of instruction, celebration, inspiration; but another was entertainment. The whimsical nature of our nineteenth-century notes bears investigation. We shall find things which amused the men and women of an earlier age. We shall also find things which they would not have found humorous but which tickle us. It was a sentimental age. It should therefore not surprise us that some of the things which amused earlier Americans involved figures and situations which we might find "twee"—a useful British word roughly equivalent to "over the top" or "too cute for words"—the engraver's equivalent of bad yard art. In the case of our early paper, anything involving cherubs was deemed meritorious, delightful, fun; accordingly, cherubs were everywhere, performing useful and not-so-useful labor which should have alarmed the child welfare people, but didn't. They were crushing rock on an Arkansas note (7-1), representing Agriculture and Commerce on one from Illinois (7-2). They formed an amorous couple on a bill from New Orleans (7-3), but had been demoted to subsidiary props on one from Columbus, Georgia (7-4; look closely at the numerals). One of their most delightful poses was adopted from a painting, and it appeared on a Michigan note from around 1860 (7-5). And the cherub becomes a young brave-to-be (paddling his canoe, which bears the head of a duckling) on an early note from Connecticut (7-6).
7-1:Little Rock, AR, Cincinnati & Little Rock Slate Company, 3 dollars, 1854
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7-2: Kaskaskia, IL, Bank of Cairo, 5 dollars, 1840
7-3: New Orleans, LA, Exchange and Banking Company of New Orleans, 5 dollars, 1840
7-4: Columbus, GA, Phoenix Bank of Columbus, 20 dollars, 1842
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7-5: Detroit, MI, State Bank of Michigan, 1 dollar, c. 1859 (unissued)
7-6: Westport, CT, Fairfield County Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1838 (unissued)
The last vignette introduces us to a fairly common approach to humor on the nineteenth-century note: the derivation of mirth from what would in other circumstances be a simple recitation of reality. Thus another scene involving Native Americans, as used on notes from several banks in the 1850s (7-7): I suppose Pop could take Mom and Junior out for a Sunday ride in the family canoe; I just never considered it. A somewhat similar spirit illumines the depiction of two young girls, caught in the act of carrying a sheaf of wheat from the harvest (7-8): I suppose children could adopt such a pose while working; but I expect these two to break into a dance at any minute.
7-7: Cleveland, TN, Ocoee Bank, 2 dollars, 1859
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7-8: Hornellsville, NY, Bank of Hornellsville, 2 dollars, 1854 (proof)
The humor on the old money may have a timeless quality, as amusing today as it was in an earlier age. One such example comes from the Chemical Bank, a New York institution still very much with us. The dogs and the birds are still fresh, still funny (7-9). But we would probably find the prospect of stampeding horses and sheep (7-10) somewhat less humorous than would our earlier counterparts: someone will have to go out and round up all those animals; what was a minor annoyance in the 1850s appears far more serious at the turn of a new millennium.
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7-9: New York, NY, Chemical Bank, 2 collars, c. 1850 (proof)
7-10: Norfolk, CT, Norfolk Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1856 (proof)
All of which is to say that if you want to understand how very far away the Distant Country is from our own, and ours from it, consider the things which it found funny but we do not, and the reverse. The points of shared amusement mark our closeness. But the points of mutual incomprehension show us how much time has intervened. Much of the incomprehension is based on a very simple fact: the bankers and engravers of the nineteenth century knew what they meant, but we may not, based on the passage of time, based on the fact that these earlier people never intended for their wares to survive them this long. When everybody using a given note (and seeing a given image) was on the same page, so to speak, why would they need an explanation, a guide? But we come to their products a century and a half later: we need a guide. And in its absence, the nature of what was broadcast in one age and received in another becomes unclear. And BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country the most obvious things, meant seriously in one time, can intrigue or amuse in another: what on earth were these people up to? We are speaking of a quality of unconscious humor, and it can stem from any of several circumstances. It can spring from the sheer unlikelihood of an image chosen in one century but seen in another. It can arise from the inappropriateness of juxtaposition—a vignette, for example, which clashes very loudly with something else about the note we are looking at. And it can result from the sheer ineptitude of the engraving. The remainder of this chapter will show you what I mean. In the case of unlikely images, we begin with a bank in Cooperstown, New York, a locale noted nowadays for baseball. But the management of the Otsego County Bank insisted on putting a fish on their notes, denomination after denomination, decade after decade (7-11). Perhaps it was a salmon, but my knowledge of piscatorial lore is incomplete, and one of my readers may have to assist. The owners of the Manufacturers' Bank at Belleville, in the New Jersey town of that name, belied the theme represented by the name of their operation by placing a most curious figure at the right-hand margin of their five-dollar bill (7-12). The late George M. Wait, who wrote New Jersey's Money, called the seated man an "Indian.” He isn't: with his faithful dog at his feet, he reminds me of Ulysses, except that he also has a rifle, which the Greek hero did not. We see a seashore with buildings in the distance: this image becomes more opaque the longer we look at it, and we must conclude that, while the people of 1838 may have known what was going on, we do not, and cannot.
7-11: Cooperstown, NY, Otsego County Bank, 5 dollars, 1850
7-12: Belleville, NJ, Manufacturers’ Bank at Belleville, 5 dollars, 1838
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The vignette on a ten-dollar note from Rockland, Maine is perfectly clear: this is Leda, with Zeus, disguised as a swan (7-13). But what on earth is this rather suggestive image from the personal lives of the Grecian gods and goddesses doing on a note from pious New England? And as far as that goes, what are those naiads doing with Cupid (714) on a five-dollar bill from New York City? What are bacchantes doing on a note (7-15) from Mr. Wright's bank in Upstate New York? Why is a sparrow perched on a globe held by a goddess in Columbus, Georgia (7-16)? And above all, why are there elephants on a five-dollar bill from Deep River, Connecticut (7-17)? Was P. T. Barnum in the neighborhood?
7-13: Rockland, ME, Ship Builders Bank, 10 dollars, 1853
7-14: New York, NY, Atlantic Bank of the City of New York, 5 dollars, c. 1853 (proof)
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7-15: Oswego, NY, Luther Wright’s Bank, 20 dollars, c. 1846 (proof)
7-16: Columbus, GA, Manufacturers and Mechanics Bank of Columbus, Georgia, 5 dollars, 1854
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7-17: Deep River, CT, Deep River Bank, 5 dollars, 1854 (spurious)
The Deep River note is "spurious"—that is, a counterfeit with a design different from that actually used for five-dollar bills from that bank. On the other hand, the elephants appear on legitimate twenty-dollar bills from the same institution; what is going on here? There may be an explanation, in this case: one of my colleagues at the Smithsonian informs me that Deep River was a center for piano-making in the nineteenth century. Pianos use white keys. White keys use ivory—or did, back in the 1850s. Hence, perhaps, elephants. In other words, the image, once inappropriate, may become appropriate again when we know more facts. So it goes: perhaps the jockeys on a dollar bill from Trenton, New Jersey (7-18) have a perfectly good reason for being there, if we but knew more. But I have a feeling that a semi-clothed, gigantic (anywhere from a hundred feet to half a mile tall, depending on where you look) female figure (7-19) would be hard to explain in De Soto, Nebraska or anywhere else. The native in the adjoining vignette appears to be trying to fend her off. I don't blame him.
7-18: Trenton, NJ, State Bank at Trenton, 1 dollar, 1825
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7-19: De Soto, NE, Bank of De Soto, 3 dollars, 1863
Some things go together. Others don't. In the case of nineteenth-century private currency, the juxtaposition of vignettes with the rest of the note sometimes works and sometimes does not. The clash may occur between the vignette and the place of issue; or there can be a discontinuity between the vignette and the nature of the institution upon whose paper it appears. A few examples will show you this discordance at work, and the whimsy it can produce. Here is the main vignette from a two-dollar bill from the Georgia Lumber Company (7-20). Never mind the fact that the firm was located in Maine rather than Georgia; but if you look closely, you will see that the shield partly obscured by the deities represents neither Georgia nor Maine, but New Jersey. The engravers obviously had a ready-to-use vignette featuring the New Jersey arms, and they either slipped it past the management of the Georgia Lumber Company or the latter didn't care. Something similar may have occurred with a proof hundred-dollar bill prepared for the Freehold Banking Company of Freehold, New Jersey (7-21): the arms which the Revolutionary soldier will risk his life to defend are those of South Carolina, not New Jersey. Contrary to what we might expect, the proof was apparently approved and hundred-dollar bills circulated with the vignette.
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7-20: Portland, ME, Georgia Lumber Company, 2 dollars, 1839
7-21: Freehold, NJ, Freehold Banking Company, 100 dollars, c. 1855 (proof)
The clash can occur between the nature of the vignette and the place where the bank or other institution did business. The Farmers Bank of Washington County was located in the village of Fort Edward, New York. Yet its fifty-dollar bill (7-22) featured a winsome lady who would have been more at home on the banks of the Panama Canal (if such had then existed, which it did not) than on those of the Champlain Division of the Barge Canal, which is where Fort Edward, and presumably the winsome lady, actually sat. A similar discontinuity can be seen on a three-dollar note from the Lumbermen's Bank, with a stirring scene of the sea, with ships under steam and sail (7-23). The Lumberman's Bank was located in Dubuque, Iowa. Having visited Dubuque several BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country times (admittedly some years ago), I am prepared to state that there is no ocean within a thousand miles. The person who owned the bank was probably from Back East and homesick; and he called the tune as far artwork was concerned. A more elaborate example of a seascape (7-24) appeared on a five circulated by the City of Omaha in 1857: Omaha isn't near an ocean either.
7-22: Fort Edward, NY, Farmers Bank of Washington County, 50 dollars, 1856 (proof)
7-23: Dubuque, IA, Lumbermen’s Bank, 3 dollars, 1857 (unissued)
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7-24: Omaha, NE, City of Omaha, 5 dollars, 1857
The clash can be a bit more difficult to explain, a disjuncture between the highmindedness of the scene and the inherent nature of the note upon which it appears—which after all is money, pure and simple. Three vignettes will convey my meaning better than my words. The first appears on currency from Ann Arbor, Michigan which entered circulation in 1836 (7-25). Ann Arbor had been laid out scarcely a dozen years before, and it would not become a city until 1851; Ann Arbor was on the Michigan frontier. But you would never know it from the central vignette on the three-dollar bill of the Bank of Washtenaw, with horses, levitating deities, and a cherub thrown in for good measure. The banker's perfectly sincere attempt to impress with good taste, set against the place where he did business, strikes one as faintly ridiculous, unintended humor in fact. An attempt to improve the locals is one thing; but keep it in bounds...
7-25: Ann Arbor, MI, Bank of Washtenaw, 3 dollars, 1836
Our second vignette (7-26) first saw the light in the 1820s; but the note bearing this example was locally reprinted in the 1860s from a leftover plate from that earlier era (banks could keep their plates if they so desired, and local reprinting could be done if needed). We see a horseman from the Classical Age, apparently exiting a fire by the timehonored method of jumping into an abyss. He presumably shows high-minded bravery; but what does this have to do with banking? BOSON BOOKS
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7-26: New Orleans, LA, Bank of Louisiana, 20 dollars, 1862
Finally, we have a vignette from the early 1830s, which did service on a two-dollar bill from Hackensack, New Jersey (7-27). It represents Samson wrestling with a lion; and the owners of the bank apparently liked it so much that they had it put on virtually every piece of paper they issued. But what did it mean? Unless Sampson represented themselves and the lion their competition (which seems unnecessarily bellicose), I have no idea. But again, the gap between a classical, or Biblical, situation and the gritty reality of running a bank produces a humorous effect now, even if it were unintended then.
7-27: Hackensack, NJ, Washington Banking Company, 2 dollars, 1833
From the discordant to the truly inept. When we consider the thousands of vignettes which were engraved for our money over two-thirds of a century, we might conclude that the majority of them were workmanlike, adequate, occasionally superb. But there were also spectacular failures, glorious "clunkers" which should never have been engraved at all, let alone seen by thousands. They may be lacking in perspective, or artistry, or judgment, or all three qualities. But if they failed at their appointed tasks (to instruct and inspire people of an earlier day), they succeed at one that their creators never considered: they amuse the residents of a later day—ourselves. Consider an early note from St. Louis, Missouri (7-28). This ten-dollar bill comes from one of the first banks in that city, or indeed in the region, and it bears the signature of none other than Auguste Chouteau, the cofounder of St. Louis. This is an impressive,
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Pictures From A Distant Country historic note. But we are concerned with the vignette; it too is impressive, but in other ways.
7-28: St. Louis, MO, Bank of Missouri, 10 dollars, 1818
It is impressively unlikely, and impressively bad. Without explanation, a bust of Thomas Jefferson has been placed on a riverbank, surrounded by cotton bales and beehives. There are ships in the distance, mountains to the west (or east, depending on whether the sun is rising or setting). The image is implausible, to say the least: there are no mountains anywhere near St. Louis, and the liberty cap behind the president seems to grow out of his shoulder. It only remains for a clock to be added to the statue's pedestal, and then we would have an inspiring objet d'art suitable for the most discerning family's parlor; except that the parlor would have to have a thirty-foot ceiling, judging from the size of the statue relative to the other elements in the engraving. The printers and the engravers who worked for them should have known better. But the bank liked the image and insisted on its inclusion on virtually all of its products. Of course, it went out of business within a few years. This may not have been coincidental. As you know, a large number of organizations besides banks issued their own money in the days of the Distant Country—railroads, municipalities, plank roads, and canal companies, to name a few. Individual citizens might do so too, especially during hard times or in areas especially bereft of hard money. A resident of Buffalo named B. Rathburn did just that in 1836 (7-29). For the printing, he chose the respected security firm of Underwood, Bald & Spencer, of New York and Philadelphia. For the vignette, Underwood, Bald & Spencer chose a singularly inept engraver.
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7-29: Buffalo, NY, B. Rathburn, 1 dollar, 1836
Either Mr. Rathburn wanted a railway train for his one-dollar bill, or Underwood, Bald & Spencer suggested it to him. But it is apparent that the person who created the vignette had never actually seen a train—either that, or that the management had never seen one either. One assumes that the vehicles are moving left-to-right, although it is difficult to see how they were propelled, there being no drive shafts or connectors on the locomotive. Nor does there seem to be any connection between the locomotive, the carriage behind it, and the passenger cars behind the carriage. Nor does there appear to be any connection between the solitary figure who balances precariously on the side of the first passenger car with the rest of the scene—or with the car: how does he maintain his balance? When we add to all this the fact that the engine looks rather more like a brace of bottles than a machine, and that the entire scene violates the laws of perspective in several ingenious ways, we conclude that what was intended here was simply the idea of a train, not the representation of one. So we exculpate the engraver, the printers, and Mr. Rathburn; we have had fun with their product, and that is enough. But the prize for ineptitude (or possibly laziness) must go to the unnamed and felonious artist who created the engraving for a Lowell, Massachusetts spurious note dated 1861 (7-30). This was his second attempt: the right-hand margin of his note had originally displayed a figure of Ceres, draped over a fancy frame containing the denomination; spurious bills with that design are known bearing an 1860 date. Then something happened to that portion of the plate, and rather than replacing the whole, our slothful engraver simply dropped a framed portrait of John Marshall over the goddess, covering some of her but not all: we can still see the bottom part of the figure poking out underneath. Doubtless she is wondering what happened. You would think that no one in his or her right mind would have accepted such a clumsy pastiche, even in 1861. But they did: the Smithsonian has two specimens, both manifesting extensive circulation.
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7-30: Lowell, MA, Merchants Bank, 2 dollars, 1861 (spurious)
In other cases, the vignettes came close to sobriety, even artistry; but an incompletely digested lesson on the laws of perspective then ruined everything. Two examples may amuse you. The first appeared during the 1830s. It appears here on an unissued five from the Tecumseh Bank (7-31), but the scene enjoyed great popularity elsewhere during that decade, always with the same lapse in judgment—minor at first, getting worse the more you think about it.
7-31: Tecumseh, MI, Tecumseh Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1838 (unissued)
We see the boast of Archimedes—that given a place to stand, and a lever, he could move the earth. He is in the process of doing so. But he is using a mountain peak as a fulcrum, and here is where the perspective lesson has its revenge: the philosopher, or the globe, or the mountain is out of scale, out of kilter, out of balance with the other two players in the scene. There is simply something wrong with this vignette, and extended study to find out what it is will cause headaches. BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country The artwork on a two-dollar note from the Bordentown Banking Company (7-32) is even more distressing. The vignette appeared on this note in 1855 and on products from other banks at about the same time; surely, someone should have seen a problem with perspective and halted, or amended, the vignette. But they didn't: art is blind, from time to time. There is nothing wrong with the scene of two riders and their skittish horses. There is nothing wrong with the train (except that the locomotive's resemblance to two bottles suggests that the engraver who prepared the Buffalo note in the 1830s was still working in the 1850s). It is when you combine the two parts of the vignette that difficulties occur: either this train is of the toy variety (in which case it wouldn't have been likely to scare the horses), or the horses are giants (in which case they needn't be scared of the train or much else). The placement of the track relative to the animals is the key point: had the engraver been more careful, much misunderstanding would have been avoided; but where's the fun in that?
7-32: Bordentown, NJ, Bordentown Banking Company, 2 dollars, 1855
I've left the best vignette for last, partly because it doesn't precisely fit into any of the preceding categories, partly because it is the best and epitomizes much of what we have already discussed. It is also one of our earlier pieces, proving that a gloriously loopy concept is forever, a proud standard against later generations of engravers, printers, and bankers might measure their efforts. The vignette was created for the National Bank—which despite the name was a private institution. The National Bank opened its doors in Lower Manhattan in 1829. It hired the finest printers, and they hired the finest engravers, whose high-minded renderings were sure to increase confidence in the new bank and its money. A figure of Washington was chosen to adorn the notes—very appropriate, considering the ambitious name of the business. And it was apparently determined that the same figure of the Father of Our Country would be used for every denomination issued by the bank. Orders were given, people set to work. And then something went wrong, very wrong. You see the result (7-33). The National Icon appears to be masquerading as a Roman dignitary; or he may be making his escape from a Village bathhouse. The point is, he isn't doing what we expect Washington to be doing, and he isn't dressed the way we expect Washington to be dressed. The figure's eighteenth-century powdered hair and the grave expression are merely icing on the cake; if it is true that gravity and dignity are BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country shared, consensual matters, then the opposite must also obtain. This Washington is ridiculous because he refuses to conform with how we know he should appear. Ridiculous or not, his semi-draped figure appeared on notes of the National Bank for many years.
7-33: New York, NY, National Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1829 (proof)
But all of this leads us to another consideration: were bankers of the day concerned about public perception of the validity of their notes? Of course they were: at bottom, their products were simply pieces of paper, backed by the name and resources of an institution about which one might know nothing. It was of the highest importance that the public never take too much time to consider this matter; and it was therefore up to the bankers, printers, and engravers to provide them with arguments in favor of the fiscal health of their institutions and products. One of the ways they could build confidence was by a judicious choice of comforting, confidence-building imagery. They learned this lesson early, and they learned it well.
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Pictures From A Distant Country CHAPTER 8 "You Can Trust Me": Images of Worth Paper is a very fragile trading mechanism. On an elemental level, people realize that, in and of itself, a piece of paper has no value—because in the nature of things, pieces of paper have no value, in and of themselves. They are not wealth. If all goes well, you may persuade the public that they represent wealth—but that is a great leap of faith, and you will do well to add all the reassurance you can by any means available. This is why modern credit cards have holograms. And this is why nineteenth-century private American currency so often employed images and techniques meant to reassure, as well as to inspire. The search for fiscal credibility took the banks and other institutions in several directions—sometimes on the same note. The currency might employ vignettes stressing fiscal trustworthiness: this was an honest bank, a legitimate bank, run by people upon whom you could depend. The vignettes might opt for the depiction of power over probity, with engravings of large and ornate banking houses: surely something as big as that must be reliable! They might also seek credibility in the most obvious way imaginable: by the depiction of coins, "real" money, on the currency which stood in for it—generally with a number of coins equal to the stated value of the note. They might seek credibility through a judicious choice of bank name. And they might seek it through a variety of other approaches, ranging from state-sponsored associations to fancy printing techniques. While the procedures varied, the objective did not: the public must come to be convinced of the validity of paper money, of this paper money. Images of fiscal trustworthiness came first, and one of the interpretations enjoying the greatest and longest vogue was a dog, ordinarily seen in the act of guarding a safe. We see him in an early incarnation on a hundred-dollar bill from Trenton, New Jersey (8-1). One hundred dollars was an enormous amount of money in 1813, and the bank needed all the credibility it could muster. The animal appears on two later notes from the Midwest, which incidentally shows us how far the art of security printing had developed in America in the space of two decades. On an unissued two-dollar bill from an entity styling itself the Chicago Marine & Fire Insurance Company (8-2), we see him with his paws over the keys to a largish strongbox, with sacks of money flanking it. The dog bears a distinctly menacing expression: surely, this animal will not allow any fiscal shenanigans to occur! Note the building behind him: there is an implication that this is the headquarters of the organization, another point in its favor. In the second Midwestern image (8-3) the dog has company—a cherub, representing Commerce. This dog is less menacing (perhaps owing to the presence of the child); but he is just as faithful as his fellow canine from Chicago. In time, the image was simplified and sentimentalized. A Georgia five-dollar bill from 1860 shows this kinder, gentler animal (8-4).
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8-1: Trenton, NJ, State Bank, 100 dollars, 1813
8-2: Chicago, IL, Chicago Marine & Fire Insurance Company, 2 dollars, c. 1835 (unissued)
8-3: Ann Arbor, MI, bank of Washtenaw, 100 dollars, 1837 (unissued)
8-4: Dalton, GA, Bank of Whitfield in Dalton, 5 dollars, 1860
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Pictures From A Distant Country Dogs dominated in this type of imagery, but other animals could also be pressed into service. A twenty-dollar note from the New-York Loan Company employed a lion, with a marvelously detailed image featuring a cherub, a city scene, a railroad train, and classical ruins, all packed into a vignette scarcely two inches long by an inch high, labeled SECURITAS (security)—a tour de force in 1838 or any other year (8-5)—while a ten-dollar bill from the other side of the Hudson used a griffin for the same purpose—but with far less effect (8-6).
8-5: New York, NY, New-York Loan Company, 20 dollars, 1838
8-6: Jersey City, NJ, Morris Canal & Banking Company, 10 dollars, 1841
From dogs and others to the banks they guarded: our early currency teems with vignettes of reassuringly large bank buildings, the homes of the currency which people were thereby encouraged to accept. The depiction of banks came with the first years of the nineteenth century, with small and simple but nonetheless solid engravings of the issuers' headquarters: the size and simplicity of the vignettes were based more on current artistic and technological limitations than on bankers' pretensions. A view of the Farmers & Mechanics Bank of Cincinnati is typical of the early period (8-7). From those simple beginnings, the engravers and technology eventually graduated to larger vignettes of ornate temples of commerce, focal points of neighborhoods, cities, and towns. The engraving of the Peoples Bank shows the immense pride which went into the enterprise, BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country to the inclusion of a large sign with the name of the bank on the top of the building (8-8). That of the State Bank of Charleston, South Carolina (8-9) was equally if not more impressive: this bank must indeed have been a pillar of the neighborhood, a center of the community (it was: it was in business for over sixty years, succumbing at last to the pressures of the Civil War rather than those of its creditors).
8-7: Cincinnati, OH, Farmers & Mechanics Bank of Cincinnati, 5 dollars, 1816
8-8: New York, NY, Peoples Bank of the City of New York, 2 dollars, c. 1855 (proof)
8-9: Charleston, SC, State Bank, 5 dollars, 1860
The Jersey Bank was a case unto itself. As with many other institutions, this one put a vignette of its headquarters on its notes. But it depicted no fewer than three banking houses in the course of a few years, each of which was more ornate than the last (8-10, 811, 8-12). One wonders whether the bank was a brilliant success and constantly had to BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country search for new headquarters, or whether its directors floundered about until they found what seemed to them the proper image. Whichever their motive, their creation came tumbling down around their ears in1826, one more victim of the economic slump that took place during the mid-twenties. When running a bank, it is useful to have more than a dignified vignette on your notes; cash reserves are helpful too.
8-10: Jersey City, NJ, Jersey Bank, 10 dollars, 1825, (first phase)
8-11: Jersey City, NJ, Jersey Bank, 3 dollars, 1825, (second phase)
8-12: Jersey City, NJ, Jersey Bank, 1 dollar, 1826 (third phase)
Banks were popular subjects; so were dogs at safes, as we saw earlier. And one could make a strong case that, whenever George Washington or other Pillars of the Republic showed up on private bank notes, their presence wasn't accidental. Consciously or unconsciously, those who issued the paper wanted the great men and an occasional great woman there to boost the credibility of their wares. But one of the most popular ways of ascribing validity to paper money involved none of these approaches. Instead, it involved the most obvious thing in the world: if you want to persuade the public that your currency is as good as coinage, put pictures of coins on your currency.
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Pictures From A Distant Country At the bankers' behest, engravers were doing so as soon as they were able to produce creditable engravings of the coins in circulation—say by around 1820. Their approach was often fairly literal: a ten-dollar bill from the hamlet of Appalachicola, Florida Territory, depicted ten silver dollars on its right-hand margin, stacked loosely enough to show the coins' dates (8-13). (You will note that they were all dated at the end of the eighteenth century; that was because the last silver dollars had been struck about that time.) A Memphis banker favored the reverse of the same coin for his dollar bill of 1853 (8-14). It might seem odd to see a sixty-year-old coin in circulation today, even through the second-hand medium of a picture on a bank note; but coinage had a far more extensive circulatory life in the days of the Distant Country than in our own, partly because much exchange was carried on by barter, coins only coming out of hiding when you didn't know the person with whom you were dealing, or he you.
8-13: Appalachicola, FL, Bank of West Florida, 10 dollars, 1832
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8-14: Memphis, TN, Banking House of John S. Dye, 1 dollar, 1853
The longer shelf life of the coin is borne out by another vignette, this time on a two-dollar bill, (8-15). The coin in front is an American silver dollar with the new design, adopted in 1840. The coin behind it is a Mexican Piece of Eight (the direct ancestor of the American silver dollar), from around 1790. This note is worth a closer look, because it demonstrates a common phenomenon during the days of private currency. It says it comes from the "Safety Fund Bank" of Boston, Massachusetts. There was a bank bearing that name in Boston, but it didn't get started until 1859, three years after the date on this note. What we have here is an altered note: crooks bought up notes from failed banks for a few cents on the dollar and then altered them so as to pass them as valid ones. The trick was to choose a plausible name and a plausible place (you'd want a note purportedly coming from a place of which everyone had heard, a place reasonably close but not too close)—then make the necessary alterations, either with pen and ink, or, by the 1850s, letterpress printing. This bank note began its career in Laurel, Indiana, a product of the Thames Bank. To add insult to injury, the Thames Bank was a fraudulent institution as well!
8-15: Boston, MA, Safety Fund Bank, 2 dollars, 1856 (altered)
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With an unissued five-dollar bill from Vermont (8-16), we come full circle. Here are five silver dollars, reminding the public that the West River Bank's product was as good as the coins represented. But the five cherubs detract from the seriousness of the message.
8-16: Jamaica, VT, West River Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued)
A judicious choice of name might also inspire trust. A bank opening its doors in the national capital during the tumultuous year of 1861 evidently thought so. It chose the most reassuring name it could think of: it styled itself the Bullion Bank, in hopes that prospective customers would imagine piles of precious ingots lying everywhere and cast their business in the bank's direction. By way of additional insurance, it ordered a portrait of George Washington placed at lower-right and a view of Washington's tomb at Mt. Vernon at upper-left: its five-dollar bill with these designs (8-17) just oozed credibility. But all of its efforts were in vain: the bank collapsed the following year. And no bullion was discovered on the premises.
8-17: Washington, DC, Bullion Bank, 5 dollars, 1861
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Pictures From A Distant Country about note-issuers collapsing—or absconding in the middle of the night—leaving creditors, including holders of their currency, high and dry. So modest attempts were made at regulation: in theory, banks now had to apply for state charters, meet state requirements. Among other obligations, they might have to join "safety funds." Safety funds came to the fore in the 1830s. Any banking institution which proposed to issue currency must pledge public stocks and real estate, putting them in a common pot, so to speak, which could be drawn upon by shaky members of the association during times of crisis. The idea was laudable in theory but ineffective in practice: during the panics of the nineteenth century, so many undercapitalized banks exerted so great a pressure on the funds that they ran out of resources well before the crises had run their courses. (Something similar took place when Herbert Hoover exhorted private charities to fight the Depression of the 1930s, then watched helplessly as the charities were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the economic collapse.) Those who subscribed to the safety funds were empowered and obligated to say so on their currency—which they did, for reasons of their own. When bankers in Clyde, New York (8-18) or Freehold, New Jersey (8-19) announced their compliance to the public, it made their notes more attractive and increased the bankers' credibility—at least until the next crisis.
8-18: Clyde, NY, Millers Bank of New-York, 2 dollars, 1840
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8-19: Freehold, NJ, Farmers Bank of Freehold, 2 dollars, 1851 (proof)
And there was a final way, albeit indirect, to augment the public's confidence in the wares of a particular bank. It was indirect because it involved printers and engravers rather than men of commerce. And it was also indirect because it could not guarantee trustworthiness, merely hint at it. We have been looking at examples of it through the course of this book. Very simply, it was based on making the currency emitted by a given bank as difficult to counterfeit as possible. The public might not know whether the bank was solvent. But it would know that its notes were genuine, and be suitably impressed. With luck, that esteem would migrate from the currency to the issuer. And all would be well. Consider matters from the bankers' point of view. At any given time during the decades between 1820 and 1860, there were hundreds if not thousands of banks in existence, hundreds if not thousands of issuers of currency. All of the notes of all of the banks were, in a sense, in competition with each other: which notes were genuine, which counterfeit, which banks were trustworthy, which not? Anything which gave an edge to the products of one institution over those of another was worth considering; and beautiful, innovative printing, eventually featuring increasingly elaborate and large vignettes, in more colors than the simple black used by Jacob Perkins and his early successors, was definitely worth a second look. This is not the place to give a detailed history of printing innovation, but a few remarks are appropriate, because the whole notion of technological trustworthiness meant a great deal to the bankers of the Distant Country and to those whom they served. You already will have noticed that vignettes became larger and more ornate over time. By the 1840s, a second color was coming to play a role on the private notes. It began as what the age called a "protector"—a bar of color, or a word expressing the denomination, which was strategically placed over the lower-center portion of the face design, making it difficult to alter the note's value upward. Within a few years, that second color—green, red, orange, or blue were most popular—was spreading across the entire face of the note, becoming an integral part of the design. It greatly added to the note's attractiveness, to the prestige of its issuer. It also made life more difficult for the forger, and the public knew it. BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country All well and good: but was there anything more which the printers and engravers could accomplish on the bankers' behalf? There was: they could produce notes which had printing on backs as well as faces (particularly popular for banks in parts of the Midwest and South: those areas were shorter of specie than other parts of the country, hence more dependent on genuine currency and vulnerable to bad). And they could resort to ingenuity with face colors and how they were used—at least in the case of small runs, where the difficulties of experimentation were outweighed by the prestige and trust which might be generated. In 1861, an institution calling itself the Mercantile Bank opened its doors in the nation's capital. To this day, we are not certain whether it was a legitimate operation or a simple scam. But the bankers manifestly wanted their organization, and its products, to inspire trust, to be taken seriously. And so they apparently asked their printers (a small, new firm which had recently opened on Wall Street, in New York City) to create a "look" which no one else had. The New York Bank Note Company obliged, and what resulted were multicolor notes (8-20)—not especially attractive, but certainly distinctive.
8-20: Washington, DC, Mercantile Bank, 1 dollar, 1861
The bank only issued ones, twos, and fives, and each of them had a color gradation, running from red at the left, to black at the center, to green at the right. I have done a bit of intaglio printing myself, including the printing of different colors with a single pass through the press; and I can tell you that this is not the way to produce a large volume of notes in a short amount of time. But it does produce an impressive result, and this was what the managers of the Mercantile Bank were after, whatever their reasons. And if you consider the central vignette on their dollar bill, your will see another concern uppermost in the minds of most who resided in the Distant Country: they were fixated on speed, movement, Progress, as they saw it. And what better image to summarize it all than the train? If you want to see what a train looked like in 1855, consult a daguerreotype. But if you want to see what one meant, look at a piece of currency. You'll see more than you anticipated.
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Pictures From A Distant Country CHAPTER 9 Progress If the twentieth century was the Age of the Automobile, the nineteenth century was the Age of the Train. In both cases, there was the perception of something special about what was, at bottom, simply a means of getting people and products from one place to another. For twentieth-century Americans, the automobile acquired an entire battery of associations, social, political, economic, even sexual, which had nothing to do with the conveyance itself, at least in its original guise. What greater significance did the train hold for nineteenth-century Americans? For them, it meant freedom and choice of movement. Rail travelers were not confined to the course of a river for their route; nor need they spend millions constructing a canal. Railroads could go virtually anywhere, and they cost far less to build than did artificial waterways—at least until the mountain ranges of the Far West were encountered. For nineteenth-century Americans, the train also meant celerity of movement. The most rapid locomotion you could hope for on foot was a few miles per hour. Add a horse, and you might double that rate, but no more. But inject a train into the equation, even an early one, and you were suddenly bowling along at twenty-five or thirty miles per hour. Learned treatises were written in the early days about the possible dire effects of such rapid travel on the human anatomy; the concern was genuine. Above all else, trains and travel by rail (and more generally by steam) meant Progress to the citizens of a Distant Country. Look at it from their point of view: for as long as humankind had walked the earth, it had done just that, walked it, or ridden it upon the back of an animal which was scarcely faster than itself. Now, for the first time, the equation had changed—and the entire potential of human life had both accelerated and broadened. And all this had come about at a time when the productive capacities of humankind had expanded as well, with factories, the beginnings of scientific farming, labor-saving inventions. If not Progress, what would you have called it? The train caught America's imagination very early. The first depiction of the new invention on a bank note (which is as good a way as any of recording popular history, and better than most) took place in 1831 (9-1). The year 1831: there could not have been more than a half-dozen trains in the entire Republic at that time. And yet here one is, happily chugging its way into the popular consciousness, all the while occupying a space of less than one square inch. For its size, it was perhaps the most important vignette ever to appear on an American private note.
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9-1: Port Deposit, MD, Susquehanna Bridge & Bank Company, 10 dollars, 1831
The new conveyance retained its hold on the popular imagination through the lifetime of the private note, and well beyond. We can document the story of the train's improvement and final perfection on the money, from a primitive but evocative view on a Georgia proof from the middle 1840s (9-2) through a slightly earlier but altogether more finished vignette on a bill from New York (9-3), to far more majestic renditions on notes from Michigan and New Jersey—with or without cowcatchers, as preferred. (9-4, 9-5). And a note from Cuba, New York neatly encapsulates the railroad experience for the average person: one of pleasant anticipation, either waiting to ascend or waiting for relatives and friends to descend (9-6).
9-2: Savannah, GA, Central Rail Road and Banking Company, 1 dollar, c. 1844 (proof)
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9-3: New York, NY, North River Banking Company, 100 dollars, 1840
9-4: Adrian, MI, Adrian Insurance Company, 3 dollars, c. 1853 (unissued)
9-5: Burlington, NJ, Burlington Bank, 50 dollars, 1855 (proof)
9-6: Cuba, NY, Cuba Bank, 2 dollars, 1855 (proof)
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Pictures From A Distant Country This leads us to an examination of what the train did, in the eyes of the average person a century and a half ago; what were railroads for? They were certainly for transporting bulk goods from one place to another. A Springfield, Illinois note from the mid-1830s clearly illustrated this usage: along with carriage-loads of passengers (who got relegated to second-class status, behind the freight), this train carried cotton, from a Southern plantation to a Northern mill (9-7). A later, far more elaborate vignette from Plattsburgh, New York emphasized the connection between rail transportation and heavy industry (9-8), but a much earlier bill, again prepared at the behest of bankers in Springfield, Illinois, said much more: the train is conveyer of all good things, sponsor of Industry and Agriculture (9-9).
9-7: Springfield, IL, State Bank of Illinios, 5 dollars, c. 1835 (unissued)
9-8: Plattsburgh, NY, Mercantile Bank of Plattsburgh, 10 dollars, c. 1856 (proof)
9-9: Springfield, IL, State Bank of Illinois, 10 dollars, c. 1835 (unissued)
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There is a tremendous enthusiasm which the people of the Distant Country attached to trains—an enthusiasm related to but not contained by what the train could do for them. The best word to describe their feelings might be admiration. People admired the railroad; they were glad it was there, excited by its presence. We see these positive feelings as early as the 1830s: on a three-dollar bill from Albany, New York, a gentleman is pointing out a train's finer features to a female companion (9-10). A decade or two later, a similar note is struck on a five-dollar bill from Newburgh, New York (9-11): two men wave as a locomotive hurtles by. But the best view of all occurred on a note from the Erie and Kalamazoo Rail Road Bank, of Adrian, Michigan—a view which was extremely popular, and replicated elsewhere because of the deep chord it struck (9-12).
9-10: Albany, NY, Mechanics and Traders Bank, 3 dollars, 1838
9-11: Newburgh, NY, Quassaick Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1852 (proof)
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9-12: Adrian, MI, Erie and Kalamazoo Rail Road Bank, 10 dollars, 1854
A group of people has gathered to watch for the appearance of a passenger train. And here it comes! A child waves, as do two seated young men. A frontiersman strikes a jaunty pose and salutes the engineer. The engineer slows his engine for dramatic effect, nodding toward his audience. Here is what Progress, and hope, and feeling good about the world and one's place in it, were all about in an earlier time. Nothing matched the train in the popular imagination, but the steamboat came close. Like the train, the image of the steam-powered boat excited and seduced: accordingly, it came to our private currency early and stayed late—through the life of the medium, in fact. The earliest representation I have traced thus far dates from 1815, less than a decade after Fulton's epochal voyage (9-13). Fascination with the new mode of transport increased over the next several decades, and steamboats appeared anywhere and everywhere on the bank notes of the day, from a tiny view reminiscent of the earliest train vignette (on a three-dollar bill of 1825—payable at the Fulton Bank, appropriately enough [9-14]), to one from the mid-thirties, with one onlooker pointing out the glorious new invention to another—just as we saw with several of the train vignettes (9-15), to views from the late 1850s and early 1860s—riverboats in Alabama (9-16), a lake steamer in Michigan (9-17).
9-13: Cincinnati, OH, Farmers & Mechanics Bank of Cincinnati, 3 dollars, 1815
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9-14: Derby, CT, Derby Bank, 3 dollars, 1825
9-15: Apalachocola, FL, Commercial Bank of Florida, 5 dollars, 1835
9-16: Selma, AL, Bank of Selma, 5 dollars, 1862
9-17: Detroit, MI, State Bank of Michigan, 5 dollars, c. 1859 (unissued)
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As with the train, the steamboat was associated with benefits, with the good things of life. It carried goods from one place to another, of course, carried them with economy and style. There are hundreds of vignettes proving just that point, with boats laden with any product you can imagine. In time, they would be equated with Commerce itself, as on a view from Perth Amboy, featuring a seated woman with barrels and bales, a beneficent steamer hovering to her right, a sailing ship to her left (9-18). In time, steamboats were associated with the most important kind of commerce of all, the exchange of ideas: a United States Mail boat was depicted on a New York note around 1855 (9-19).
9-18: Perth Amboy, NJ, City Bank of Perth Amboy, 2 dollars, 1856 (proof)
9-19: New York, NY, North River Bank in the City of New York, 100 dollars, c. 1855 (proof)
As with the train, there was an exuberance associated with the steam-powered boat, an admiration of it. People were excited by the possibilities it offered, the cachet it brought, the good times it promised. They were proud and happy to be sailing on steamboats across America's spacious lakes, up and down her broad rivers. Something of the exuberance which the vessels inspired is seen on a dollar bill from Memphis, Tennessee, dated 1856 (9-20). Look closely at the people, especially those who have disregarded all safety precautions and have clambered on top: they are exultant, waving at unseen mortals on the bank unfortunate enough to be land-bound on a beautiful day, BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country probably yelling themselves hoarse on general principle. That's what steamboats meant, in the Distant Country. They meant movement: and movement trumped everything else as a matter of course.
9-20: Memphis, TN, Citizens Bank of Nashville & Memphis, 1 dollar, 1856
Movement! Based upon the scenes on their money, this was the most footloose generation of people this country or any country ever saw. Beyond boating vignettes such as the one we just saw, every other form of conveyance was depicted, and celebrated. A very early view of a train from Michigan (9-21) has its passengers gravely seated, facing backward, watching the landscape slip away—and remarking to themselves or their companions, "Now, this is the way to travel, don't you think?" The dramatic impact of the scene is somewhat diminished by its placement on the right end of the note, at right angles to the rest of the note.
9-21: Ann Arbor, MI, Bank of Washtenaw, 1 dollar, 1836
Oftentimes more than one sort of movement was crowded into the same vignette. This practice became quite popular during the middle and final phases of the private note. There is an early instance of it on an Ohio dollar bill from the late 1830s (9-22): people on a towboat heading in one direction watch as one of the newfangled steamers chugs toward them from another; and for good measure, a train makes its way along the opposite bank.
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9-22: Manhattan, OH, Manhattan Bank, 1 dollar, 1839
The simplest water conveyance was a raft, and there are several marvelous images of this mode of travel and the people who favored it. I show two, both from banks doing business in Savannah, Georgia, both circulated in the war year of 1861. The first shows a family of rafters, about to welcome a visitor who has just arrived in a rowboat (9-23). The second shows a jolly scene: while three men man the sweeps, a fourth plays a fiddle to lighten the work, and a fifth dances to the fiddle's tune (9-24). This scene was especially appropriate, given the business of the bank. That institution catered to lumbermen, and the easiest way of getting what you'd cut from one place to another was to float it, and live on the lumber as you took it to market.
9-23: Savannah, GA, Bank of Commerce, 20 dollars, 1861
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9-24: Savannah, GA, Timber Cutter’s Bank, 5 dollars, 1861
Movement everywhere, equated with the good life, with freedom, with progress. One of my favorite "mixed" images appears on a dollar bill from Toms River, New Jersey, printed in 1857. The vignette is small, but the scene is incredibly dense, approaching a glorious pandemonium (9-25). A coach bowls along, but a solitary rider threatens to cut across its path. Meanwhile, a stagecoach's progress has been arrested by a harried shepherd, whose flock is showing the dumb intransigence common to sheep. A wagon-load of hay trundles along toward the top of the scene, with a covered wagon ahead of it, and a loaded dray ahead of it—all this movement, all those people, beasts, and goods, in a space at most an inch and a half square.
9-25: Toms River, NJ, Ocean County Bank, 1 dollar, 1857 (unissued)
This 1857 scene is reminiscent of a modern traffic jam, everybody trying to rapidly move at once, no one moving rapidly anywhere. But the participants were moving at a goodly clip all the same, and in a direction which most of them did not anticipate. They were moving out of one country, and into another.
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Pictures From A Distant Country CHAPTER 10 …An Age Now Ending Their exit from the Distant County, their entrance to a strange, new land (where we also live) was accelerated by the growing sectional tension of the fifties; but the expulsion would have taken place sooner or later anyway. There were too many factors in its favor: a new industrialism, new ways of working the land, new peoples on our doorstep, poised to enter. But sectionalism and the resulting war between brothers did speed things up. In the process of rapid and forced change, much would be gained—a single country, strengthened in time by a commonness of suffering, freedom for an entire people. But much would be lost too: to other casualties of the war, add the private bank note. On the part of some, there was an awareness that change was in the air, even before the appearance of its more blatant manifestations. Among the prescient were a few engravers and those for whom they worked; and their awareness of an age now ending found occasional reflection on the money they created and circulated. They celebrated an American archetype, the frontiersman, just as the open land was closing around him, just as his justification for existence was slipping away. Except for an occasional vignette of Daniel Boone (10-1), the frontiersman had never attracted much attention before; that he did so now, at a time when he was becoming a rarity, was hardly a coincidence. People felt impending change, a nostalgia for someone who had not previously engaged their attention or affection.
10-1: Glen’s Falls, NY, Glen’s Falls Bank, 2 dollars, 1851 (proof)
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Pictures From A Distant Country They felt admiration, too: they saw this person as a self-sufficient individual, ready for anything, whether preparing to defend himself and his game from poachers (10-2), or simply finding water (10-3) or building a fire (10-4) in the middle of nowhere. All the same, the frontiersman was in danger of becoming a prop, in danger of suffering the same treatment as that meted out to his Native American adversary: I suspect that he exists on a New York City hundred-dollar bill (10-5) only to fill the space created by the ornate Roman numeral of the denomination!
10-2: Catasaqua, PA, Bank of Catasaqua, 50 dollars, c. 1857 (proof)
10-3: Tekama, NE, Bank of Tekama in Burt County, 1 dollar, 1857
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10-4: New Orleans, LA, Citizens’ Bank of Louisiana, 3 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued)
10-5: New York, NY, Nassau Bank, 100 dollars, c. 1855 (proof)
The engravers and bankers also celebrated the villages and towns from whence they came, places increasingly found on no map save that of memory. A five-dollar bill from New York City presented a scene from the end of the seventeenth century, when the city was a village, known as New Amsterdam rather than New York (10-6). A bill from Albany showed what the New York state capital looked like in 1800, with the added caption "Albany 1800" so that everyone got the point (10-7). Most issues from the City BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country Bank of New Haven, Connecticut carried a peaceful scene of New Haven Green (10-8) as their central vignette, while the people at the Holyoke Bank in adjoining Massachusetts featured another village green on their paper, which, confusingly, was issued from Northampton, not Holyoke (10-9). And a bank in Brighton, Massachusetts (nowadays a part of Greater Boston) went everybody one better with a panoramic view of its green, buildings to either side, church behind, and a livestock market in the center (10-10).
10-6: New York, NY, Knickerbocker Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1854 (proof)
10-7: Albany, NY, Union Bank of Albany, 2 dollars, 1859 (counterfeit)
10-8: New Haven, CT, City Bank of New Haven, 1 dollar, 1865
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10-9: Northhampton, MA, Holyoke Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1861 (unissued)
10-10: Brighton, MA, Bank of Brighton, 20 dollars, 1851
The engravers and bankers celebrated a Peaceable Kingdom—a place so evanescent that it could never have endured (had it existed at all, which it did not: we are speaking of the perceptions which people chose to have, rather than the realities they were forced to accept). The money from the middle and especially later years of the private banking period is replete with images from the Peaceable Kingdom, images of repose and reflection, of plenitude—images that are bittersweet to us, because we know what was in store for those who saw the images when they were new. Simple scenes: a husband and wife watching harvesters in Virginia (10-11), a man with his dog on a note from western New York (10-12), a mother teaching her daughter to fish on a five-dollar bill from Front Royal, Virginia (10-13), the glorious liberty of doing nothing, which blesses a daydreaming farm boy in Ohio (10-14), a sleeping child in New York (10-15).
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10-11: Winchester, VA, Bank of the Valley in Virginia, 50 dollars, 1856
10-12: Geneseo, NY, Genesee Valley Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1855 (proof)
10-13: Front Royal, VA, Bank of Manassa, 5 dollars, 1859
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10-14: Kirtland, OH, Kirtland Safety Society, 10 dollars, 1837
10-15: New York, NY, Clinton Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1844 (proof)
Some of the vignettes are a bit more elaborate. One family shares a lunch on a five-dollar bill from Tennessee (10-16), while the members of another family take a break during a harvest in Vermont (10-17). And a note from Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania (1018) has something for everyone: at the right, a young boy chats with his grandfather, while a man at the center (the boy's father?) looks on, captured in a rare moment of repose. And to his right, a seated Ceres blesses the scene. But look behind her, and to her left.
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10-16: Lawrenceburg, TN, Lawrenceburg Bank of Tennessee, 5 dollars, c. 1857 (unissued)
10-17: Montpelier, VT, Vermont Bank, 5 dollars, 1849
10-18: Hollidaysburg, PA, Central Bank of Pennsylvania, 5 dollars, 1859
That diminutive train might have stood for Progress—we saw a number of its fellows in the preceding chapter. But the problem with Progress is that it changes things, and not always for the better. The more reflective inhabitants of the Distant Country were aware of this fact, aware that they were living in an age that was becoming as alien to them as their age is to us.
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Pictures From A Distant Country I cannot state with certainty what went on in the minds of men and women dead for a century and more. And I do not wish to belabor what I think I see, for it is subtle, threatening to vanish under excessive scrutiny. So I shall simply present a series of vignettes, which appear to me to share a common theme of change, movement, and loss—scenes of an age now ending. But you will draw your own conclusions. It seems to me that these vignettes fall into several large categories. First, there are scenes wherein the Future collides with Tradition, and does so in an inappropriate, even threatening way. Two women, one with a spinning wheel and the other with a distaff, work at tasks that have been their lot for a thousand years; in the distance, a train rumbles by on an elevated bridge (10-19). The juxtaposition is a bit jarring, to my eyes at least. On a threedollar bill from Mount Holly, New Jersey (10-20), the collision is more palpable: horses are frightened by the noise, speed, and smoke of a train. Would it be too much to suggest that the horses represent old ways and the train new ones?
10-19: Winchester, VA, Bank of Winchester, 50 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued)
10-20: Mount Holly, NJ, Farmers Bank of New Jersey, 3 dollars, c. 1852 (proof)
The collision may be far more subtle—barely there, unless you know where to look. A Connecticut two-dollar note of 1860 features a covered wagon as the central vignette (10-21); the traditional ways of moving people and goods still hold. Or do they? BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country A train in front and a steamboat behind suggest that the central conveyance is a bit outdated: why would someone want to travel in that fashion anymore? An Illinois dollar from the 1850s presents the discontinuity in an even subtler fashion (10-22). A woman draws water from a well. Her costume and the well itself are timeless. But unnoticed on the river below, a steamboat glides by: intrusion of a new age on the old. The scene on another dollar, this time from Cherry Valley, New York, favors the same kind of composition, leading to the same conclusion (10-23).
10-21: East Haddam, CT, Bank of New England, 2 dollars, 1860
10-22: Springfield, IL, Clark’s Exchange Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1852 (proof)
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10-23: Cherry Valley, NY, Central Bank of Cherry Valley, 1 dollar, c. 1842 (proof)
The collision may in fact be a competition, in which new ways win out over old ones. A fairly early example of this approach is seen on a five-dollar bill from Richmond, Virginia (1 0 - 2 4 ). A canal boat and a train are both heading for the same destination—and there is absolutely no question about which will win. A somewhat similar, more elaborate scene graced an Indiana note from 1854 (10-25). One might observe that the issuer was a railroad and was naturally predisposed toward its mode of transportation. And yet, while the canal boat is indeed closer to us and hence larger, there is no question as to which mode of transport commands people's attention.
10-24: Richmond, VA, James River and Kanawha Company, 5 dollars, c. 1840 (unissued)
10-25: Muncie, IN, fort Wayne & Southern Rail Road Company, 3 dollars, 1854
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A similar competition took place on the water, between traditional boats and new, stream-powered ones. The Bank of Chippeway illustrated the fact as early as 1838: here we see an early steamboat which literally leaves its sail-powered competition far behind. In fact, there is no contest at all (10-26). And fifteen years later, the Empire City Bank presented the same competition, with the same results (10-27). Sail yielding place to steam: an age in transition, neither one thing nor the other; not just yet. But there is a final image, and it, I think, neatly sums up what we have been discussing, and how the transition was likely to turn out.
10-26: Sault De Saint Marys, MI, Bank of Chippeway, 5 dollars, 1838
10-27: New York, NY, Empire City Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1852 (proof)
We find it on a ten-dollar bill from the Buffalo City Bank (10-28). The bank was established in 1853, and the vignette was probably created that same year. The scene occupies less than two square inches, and you will have to look closely to see what it contains; but it will be worth the effort.
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10-28: Buffalo, NY, Buffalo City Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1853 (proof)
Two men and their team are hauling hay. They have paused by the edge of a lake. A village is seen in the distance, its church spires clearly visible against a backdrop of hills. But the central focus of the vignette is neither the men, their horses and wagon, nor the dreaming village by the lake. Rather, it is a viaduct crossing that lake, upon which we see a train passing to the right, under full steam. It is leaving or bypassing the village, and the onlookers. It is leaving all that they symbolize. It is leaving the Distant Country.
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Pictures From A Distant Country CHAPTER 11: EPILOGUE ...And Then What Happened? In 1860, the private bank note was the dominant form of money in America. By 1865, it had nearly passed from the scene, a discredited reminder of impossibly distant times. What had happened? A war had happened: what many had been predicting for decades finally came rumbling and flashing into life in the spring of 1861. Whether anyone wanted it or not, the issues of the relationship of the sections to each other, and of the races to each other, were going to be resolved. And if the method of resolution was through violence, there was no help for it. As we have seen, America's paper money chronicled the march toward disunion. Now it would chronicle its own demise. There were many casualties of the Civil War. Some were well-known, beginning with a president, Abraham Lincoln. But there were others which went unrecognized both then and later. One was the money which had built and sustained the Distant Country. This was appropriate, for the Distant Country itself was another. The story of the war years is incredibly dense. At bottom, the conflict increased the need for private paper money on local, state, and national levels. The visual content of this money frequently spoke to the larger events—although not in ways which we might always anticipate. But the most important element in the story was not the money's visual content but the fact that, North and South, private currency proved inadequate to the occasion. From that flowed everything else, including the death of a medium. What happened in the 1860s was the precise opposite to what had taken place in the 1770s and 1780s. During that earlier period, the inadequacy of public currency inspired private currency. Now the inadequacy of private currency led to the reintroduction of public currency, and to the demise of private currency. In both eras, the root problem was the same. A conflict began which everyone assumed would be of short duration, which could therefore be financed on the cheap, financed in traditional ways, with traditional monetary forms. But when the fighting went on for far longer than anyone had anticipated (and showed no signs of ever winding down), the people were caught flat-footed. How on earth did one pay for a war like that? One began by tried-and-true methods and hoped for the best. Northern banks continued to circulate currency, and Northern mints continued to strike coins (which were hoarded as soon as they appeared, due to the uncertainty of the times). Southern banks continued to circulate currency too, although the story was rather more complex Down South than it was Up North. In part this was because of the location of security printers: with scarcely an exception, all of the printers who had traditionally supplied Southern banks with their currency were Northern concerns, centered in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Even had they wished to continue the connection with their Southern clients (and there is evidence of a cheery non-sectionalism on the part of several of the firms), the increasing rigidity of the frontier between the sections would and did render such commerce difficult and finally impossible. BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country What would Southern banks do? It depended on the bank. Some increased their purchases from the printers as it became apparent that trouble was on the way (as was certainly clear, after the spring of 1860), then carefully doled out their currency, making it last as long as possible. Others quit issuing paper money, becoming more like the banks we know today. Others still continued to circulate paper, adapting several ingenious stratagems in the process. Banks in Virginia and South Carolina resurrected printing plates from earlier eras and recycled them to meet the current emergency. The results might be less than impressive (especially as the plates had rusted in the damp Southeastern climate, leaving telltale blotches or weak spots on the paper they produced; 11-1), but money with blemishes was better than no money at all.
11-1: Charleston, SC, Bank of the State of South Carolina, 1 dollar, 1862
Other banks turned to other, simpler technologies for the currency they needed. Intaglio work was safest, but all the intaglio printers were in enemy territory. Very well: go with something slightly more risky, but homegrown. And if that failed, go with something very risky, and hope for the best. The lithographic process had been invented at the close of the eighteenth century. It had never been widely used to print money before, North or South, because the line of color it created was altogether more soft and more subtle than the hard and precise line wanted for security printing. But lithography was well within the technological capabilities of the wartime South, and it saw widespread usage for private currency there during the first years of the conflict. For those unable to afford lithography, the ordinary back-country print shop would have to do. There were hundreds of job printers from Virginia to Texas, producing handbills, advertisements, broadsides, and almanacs. Now they would be asked to produce money as well. The next few illustrations will show you what was happening. Most lithographers were of German extraction, a number of them having fled Central Europe after the failed Revolutions of 1848. The principals of the Richmond firm Hoyer & Ludwig fell into this category. Before the war, they had printed stock certificates, sheet music, and the like. Now they printed money—and they soon found themselves out of their depths. Their five-dollar bill for the Bank of Richmond (11-2) was one of their best pieces of work. It was BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country a collection of images lifted from prewar, intaglio notes, translated to the lithographer's stone for a new issue. Hoyer & Ludwig printed for everybody during the first year or two—including the Virginia Central Rail Road, whose ten-dollar bill featured another recycled image, this time of a train under full steam (11-3). The train made a final appearance when the lithographers put it on hundred-dollar bills they prepared for the Confederacy in the spring of 1862. But by that time, Hoyer & Ludwig was falling from favor: the firm was not particularly gifted at what it did, and more skilled players were only too ready to take its place. Its most successful successor was Keatinge & Ball, of Columbia, South Carolina. This organization did excellent work, printing notes for a number of the new "savings banks" (11-4) which sprang up during the war; it also produced most Confederate currency during the last three years of the conflict.
11-2: Richmond, VA, Bank of Richmond, 5 dollars, 1861
11-3: Richmond, VA, Virginia Central Rail Road Company, 10 dollars, 1861
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11-4: Atlanta, GA, Mechanics Savings Bank, 5 dollars, 1863
For those unable to afford the cost of lithography, for those located in out-of-theway places where no lithographer had ever ventured, there was typeset printing. You would tell your local printer what you wanted, and he would do his best to oblige. He would try to use odd or unusual bits of type, things which would, hopefully, be unavailable to those with felonious intentions. An 1862 note from the Danville Savings Bank (11-5) is a fairly typical member of the typeset genre. Note that its denomination is fifty cents: by the time this note was circulated, the South was essentially bereft of metallic small change and depended on paper for that purpose too (until wartime inflation made such fractional notes impractical, then valueless). The Bank of Roxboro's five-dollar bill (11-6) is another typical typeset note, and it carries a note of poignancy which was present if unstated on all of this emergency currency. If you look closely at the right-hand margin, you will see that this crude printing was A TEMPORARY ISSUE UNTIL A PLATE CAN BE HAD. In other words, this money was a stand-in for the real thing. I wonder if the bankers ever got their plate, or money printed from it...
11-5: Danville, VA, Danville Savings Bank, 50 cents, 1862
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11-6: Roxboro, NC, Bank of Roxboro, 5 dollars, 1861
Lithographed and typeset notes alike recycled images from earlier notes. I suspect that one reason they did so was because of the comforting familiarity such vignettes engendered—with a correspondingly greater chance of public acceptance of a new money with old imagery. But another reason for recycling went deeper: it was easier to copy than to create. The results were interesting. An image created for an 1857 two-dollar bill from Morgan, Georgia (see 3-7) reappeared on a fifty-cent note from Winchester, Virginia four years later (11-7), while a seated sailor, who had earlier figured on a number of currency issues along the Eastern Seaboard, now wound up high—and dry—on a two-dollar bill from the mountain country of Virginia (11-8). Both of these wartime notes were typeset, but a similar recycling can be observed among their lithographed counterparts—especially those produced by Hoyer & Ludwig. Other images were created for the occasion, as the one of blacksmiths on a dollar bill from the Appomattox Savings Bank (11-9). This note dates from the early fall of 1861. Part of its name would acquire a permanent place in the national memory a few years later.
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11-7: Winchester, VA, Corporation of Winchester, 50 cents, 1861
11-8: Lynchburg, VA, Merchants Bank of Virginia, 2 dollars, 1861 (unissued)
11-9: Pamplin’s Depot, VA, Appomattox Savings Bank at Pamplin’s Depot, 1 dollar, 1861
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Pictures From A Distant Country According to the tenets of the times, this war was a struggle for independence by the Southern section. Did the currency reflect this in its choice of images? It did, but only to a degree. That is, the Commercial Bank of Richmond might commission a splendid image of a Confederate soldier with battle flag, defending Southern Womanhood from Yankee depredations (11-10). But it took time to create new images, and time was precisely what Southern bankers and their customers did not have. Some patriotic images were indeed created and disseminated, the best through lithography and the rest through typeset printing; but if you really wanted inspiring images, scenes of Southern heroes, heroines, and heroism, you would do well to look at the public sector, to the currency of the insurgent states and the Southern Confederacy. The private sector had enough on its hands as it was.
11-10: Richmond, VA, Commercial Bank, 1 dollar, 1862
As the months wore on, the Southern situation worsened. The Yankee blockade had been risible early on; within a year it was beginning to pinch here and there; and it was becoming increasingly difficult to acquire paper and ink, the raw materials necessary to create paper money. Shortages forced people to print smaller notes, to print them on the backs of other, unissued notes, and to devise ingenious substitutes for printer's ink. They used berry juice to print the backs of an issue of North Carolina currency in the fall of 1861. They found that it soon washed off, which was why no one had used it before. And across the South, many of those whose expertise might have created better currency and more of it volunteered for military service or found themselves drafted—taking BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country manpower from one critical area and transferring it to another, even more critical for Southern independence. The story was somewhat different in the North. There, bankers and other members of the private sector could more easily obtain patriotic images if they were willing to pay the price. Banks could have engravings; for humbler merchants, there was lithographic and typeset imagery—and it was all easier to come by than it was in the Confederacy. The Merchants' Bank of Trenton, New Jersey was an early disseminator of patriotic images. Its president evidently decided that it would be an excellent idea to put Northern leaders on its notes. Accordingly, its two-dollar bill, issued in the autumn of the war's first year, showed a glowering portrait of the North's first military leader—Winfield Scott, whose prescience about how to win this conflict long outlived his actual participation in it (11-11). The Merchants' Bank's companion note for a dollar (11-12) depicted the new president, Abraham Lincoln, sporting his new beard. It is perhaps significant that the military leader occupied a more central position than his civilian superior: people had confidence in General Scott, but they hadn't yet made up their minds about President Lincoln.
11-11: Trenton, NJ, Merchants’ Bank, 2 dollars, 1861 (unissued)
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11-12: Trenton, NJ, Merchants’ Bank, 1 dollar, 1861 (unissued)
Such images as these were matched by more overtly patriotic scenes, rendered in intaglio and humbler media as well. The Borough of Williamsport, Pennsylvania packed an incredible amount of imagery onto a note worth a dime (11-13). The bill's designers harked back to an earlier time of troubles and triumph for their themes: we see a soldier of the Revolutionary War at left, taking on all comers, while a young drummer beats a tattoo at the right. We might have anticipated an eagle of some sort at the center, but this bird is especially magnificent.
11-13: Williamsport, PA, Borought of Williamsport, 10 cents, 1863
This particular note (and we call such public and private issues in denominations less than a dollar scrip: they had come about during several earlier times of emergency, when normal money was scarce; but the Civil War would be their last hurrah until the Great Depression) was printed by the intaglio method. This suggests that the Northern security printers had perfected their craft: anyone who could put that much work into a note worth a dime and still turn a profit must be very good indeed. All the same, for those with more modest means or more modest intentions, lithography and typeset printing offered viable alternatives. Both methods offered a choice of imagery, and in many cases BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country a patriotic allegory or scene was chosen. Mr. Sherwood's note for fifteen cents is a typical lithographed product—American eagle above, arms of Pennsylvania beneath (11-14). It was printed in Lower Manhattan, then the center of the lithography trade, by Ferdinand Mayer. Mr. Mayer had fled the Fatherland after the unpleasantness of 1848, had set up shop in New York City, had printed music, maps, and the like—and was now doing a land-office business printing scrip for jittery merchants across the North. Nathan Shafer's three-cent note is a reasonably typical member of the typeset genre—although its exuberant profusion of lobsters, crabs, and clams is a trifle hard to explain on a note from eastern Pennsylvania (11-15). Perhaps Mr. Shafer sold seafood, or wanted to.
11-14: Pittston, PA, C. Sherwood, 15 cents, 1863
11-15: Allentown, PA, Nathan Shafer, 3 cents, 1863
The denominations of Messrs. Sherwood's and Shafer's currency may strike us as bizarre. They would not have seemed so to the inhabitants of the Distant Country. Indeed, there was a three-cent coin in those days—or at least there was during normal times. You could purchase a first-class postage stamp with it, and that was why the Mint struck it (and a three-dollar companion, with which you could purchase a whole sheet of first-class postage stamps: the bureaucratic mind is an eternal thing). A three-cent note made sense in the absence of the three-cent silver coin, and a fifteen-cent note equaled five of the absent coins, would purchase five stamps if you wished. BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country The thing that most surprises me about Northern wartime currency images is how few of them made direct or even indirect reference to what was taking place. There are a few images of Union soldiers at rest (11-16)—but I have never seen one of Union soldiers in action. Perhaps such scenes would have been altogether too graphic for a time which still considered itself genteel, regardless of the slaughter taking place. There is a bewhiskered Union general or two—or four, in the case of a dollar bill from Norristown, Pennsylvania (11-17), which appeared within a few months of the end of the conflict. All of them were loyal sons of Pennsylvania, and that merited their inclusion on the note. But a tiny oval portrait of George Washington at bottom-center suggests the standard by which they must be judged; and George Washington, and a complex set of images which we have seen throughout the course of our travels, would continue to dominate Northern bank notes, regardless of current events and concerns. I suspect people wanted it that way; and it was obviously cheaper to stay with old images than pay for new ones.
11-16: Oil City, PA, Oil City Bank, 5 dollars, 1864
11-17: Norristown, PA, Bank of Montgomery County, 1 dollar, 1865
But there were new images all the same, North and South, for there was a new kind of currency, North and South. Disillusionment with public currency had led to private notes; desperation in the face of the inadequacy of private currency would force
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Pictures From A Distant Country the reintroduction of public notes. And America took a step out of the Distant Country, a step into our own. The South had the easier time of it. South Carolina seceded in December 1860. Ten more slave states followed her during the first few months of 1861. When these political entities severed their connections with the government in Washington, they also ended their obligation to abide by the provisions of the federal compact of 1787—the United States Constitution. That was how the argument went. The section might keep those provisions of the Constitution it liked (and when the Confederacy got around to composing its new basic law, it in fact retained most of the provisions of the old). There were exceptions, of course. One was the treatment of the entire slavery issue, which was a good deal more favorable to the "Peculiar Institution" than the 1787 arrangement had dared to be. And another was the provision about paper money. In 1787, the states had had the right to issue currency taken away from them. In 1861, they got it back, with a vengeance. And so did the new national government—the Confederate States of America. This restoration was inevitable. If the Southern states were once again sovereign entities (which they said they were), and if the issue of money was an attribute of sovereignty (which no less an authority than Thomas Jefferson had said it was), then Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, and all the others had the right to circulate any kind of exchange media they desired. And so did their new national association. It was also inevitable that the kind of money circulated by Southern state and federal entities would be paper money. The section was accustomed to it, was dependent upon it, and had no real alternative to it. It takes time and technology to make coins. It also takes raw materials. The South was sadly lacking in all three ingredients. But it could issue paper promises to pay, and it did so from the spring of 1861 to the spring of 1865. As the Southern States and the Southern Confederacy issued paper money, they were doing something more than paying for a war. They were accustoming their people to public rather than private paper money. In the process, they were weakening private currency's appeal. It will pay us to look at some of the images they put on this new money, because those images went through an interesting evolution from the beginning of the war to its end. In general, those of the states were slightly closer to what people had been accustomed to seeing on their prewar money. So Florida put a demure Ceres, a female Native American and a train under full steam on a two-dollar bill from 1863 (11-18), while the center and lower-left vignettes on a Mississippi twenty from that same year had graced normal, private notes a decade or so earlier (11-19). These notes were fairly attractive productions, and for good reason: the one from Florida was printed by the best of the lithographers, Keatinge & Ball, while the Mississippi note was a product of the American Bank Note Company, the premium printer of intaglio currency. Some of the other notes from both of these states and others were far less impressive, created in backcountry print shops under emergency conditions. Most of them continued to have some pictorial content until the very end, however: the Arkansas five-dollar bill appears to have
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Pictures From A Distant Country been printed from a woodcut, and it appeared exactly a month before the surrender at Appomattox (11-20).
11-18: State of Florida, 2 dollars, 1863
11-19: State of Mississippi, 20 dollars, 1863
11-20: State of Arkansas, 5 dollars, 1865
The images on many state issues were carried over from peacetime days. But not all: the money chronicled the growth of a local or sectional imagery as well, hinted at in the days leading up to the war, fully explored during the conflict. Thus, the gentleman at lower-right on the Mississippi note was Governor John J. Pettus, at the helm when his BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country state left the Union, while the emaciated person on the Arkansas five was Henry M. Rector, who served his state in the same capacity. The exploration of a distinctly Southern visual expression received its fullest treatment on currency circulated by the insurgent national government, the Confederate States of America. Confederate leaders wrung their hands at the prospect of launching a paper currency to fight a war for independence, one backed only by a patriotic belief in an eventual victory. They wrung their hands—and then launched it anyway. They had no choice: the banks couldn't supply all the money needed, nor could the individual states. That left the national government. (Up North, Abraham Lincoln came to the same conclusion and would respond in the same fashion once he got around the assumed strictures of the federal Constitution, which still ruled his actions, if not those of Jefferson Davis.) We are primarily interested in what the Confederacy chose to put on its currency, rather than the acts leading up to the medium's creation. That imagery did not spring to life in a single creative act; rather, it evolved over time, reflecting a growing national sentiment, a growing skill in creating and disseminating a particular way of looking at the world. The earliest Confederate notes were produced in the North, then sent South; the practice stopped when the Lincoln government announced its displeasure. This left the infant Confederacy in something of a quandary: where would it find a new printer? It found one in Richmond—Hoyer & Ludwig. The firm had never printed money before, and its products for the Confederacy and others showed its lack of experience, as we have already seen. Its work was crude, and the same vignettes or portraits had a depressing tendency to show up on all of its products, regardless of denomination, regardless of issuer. Its Confederate twenty-dollar bill of 1861 (11-21) may be taken as typical: the sailor at a capstan had shown up on an earlier five-dollar note for the same customer.
11-21: Confederate States of America, 20 dollars, 1861
It would be impossible to create a distinctly "Confederate" currency as long as Hoyer & Ludwig was entrusted with producing it. There was another problem too: the slender stock of artwork available to Hoyer & Ludwig was available to virtually any other lithographer, honest or not, for the portraits and scenes had been around for decades.
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Pictures From A Distant Country That made Hoyer & Ludwig products vulnerable to counterfeiting, which was something the struggling Confederacy could well do without. Another lithographer soon appeared upon the scene, one far more skilled at its craft, one willing to do the extra work to give Richmond the distinctly nationalistic, safer currency it required. This was Leggett, Keatinge & Ball. Mr. Leggett parted company with his partners early on, and for the final three years of the Confederacy, Keatinge & Ball would secure most of the contracts to prepare its money, that of several of the states—and that of a number of private banks as well. From the start, its products were an improvement on its predecessors'. They had less of the "cut-and-paste" appearance that had distinguished Hoyer & Ludwig's products. They were elegant, balanced, carefully finished. And when Keatinge & Ball addressed Richmond's desires for a national imagery (as it was beginning to do by the end of 1862), the result was a series of vibrant, occasionally masterful compositions. The firm's design for a hundred-dollar bill (11-22) was introduced late in 1862 and was retained for the rest of the war. It evinced a deep patriotism: Southern soldiers on guard at the left, Lucy Holcombe Pickens, high-spirited wife of the governor of South Carolina at center, and George W. Randolph, military hero, Secretary of War, diplomat at the right. The apotheosis of this sense of aspiring nationalism was achieved a couple of years later on Keatinge & Ball's five hundred-dollar note (11-23), which featured the Great Seal of the Confederacy (above which flew the national flag, garlanded with laurel) on the left, a sensitive portrait of Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson on the right. None of the products of the Lincoln, or Union, government came close to the quiet fervor of this design. But they had an importance far greater than anything the Confederacy ever produced, however beautiful. For the Northern currency (and the armies it drove, and the government which stood behind it) would win its war and in the process create a new, public currency with no room for private competition. The Northern response to Southern secession would bring a close to the private bank note era, and to this book.
11-22: Confederate States of America, 100 dollars, 1862
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11-23: Confederate States of America, 500 dollars, 1864
Abraham Lincoln did not start out with a fixed intention of eliminating private currency; nor did anyone in his government harbor such a desire. As with so much else in this war, events took on a life of their own, and new decisions and changes in course were created or conditioned by what had taken place last year, or last week. One could make an argument that that was one reason why Mr. Lincoln won his war and Mr. Davis lost his: Lincoln would switch directions until he found the right one—or at least one which moved him in the general direction he wanted to go. Davis would not or could not. So it was that Lincoln's people, having concluded that a national currency would indeed be required, lurched about until they found several possible solutions—and used them all. So it was that they took actions which ended private currency, having taken a previous series of expedients which left them with no other recourse. You will recall that the federal Constitution was silent on the matter of a national currency. Silence might imply consent—but the accumulated weight of three-quarters of a century implied the opposite. The Lincoln administration realized that it had a major problem on its hands and would have to issue paper money in pursuit of its solution. But how could it do that without further undermining public confidence? Consider its quandary: by the summer of 1861, eleven states had left the Union, more were poised to follow, the national capitol was surrounded on all sides by hostile or potentially hostile territory—and a recent battle in the Virginian countryside had led to a mass panic and a federal rout. What gave Mr. Lincoln the right to issue federal currency? What gave him the right to expect that anybody would accept it? The first question was easier to answer than the second. While there was no universal agreement that the federal government could circulate currency, there was a consensus that it could borrow money. Governments did that: it was one of their powers and reasons for being. And this allowed the Lincoln administration to tackle its problem not head-on, but from the side. What it did was this. It passed two laws on 17 July 1861 (just before the battle of Bull Run), and a third early the following month (a couple of weeks after the battle). The first law authorized it to borrow a quarter-billion dollars for the purposes of war; the second and third authorized it to turn a portion of the loan into a special type of war matériel—federal currency. Specifically, the Union government gave itself the right to create BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country sixty million dollars in five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar notes. The currency was payable in specie "on demand"; accordingly, they have been called demand notes ever since. They were made payable in silver coin at a very restricted number of places. They claim our attention for several reasons. First, they served notice that the federal government was back in the currency business—with uncertain times ahead for private competition. Second, they proved completely inadequate to the need, which meant that the federal government would follow them with other, larger issues. And third, they were pioneers of design: what was chosen for their artwork would have a tremendous impact on any and all future United States issues, simply because it was the first to appear. In this pioneering imagery, we see a deep-seated patriotism combined with a carry-over of some design elements from private, local notes. There was a very good reason for the continuity: lacking its own printery, the public power had to rely on the people creating the currency for the private banks—the American Bank Note Company and the National Bank Note Company. Those firms had "morgues" of earlier images, and there was a natural temptation for the printers, and the Union government they served, to cut corners to get the job done quickly, to get the new money into circulation in a timely fashion. (A federal printing establishment would be set up in the following year, 1862, but it would be two decades before it was fully up to the task facing it.) What images were on these pioneering notes? I spoke of a recycling, so it should come as no surprise that a "screaming eagle," originally created by Toppan, Carpenter & Company and then retained in stock when that firm joined the American Bank Note Company, appeared as the center vignette on the new federal ten-dollar bill (11-24). What does surprise us is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the same note. This bill was created during Lincoln's lifetime: wasn't that illegal? We don't usually do it anymore, but it was common practice at the time the note appeared—and we would see portraits of the archenemy Jefferson Davis if we looked at Confederate currency from the same period. Lincoln's portrait suggests the patriotic feeling of the early months of the war—a feeling that would diminish as war-weariness set in. But Lincoln would remain—and so would the stature of Freedom, which was about to be hoisted atop the Capitol Dome in Washington (11-25) on the five-dollar demand note and a marvelous America, complete with sword and national shield, on the twenty (11-26). Unlike the eagle, these latter images were created especially for the occasion.
11-24: United States of America, demand note, 10 dollars, 1861
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11-25: United States of America, demand note, 5 dollars, 1861
11-26: United States of America, demand note, 20 dollars, 1861 (proof)
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Pictures From A Distant Country Demand notes were issued between August 1861 and April 1862. By the latter date, the federal government had had a full year's worth of war—most of it spent bogged down in the mud of northern Virginia rather than fighting, but costing an astronomical amount of money nonetheless. The sixty million dollars created the summer before were a distant memory now, a drop in the bucket of what would be needed. That was clear to see: what was less clear was what the federal government was going to do about it. It concluded that paper money payable in specie on demand was simply impractical. The Union's two remaining mints (at Philadelphia and San Francisco; the other three were located in Southern territory) could not have created enough specie to redeem the millions of dollars of new demand notes, currency which would surely be presented for redemption as soon as it exited the printers. And even if the mints had miraculously managed to create all those new coins, they would simply disappear, go underground: by the beginning of 1862, people were becoming so jittery about the future that they were even hoarding cents, just in case. Beyond all that, there were insurmountable logistical problems: it was simply impossible to get Western silver and gold Back East quickly enough to turn it into coinage for war. By the winter of 1862, the Lincoln government had recognized the inevitable. It was ready to give paper currency another chance; but in recognition of the facts, it would change the nature of the paper it circulated. It would introduce the legal tender note. Legal tender notes were just that—"legal tender for all debts public and private.” They were not redeemable in specie. Indeed, they were not redeemable in anything—at least, not just now. But they were exchangeable for Union bonds paying six percent, redeemable in five years. That wasn't much, considering the way the war was going; but it was as much as the Northern government felt comfortable offering. Congress created this currency in several stages, as more and more of it was required. The first batch was authorized on 25 February 1862—some 150 million dollars' worth, which would bear an issue-date of 10 March 1862. By that summer, the entire 150 million dollars had been printed (by the two private firms mentioned earlier, which used many of the same designs) and issued, victory was more elusive than ever—and a second Act was passed (the first one had said there would never be a second Act), authorizing another 150 million dollars in demand notes. A third Act was passed in March 1863, authorizing a third issue for the same amount. But this Act remained unfulfilled through the remainder of the war: Lincoln's people had meanwhile overhauled the archaic tax system and were now getting more monies from the citizenry—and they had also come up with another type of currency, of which more later. For now, let us consider the imagery of the legal tender notes. Much of it was carried over from the demand notes. The faces of the five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar legal tender notes have identical design elements with those used on the demand notes. Their backs (federal currency was printed on both sides—so was Confederate currency, when circumstances permitted) remained green (hence the term greenback, introduced in 1861 and used ever since as a synonym for United States paper money); but the wording was changed, reflection of the different (read: lower) quality of the new currency. Demand notes had come in three denominations; legal tender notes came in nine, ranging in value from one dollar to one thousand. A number of patriots, both dead BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country (Alexander Hamilton) and living (Salmon P. Chase) provided inspiration for some of the designs. Hamilton appeared on the two-, five-, and fifty-dollar bills, which was his right, by virtue of having been the first Secretary of the Treasury. Chase appeared on the onedollar bill, which was his right, by virtue of being the current Secretary of the Treasury. An ambitious man, Mr. Chase had had designs on the presidency in 1860, only to see it go to that upstart Lincoln. He would see the dissemination of millions of copies of his imposing if somewhat florid likeness as good for his future political prospects, keeping his face before the populace, as it were. He would be mistaken. Legal tender notes dealt more in portraiture than allegory or national icons. But there was an exception, and it appeared on one of the highest members of the series, the hundred-dollar bill. It is nothing less than the national symbol, the American bald eagle; and it possesses a majesty and intensity never seen on earlier, private notes or on later, federal ones (11-27).
11-27: United States of America, legal tender note, 100 dollars, 1862
There was one major flaw with legal tender notes: because they were not redeemable in specie at their time of issue, they tended to fluctuate in value against specie (specifically gold, the standard by which all other monies must be judged). The basis of their fluctuation was how the average citizen felt about the government which issued them on any given day—and how the average citizen thought the war was going. The Civil War lasted a trifle more than four years. For the first three, if asked how the war was going, the Northern man (or woman) in the street would have replied that it wasn't going particularly well—quite miserably, in fact, which is all you could expect with incompetents in charge of the government and cowards in charge of the army. Any unsupported currency issued in such a climate of opinion was likely to have a difficult time of it. And the legal tender notes did: at their low point, they were worth about thirtyfive cents on the dollar, against gold. That was early in 1864. We know that the Union would be victorious within a year. But the people of the day lacked our hindsight; and they distrusted their money. BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country So this fiat currency was not going as far as Mr. Lincoln had hoped it would. But the president was a pragmatist, perfectly willing to tinker with things until he got the right general, the right troops, the right money. He never achieved perfection, but then, he didn't need to: he realized that even a mediocre solution would work, given enough time, given the enormous potential of Northern industry, manpower, and wealth. Much of that wealth was tied up in the assets of the private, note-emitting banks. Thus far, the bankers had been less-than-enthusiastic partisans in the Union cause. They were practical souls, and they realized that warfare was bad for banking. And what if the North actually lost—something they and many others thought a distinct possibility until the final months of fighting? Better to keep one's head and remain cautious. That wasn't the way the Lincoln administration saw things: early in 1863, it concocted a plan which it felt certain would enroll Northern bankers and their money in the sacred cause. The plan became law as the National Banking Act of 25 February 1863. The Act attempted to regulate the country's banking system (which sorely needed it, and had for decades). But its main thrust was to enlist bankers in the Union war effort, by appealing to their sense of profit as well as their sense of patriotism. The law's provisions were complex, but they came down to this: private banks were encouraged to apply for federal charters, thereby becoming national banks. They would then use their funds to purchase Union war bonds (thus raising money for the prosecution of the war) that would be deposited with the United States Treasurer. In return, the new national banks would be allowed to issue a new type of currency, national bank notes, against up to ninety percent of the value of the bonds they had just deposited at Washington. Each national bank's charter would run for a period of twenty years and was renewable. We shall put aside the fate and the effects of this new legislation for a moment. I first want to tell you something about the vignettes adopted for this new type of currency. They were the most beautiful renditions ever to appear on any federal paper money. And they can serve as a capstone to this book, for they form the transition between the Distant Country and ours. They were beautiful because they were created by prize-winning artists. A couple of weeks after the Act was passed, an official call went out to interested artists and engravers, soliciting their help in designing the new currency, offering cash prizes by way of incentive. Up to two hundred dollars would be paid for each note designed (a paltry sum now, but a distinct amount of money back then, especially to a starving artist); however, the contestants only had until the twenty-eighth of March to submit their ideas. There is some advantage to be gained from working under pressure: the artists and engravers responded magnificently. For the face of the dollar bill (11-28), T. A. Liebler designed a vignette called "Concordia," whose two maidens symbolized the hopes for peace of a nation still at war. Charles Burt carried Mr. Liebler's concept from artist's ink to engraver's plate. Scenes from the national past also found allegorical and realistic expression. The five-dollar member of the national bank note series featured two engravings by Louis Delnoce, from designs by Charles Fenton. To the left, we see the epochal moment in 1492 when Christopher Columbus first sighted a New World. To the right, we see the New World presented to the Old. The back of the note carries on the theme of Discovery, as Columbus actually steps onto American soil (11-29, 11-30).
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11-28: United States of America, national bank note, Atlantic National Bank of Boston, 1 dollar, 1865
11-29: United States of America, national bank note, Second National Bank of Watkins, New York, 5 dollars, 1864 (face)
11-30: United States of America, national bank note, Second National Bank of Watkins, New York, 5 dollars, 1864 (back)
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Pictures From A Distant Country Other denominations continued the patriotic, uplifting imagery. The face of the fifty-dollar bill gives us two glimpses of the desperate days of the American Revolution, Washington crossing the Delaware to on the left, a Continental soldier in prayer on the right. The back of this note shows a scene of dedication from an earlier age, as the Pilgrims embark for Plymouth (11-31, 11-32).
11-31: United States of America, national bank note, North National Bank of Boston, 50 dollars, 1864 (face)
11-32: United States of America, national bank note, North National Bank of Boston, 50 dollars, 1864 (back)
The images were a triumph; but the currency which bore them was a failure. Remember that there were several hundred note-issuing banks across the Republic; by the time the National Banking Act had run for a full year, only 179 of them had joined the system, with scant prospects of many more coming into the fold anytime soon. The problem was that the banks got far less from the arrangement than did the federal government, and the bankers were perfectly aware of the discrepancy. They could tack the name "national" on to their institutions, thereby impressing the locals. But that didn't necessarily translate into profits, which were what the banks had been set up to achieve. What else could the government offer? It could offer threats: join the system; or quit circulating you own bank notes; or go out of business; or pay taxes of an escalating severity. A hint of things to come was suggested early in 1863: a two percent tax on private bank notes was proposed. It was not BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country enacted for the time being, but by the time it became law (on 3 March 1865) it had ballooned to ten percent. That got the banks' attention: while the law wouldn't take effect for another eighteen months, bankers across the North ran for cover: they voluntarily got out of the private note-issuing business, or they joined President Lincoln's public one, becoming national banks. The process is neatly suggested by two five-hundred dollar bills from Lowell, Massachusetts. The note from the Appleton Bank (11-33) dates from around 1860. Its counterpart from the Appleton National Bank (11-34) dates from 1865—and it is more than likely that the same personnel served in the same capacities during both eras.
11-33: Lowell, MA, Appleton Bank, 500 dollars, c. 1860 (proof)
11-34: United States of America, national bank note, Appleton National Bank of Lowell, 500 dollars, 1865
And there were two eras involved here, one merging into the other for now, but not for long. Whether anyone realized it, a river had been crossed. The federal government was once again accustomed to issuing paper currency. The people were once again accustomed to accepting and using it—with the modicum of grousing which was and remains their right. The banks were no longer able to issue unfettered private currency in the North, and they had simply ceased doing business in the South, victims of the general economic and political collapse that came with the losing of the war. But there was something more to which the people, and their government, had become accustomed. BOSON BOOKS
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Pictures From A Distant Country They now used paper money with a few universal designs. Their five-dollar national bank notes might proclaim that they were from Washington, or Wisconsin—or Wyoming Territory, in time. But they all looked alike. They all bore the same scenes (or later, the same bearded politicians or Civil War generals). Other types of federal currency had a similar internal consistency—and in time, all federal paper would look alike, and be alike. This train of developments was inherent in the policies of a long-ago government, pursuing victory in a brothers' war. But it was also inherent in the dream of the man who had started it all—Jacob Perkins. Remember him? He dreamed of a single design for all currency. It would take the better part of two centuries and the assistance of a national government, but the dream would finally be secured. We should be grateful that it took so long to achieve. During the time when Perkins's reach still exceeded his grasp, the Distant Country was born and flourished, and presented and preserved pieces of itself, pieces broadcast for all to see. They are pieces of our past, made possible by the genius of this man and those who followed after him.
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Pictures From A Distant Country LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS CHAPTER 1 1-1: Philadelphia, PA, Bank of the United States, 30 dollars, 1791 1-2: Warren, RI, Warren Bank, 1 dollar, 1804. 1-3: New York, NY, Bank of America, 5 dollars, c. 1815 (proof) 1-4: Orange, NJ, Orange Bank in the County of Essex, 1 dollar, c. 1845 (proof) 1-5: Port Jervis, NY, Bank of Port Jervis, 20 dollars, c. 1860 (proof) 1-6: Augusta, GA, Bank of Augusta, 20 dollars, c. 1850 (unissued) 1-7: Washington, DC, Bank of the Union, 3 dollars, 1851 (unissued) 1-8: Lancaster, PA, Lancaster Bank, 10 dollars, 1855 1-9: Washington, DC, Bank of the Republic, 5 dollars, 1852 (unissued) 1-10: Tekama, NE, Bank of Tekama, 5 dollars, 1857 1-11: Washington, DC, Government Bank, 5 dollars, 1862 1-12: Rockland, ME, Ship Builders Bank, 5 dollars, 1853 1-13: Boston, MA, Cochituate Bank, 10 dollars, 1853 1-14: New York, NY, Citizens Bank, 100 dollars, c. 1851 (proof) 1-15: Jamaica, VT, West River Bank, 50 dollars, c. 1855 (unissued) 1-16: Little Rock, AR, Cincinnati & Little Rock Slate Company, 1 dollar, 1854 1-17: Georgetown, DC , Potomac River Bank, 2 dollars, 1854 1-18: Saline, MI, Bank of Saline, 20 dollars, 1838 1-19: Westerly, RI, Washington Bank, 25 dollars, 1800 (unissued) 1-20: Washington, DC, Presidents Bank, 1 dollar, 1852 (unissued) 1-21: New Orleans, LA, Citizen’s Bank of Louisiana, 100 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued) 1-22: Boston, MA, Franklin Bank, 20 dollars, 1836 1-23: Catskill, NY, Catskill Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1830 (proof) 1-24: Salem, NJ, Salem & Philadelphia Manufacturing Company, 1 dollar, 1828 1-25: San Francisco, CA, Miner’s Bank, 1 dollar, 1849 1-26: Buffalo, NY, Hollister Bank of Buffalo, 10 dollars, c. 1850 (proof) 1-27: Howardsville, VA, Bank of Howardsville, 50 dollars, 1861 1-28: New York, NY, Fulton Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1845 (proof) 1-29: Northampton, PA, NORTHAMPTON Bank, 10 “thaler” (dollars), 1835 1-30: Freehold, NJ, Monmouth Bank, 5 dollars, 1825 1-31: Ringgold, GA, Northwestern Bank of Georgia, 5 dollars, 1861 1-32: Lambertville, NJ, New Hope Delaware Bridge Company, 100 dollars, c. 1835 1-33: Charleston, SC, Bank of the State of South Carolina, 10 dollars, 1861 1-34: New Salem, OH, Jefferson Bank of New Salem, 3 dollars, 1817 1-35: New Salem, OH, Jefferson Bank of New Salem, 1 dollar, 1817 1-36: Nashville, TN, Central Bank of Tennessee, 5 dollars, 1855 1-37: Augusta, GA, Augusta Insurance & Banking Company, 10 dollars, 1860 1-38: St. Paul, MN, Dayton Bank, 2 dollars, c.1853 (unissued) 1-39A: Camden, SC, Bank of Camden, 5 dollars, 1856 1-39B: Camden, SC, Bank of Camden, 5 dollars, 1856 1-40: Charleston, SC, Bank of South Carolina, 10 dollars, 1861 1-41: Richmond, VA, Bank of the Commonwealth, 10 dollars, 1858
CHAPTER 2 2-1: Marshall, MI, Bank of Marshall, 1 dollar, 1837 2-2:Canastota, NY, Canastota Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1856 (proof) 2-3: Gibraltar, MI, Bank of Gibraltar, 1 dollar, c. 1838 (unissued) 2-4: Fairmount, ME, New England Bank, 20 dollars, 1857 2-5: Maukato City, MN, Merchants Bank, 5 dollars, 1850s (unissued) 2-6: Omaha, NE, City of Omaha, 1 dollar, c. 1857 (unissued)
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Pictures From A Distant Country 2-7: Omaha, NE, Western Exchange Fire & Marine Insurance Company, 2 dollars, 1857 (unissued) 2-8: Omaha, NE, Western Exchange Fire & Marine Insurance Company, 1 dollar, 1857 (unissued) 2-9: Buffalo, NY, Buffalo City Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1855 (proof) 2-10: Newburgh, NY, Quassaick Bank, 100 dollars, 1854 (proof) 2-11: Cleveland, TN, Ocoee Bank, 10 dollars, 1860 2-12: Bristol RI, Eagle Bank, 1 dollar, 1848 (proof) 2-13A: Washington, NC, Bank of Washington, 20 dollars, 1861 2-13B: Washington, NC, Bank of Washington, 20 Dollars, 1861 2-14: Sault De St. Marys, MI, Bank of Chippeway, 2 dollars, 1838 2-15: Florence, NE, Bank of Florence, 5 dollars, 1858 2-16: St. Paul, MN, Dayton Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1853 (unissued) 2-17: Macon, GA, Ocmulgee Bank, 5 dollars, 1840 2-18: Dalton, GA, Bank of Whitfield in Dalton, 2 dollars, 1860 2-19: Mohawk, NY, Mohawk Valley Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1845 (proof) 2-20: Albany, NY, Bank of the Capitol, 1 dollar, c. 1853 (proof) 2-21: Memphis, TN, Bank of West Tennessee, 10 dollars, 1861 2-22: Tecumseh, MI, Bank of Tecumseh, 3 dollars, c. 1838 (unissued) 2-23: Medford, NJ, Burlington County Bank at Medford, 1 dollar, c. 1850 (proof) 2-24: Johnstown, NY, Montgomery County Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1835 (proof) 2-25: Brattleboro, VT, Windham County Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1857 (unissued) 2-26: Schenectady, NY, Mohawk Bank, 3 dollars, 1831 2-27: Omaha, NE, Western Exchange Fire & Marine Insurance Company, 3 dollars, 1857 2-29: New York, NY, Bank of North America, 5 dollars c. 1855 (proof) 2-28: Detroit, MI, State Bank of Michigan, 2 dollars, c. 1859 (unissued)
CHAPTER 3 3-1: Augusta, GA, Farmers & Mechanics Bank of Augusta Georgia, 5 dollars, before 1820 (proof) 3-2: Adrian, MI, Adrian Insurance Company, 1 dollar, 1853 3-3: Winnsboro, SC, Planters Bank of Fairfield, 5 dollars, 1855 3-4: Onondaga Valley, NY, Farmers Bank of Onondaga, 1 dollar, 1852 (proof) 3-5: Howardsville, VA, Bank of Howardsville, 50 dollars, 1861 3-6: Selma, AL, Bank of Selma, 5 dollars, 1862 3-7: Morgan, GA, Bank of Morgan, 2 dollars, 1857 3-8: Chattanooga, TN, Bank of Chattanooga, 50 dollars, 1860 3-9: Charleston, SC, Bank of the State of South Carolina, 1 dollar, 1862 3-10: Nashville, TN, Central Bank of Tennessee, 1 dollar, 1855 3-11: Yanceyville, NC, Bank of Yanceyville, 4 dollars, 1857 3-12: Greensborough, GA, Bank of Greensborough, 1 dollar, 1858 3-13: Newburgh, NY, Quassaick Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1852 (proof) 3-14: Montgomery, AL, Central Bank of Alabama, 50 dollars, 1859 3-15: Savannah, GA, Farmers and Mechanics Bank, 2 dollars, 1860 3-16: Macon, GA, Manufacturers Bank, 20 dollars, 1862 3-17: Hamburg, SC, Bank of Hamburg, 5 dollars, 1860 3-18: Savannah, GA, Bank of the State of Georgia, 1 dollar, 1861 3-19: Savannah, GA, Timber Cutter’s Bank, 2 dollars, 1858
CHAPTER 4 4-1:Macon, GA, Ocmulgee Bank, 20 dollars, 1840 4-2: Tecumseh, MI, Tecumseh Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1838 (unissued) 4-3: Catskill, NY, Green County Bank, 50 dollars, 1825 4-4: Hackettstown, NJ, Hackettstown Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1854 (proof) 4-5: De Soto, NE, Waubeek Bank, 3 dollars, 1857 4-6: Newbern, NC, Bank of Commerce at Newbern, 10 dollars, 1861 4-7: Sanford, ME, Sanford Bank, 5 dollars, 1861 4-8: Rochester, NY, Rochester Canal Bank, 1 dollar, 1840 (proof)
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Pictures From A Distant Country 4-9: Bainbridge, GA, Southern Bank of Georgia, 1 dollar, 1858 4-10: Philippi, VA (now WV), Bank of Philippi, 5 dollars, 1861 4-11: Smethport, PA, McKean County Bank, c. 1857 (unissued) 4-12: Haverhill, MA, Essex Bank, 50 dollars, 1860 (proof) 4-13: Tallahassee, FL, Tallahassee Rail Road, 3 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued) 4-14: Springfield, MA, John Hancock Bank, 10 dollars, 1863 (counterfeit) 4-15: Brighton, NY, Eagle Bank, 5 dollars, 1850 (proof) 4-16: Huntsville, NY, New-York Security Bank, 3 dollars, 1847 (proof) 4-17: Lawrenceburg, TN, Lawrenceburg Bank of Tennessee, 10 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued) 4-18: Milledgeville, GA, Bank of Milledgeville, 10 dollars, 1854 4-19: Goshen, NY, Bank of Orage County, 1 dollar, c. 1845 (proof) 4-20: Troy, NY, Commercial Tank of Troy, 1 dollar, c. 1855 (proof) 4-21: Palmyra, NY, Wayne County Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1840 (unissued) 4-22: Salisbury, MD, Somerset and Worcester Savings Bank, 2 dollars, 1862 4-23: Egg Harbor, NJ, Egg Harbor Bank, 2 dollars 1861 4-24: Savannah, GA, Merchants and Planters Bank, 2 dollars, 1857 4-25: East Haddam, CT, Bank of New England at Goodspeed’s Landing, 5 dollars, c. 1862 (unissued) 4-26: Augusta, GA, Augusta Insurance & Banking Company, 1 dollar, 1861 4-27: Canajoharie, NY, Canajoharie Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1855 (unissued) 4-28: Dalton, GA, Bank of Whitfield in Dalton, 2 dollars, 1860 4-29: Natchez, MS, Agricultural Bank of Mississippi, 100 dollars, 1839 4-30: Lewistown, PA, Bank of Lewistown, 10 dollars, 1844 4-31: Hackettstown, NJ, Hackettstown Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1855 (proof) 4-32: Michigan City, IN, Michigan City and South Bend Plank Road Company, 1 dollar, 1862 4-33: Ringgold, GA, North Western Bank of Georgia, 20 dollars, 1861 4-34: New York, NY, New York Manufacturing Company, 100 dollars, c. 1815 (proof) 4-35: Sanford, ME, Sanford Bank, 2 dollars, 1861 4-36: Methuen, MA, Spicket Falls Bank, 5 dollars, 1853 (proof) 4-37: Providence, RI, Providence Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1853 (proof) 4-38: Warren, PA, Lumbermens Bank at Warren, 5 “thaler” (dollars), c. 1838 (unissued) 4-39: Medford, NJ, Burlington County Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1840 (proof) 4-40: Troy, NY, Merchants and Mechanics Bank of Troy, 1 dollar, (proof) 4-41: Millville, NJ, Millville Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1857 (proof)
CHAPTER 5 5-1: Dalton, GA, Planters and Mechanics Bank of Dalton, 1 dollar, 1856 5-2: Rockaway, NJ, Rockaway Bank, 1 dollar, 1858 (proof) 5-3: Savannah, GA, Farmers and Mechanics Bank, 5 dollars, 1860 5-4: Cumberland, MD, Allegany County Bank, 5 dollars, 1860 5-5: Cumberland, MD, Allegany County Bank, 2 dollars, 1861 5-6: Savannah, GA, Bank of Commerce, 5 dollars, 1857 5-7: Hackettstown, NJ, Hackettstown Bank, 20 dollars, c. 1855 (proof) 5-8: De Soto, NE, Corn Exchange Bank, 2 dollars, 1860 5-9: New York, NY, New York County Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1855 (proof) 5-10: Potsdam, NY, Frontier Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1860 (proof) 5-11: Springfield, IL, Clark’s Exchange Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1852 (proof) 5-12: Elkton, MD, Farmers and Merchants Bank of Cecil County, 20 dollars, 1862 5-13: Camden, NJ, Farmers and Mechanics Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1856 (proof) 5-14: Paterson, NJ, Paterson Bank, 5 dollars, 1824 (counterfeit) 5-15: Newark, NJ, Newark Banking & Insurance Company, 3 dollars, c. 1820 (proof) 5-16: Fort Edward, NY, Farmers Bank of Washington County, 2 dollars, c. 1856 (proof) 5-17: Canastota, NY, Canastota Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1856 (proof) 5-18: Fairmount, ME, New England Bank, 10 dollars, 1857 (unissued) 5-19: Fayettville, NC, Bank of Clarendon at Fayetteville, 10 dollars, 1855
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Pictures From A Distant Country 5-20: Nashville, TN, Central Bank of Tennessee, 5 dollars, 1855
CHAPTER 6 6-1: Newark, NJ, Newark Banking & Insurance Company, 1 dollar, c. 1815 (proof) 6-2: Belleville, NJ, Manufacturers’ Bank at Belleville, 9 dollars, 1836 6-3: Penn-Yan, NY, Yates County Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1850 (proof) 6-4: Michigan City, IN, Michigan City and South Bend Plank Road Company, 2 dollars, 1862 6-5: Somerville, NJ, Somerset County Bank, 20 dollars, c. 1858 (unissued) 6-6: Frankfort, KY, Frankfort Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1818 (unissued) 6-7: Ann Arbor, MI, Bank of Washtenaw, 5 dollars, 1835 (unissued) 6-8: Watertown, NY, Henry Keep’s Bank, 2 dollars, 1847 (proof) 6-9: Lyons City, IA, Treasurer of Lyons City, 2 dollars, 1858 6-10: Lexington, NC, Bank of Lexington, 10 dollars, 1860 6-11: Canajoharie, NY, Canajoharie Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1855 (proof) 6-12: Weston, VA, Bank of Weston, 5 dollars, c. 1858 (unissued) 6-13: Canajoharie, NY, Canajoharie Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1855 (proof) 6-14: Hightstown, NJ, Central Bank of New Jersey, 5 dollars, 1852 (proof) 6-15: Muncie, IN, Fort Wayne & Southern Rail Road Company, 1 dollar, 1854 6-16: Smethport, PA, McKean County Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1857 (unissued) 6-17: Columbia, TX, Commercial & Agricultural Bank of Texas, 2 dollars/2 pesos, c. 1837 (unissued) 6-18: New York, NY, Shoe and Leather Bank, 10 dollars, 1864 6-19: Dalton, GA, Planters and Mechanics Bank of Dalton, 1 dollar, 1856 6-20: Warren, PA, North Western Bank, 5 dollars, 1861 6-21: Paterson, MJ, Paterson Bank, 3 dollars, 1815 (counterfeit) 6-22: Millville, NJ, Millville Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1857 (proof) 6-23: Camden, NJ. Farmers and Mechanics Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1856 (proof) 6-24: Morristown, NJ, Iron Bank, 10 dollars, 1863 6-25: Morristown, NJ, Iron Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1858 (proof) 6-26: Camden, NY, Camden Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1848 (proof) 6-27: Saugerties, NY, Saugerties Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1860 (proof) 6-28: Memphis, TN, Mechanics Bank of Memphis, 10 dollars, 1855 6-29: Newark, NJ, Newark Banking & Insurance Company, 10 dollars, c. 1815 (proof) 6-30: Cumberland, MD, Allegany County Bank, 10 dollars, 1861 6-31: Murphy, NC, Miners & Planters Bank, 10 dollars, 1860 6-32: Newark, NJ, Newark Banking and Insurance Company, 2 dollars, c. 1815 (proof) 6-33: Salisbury, MD, Somerset and Worcester Savings Bank, 5 dollars, 1862 6-34: Augusta, GA, Augusta Insurance & Banking Company, 5 dollars, 1860 6-35: Murphy, NC, Miners & Planters Bank, 20 dollars, 1860 6-36: Jersey City, NJ, Mechanics and Traders Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1853 (proof) 6-37: New York, NY, East River Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1860 (proof) 6-38: Adrian, MI, Adrian Insurance Company, 2 dollars, 1853 6-39: New York, NY, Eighth Avenue Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1854 (proof) 6-40: Freehold, NJ, Farmers Bank of Freehold, 1 dollar, 1851 (proof) 6-41: New York, NY, Tradesmens Bank of the City of New York, 3 dollars, c. 1857 (proof) 6-42: New Orleans, LA, Citizens’ Bank of Louisiana, 2 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued) 6-43: Perth Amboy, NJ, Commercial Bank of New Jersey, 5 dollars, 1856 (proof) 6-44: Boston, MA, Continental Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued) 6-45: New York, NY, Marine Bank of the City of New York, 100 dollars, c. 1853 (proof) 6-46: Portsmouth, NH, Piscataqua Exchange Bank, 3 dollars, 1852 (unissued) 6-47: Perth Amboy, NJ, Commercial Bank of Perth Amboy, 5 dollars, 1856 (proof) 6-48: Rochester, NY, Rochester City Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1840 (proof) 6-49: Milledgeville, GA, Bank of Milledgeville, 5 dollars, 1854 6-50: Boston, MA, Cochituate Bank, 2 dollars, 1853 6-51: Jersey City, NJ, Mechanics and Traders Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1853 (proof)
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Pictures From A Distant Country 6-52: Chicago, IL, Bank of Chicago, 3 dollars, 1852 6-53: Hoboken, NJ, Hoboken City Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1857 (proof) 6-54: Millville, NJ, Millville Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1857 6-55: New Orleans, LA, Louisiana State Bank, 5 dollars, 1856 (unissued) 6-56: Keokuk, IA, Keokuk, Mt. Pleasant and Muscatine Rail Road, 3 dollars, c. 1852 (unissued) 6-57: Ann Arbor, MI, Bank of Washtenaw, 5 dollars, 1854 6-58: Morristown, NJ, Morris County Bank, 20 dollars, c. 1858 (unissued) 6-59: Marshall, MI, Bank of Michigan, 3 dollars, c. 1862 (unissued) 6-60: Camden, NJ, Farmers and Mechanics Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1857 (proof) 6-61: Jersey City, NJ, Hudson County Bank, 50 dollars, c. 1857 (proof) 6-62:Jersey City, NJ, Mechanics and Traders Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1853 (proof)
CHAPTER 7 7-1:Little Rock, AR, Cincinnati & Little Rock Slate Company, 3 dollars, 1854 7-2: Kaskaskia, IL, Bank of Cairo, 5 dollars, 1840 7-3: New Orleans, LA, Exchange and Banking Company of New Orleans, 5 dollars, 1840 7-4: Columbus, GA, Phoenix Bank of Columbus, 20 dollars, 1842 7-5: Detroit, MI, State Bank of Michigan, 1 dollar, c. 1859 (unissued) 7-6: Westport, CT, Fairfield County Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1838 (unissued) 7-7: Cleveland, TN, Ocoee Bank, 2 dollars, 1859 7-8: Hornellsville, NY, Bank of Hornellsville, 2 dollars, 1854 (proof) 7-9: New York, NY, Chemical Bank, 2 collars, c. 1850 (proof) 7-10: Norfolk, CT, Norfolk Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1856 (proof) 7-11: Cooperstown, NY, Otsego County Bank, 5 dollars, 1850 7-12: Belleville, NJ, Manufacturers’ Bank at Belleville, 5 dollars, 1838 7-13: Rockland, ME, Ship Builders Bank, 10 dollars, 1853 7-14: New York, NY, Atlantic Bank of the City of New York, 5 dollars, c. 1853 (proof) 7-15: Oswego, NY, Luther Wright’s Bank, 20 dollars, c. 1846 (proof) 7-16: Columbus, GA, Manufacturers and Mechanics Bank of Columbus, Georgia, 5 dollars, 1854 7-17: Deep River, CT, Deep River Bank, 5 dollars, 1854 (spurious) 7-18: Trenton, NJ, State Bank at Trenton, 1 dollar, 1825 7-19: De Soto, NE, Bank of De Soto, 3 dollars, 1863 7-20: Portland, ME, Georgia Lumber Company, 2 dollars, 1839 7-21: Freehold, NJ, Freehold Banking Company, 100 dollars, c. 1855 (proof) 7-22: Fort Edward, NY, Farmers Bank of Washington County, 50 dollars, 1856 (proof) 7-23: Dubuque, IA, Lumbermen’s Bank, 3 dollars, 1857 (unissued) 7-24: Omaha, NE, City of Omaha, 5 dollars, 1857 7-25: Ann Arbor, MI, Bank of Washtenaw, 3 dollars, 1836 7-26: New Orleans, LA, Bank of Louisiana, 20 dollars, 1862 7-27: Hackensack, NJ, Washington Banking Company, 2 dollars, 1833 7-28: St. Louis, MO, Bank of Missouri, 10 dollars, 1818 7-29: Buffalo, NY, B. Rathburn, 1 dollar, 1836 7-30: Lowell, MA, Merchants Bank, 2 dollars, 1861 (spurious) 7-31: Tecumseh, MI, Tecumseh Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1838 (unissued) 7-32: Bordentown, NJ, Bordentown Banking Company, 2 dollars, 1855 7-33: New York, NY, National Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1829 (proof)
CHAPTER 8 8-1: Trenton, NJ, State Bank, 100 dollars, 1813 8-2: Chicago, IL, Chicago Marine & Fire Insurance Company, 2 dollars, c. 1835 (unissued) 8-3: Ann Arbor, MI, bank of Washtenaw, 100 dollars, 1837 (unissued) 8-4: Dalton, GA, Bank of Whitfield in Dalton, 5 dollars, 1860 8-5: New York, NY, New-York Loan Company, 20 dollars, 1838 8-6: Jersey City, NJ, Morris Canal & Banking Company, 10 dollars, 1841
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Pictures From A Distant Country 8-7: Cincinnati, OH, Farmers & Mechanics Bank of Cincinnati, 5 dollars, 1816 8-8: New York, NY, Peoples Bank of the City of New York, 2 dollars, c. 1855 (proof) 8-9: Charleston, SC, State Bank, 5 dollars, 1860 8-10: Jersey City, NJ, Jersey Bank, 10 dollars, 1825, (first phase) 8-11: Jersey City, NJ, Jersey Bank, 3 dollars, 1825, (second phase) 8-12: Jersey City, NJ, Jersey Bank, 1 dollar, 1826 (third phase) 8-13: Appalachicola, FL, Bank of West Florida, 10 dollars, 1832 8-14: Memphis, TN, Banking House of John S. Dye, 1 dollar, 1853 8-15: Boston, MA, Safety Fund Bank, 2 dollars, 1856 (altered) 8-16: Jamaica, VT, West River Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued) 8-17: Washington, DC, Bullion Bank, 5 dollars, 1861 8-18: Clyde, NY, Millers Bank of New-York, 2 dollars, 1840 8-19: Freehold, NJ, Farmers Bank of Freehold, 2 dollars, 1851 (proof) 8-20: Washington, DC, Mercantile Bank, 1 dollar, 1861
CHAPTER 9 9-1: Port Deposit, MD, Susquehanna Bridge & Bank Company, 10 dollars, 1831 9-2: Savannah, GA, Central Rail Road and Banking Company, 1 dollar, c. 1844 (proof) 9-3: New York, NY, North River Banking Company, 100 dollars, 1840 9-4: Adrian, MI, Adrian Insurance Company, 3 dollars, c. 1853 (unissued) 9-5: Burlington, NJ, Burlington Bank, 50 dollars, 1855 (proof) 9-6: Cuba, NY, Cuba Bank, 2 dollars, 1855 (proof) 9-7: Springfield, IL, State Bank of Illinios, 5 dollars, c. 1835 (unissued) 9-8: Plattsburgh, NY, Mercantile Bank of Plattsburgh, 10 dollars, c. 1856 (proof) 9-9: Springfield, IL, State Bank of Illinois, 10 dollars, c. 1835 (unissued) 9-10: Albany, NY, Mechanics and Traders Bank, 3 dollars, 1838 9-11: Newburgh, NY, Quassaick Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1852 (proof) 9-12: Adrian, MI, Erie and Kalamazoo Rail Road Bank, 10 dollars, 1854 9-13: Cincinnati, OH, Farmers & Mechanics Bank of Cincinnati, 3 dollars, 1815 9-14: Derby, CT, Derby Bank, 3 dollars, 1825 9-15: Apalachocola, FL, Commercial Bank of Florida, 5 dollars, 1835 9-16: Selma, AL, Bank of Selma, 5 dollars, 1862 9-17: Detroit, MI, State Bank of Michigan, 5 dollars, c. 1859 (unissued) 9-18: Perth Amboy, NJ, City Bank of Perth Amboy, 2 dollars, 1856 (proof) 9-19: New York, NY, North River Bank in the City of New York, 100 dollars, c. 1855 (proof) 9-20: Memphis, TN, Citizens Bank of Nashville & Memphis, 1 dollar, 1856 9-21: Ann Arbor, MI, Bank of Washtenaw, 1 dollar, 1836 9-22: Manhattan, OH, Manhattan Bank, 1 dollar, 1839 9-23: Savannah, GA, Bank of Commerce, 20 dollars, 1861 9-24: Savannah, GA, Timber Cutter’s Bank, 5 dollars, 1861 9-25: Toms River, NJ, Ocean County Bank, 1 dollar, 1857 (unissued)
CHAPTER 10 10-1: Glen’s Falls, NY, Glen’s Falls Bank, 2 dollars, 1851 (proof) 10-2: Catasaqua, PA, Bank of Catasaqua, 50 dollars, c. 1857 (proof) 10-3: Tekama, NE, Bank of Tekama in Burt County, 1 dollar, 1857 10-4: New Orleans, LA, Citizens’ Bank of Louisiana, 3 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued) 10-5: New York, NY, Nassau Bank, 100 dollars, c. 1855 (proof) 10-6: New York, NY, Knickerbocker Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1854 (proof) 10-7: Albany, NY, Union Bank of Albany, 2 dollars, 1859 (counterfeit) 10-8: New Haven, CT, City Bank of New Haven, 1 dollar, 1865 10-9: Northhampton, MA, Holyoke Bank, 5 dollars, c. 1861 (unissued) 10-10: Brighton, MA, Bank of Brighton, 20 dollars, 1851 10-11: Winchester, VA, Bank of the Valley in Virginia, 50 dollars, 1856 10-12: Geneseo, NY, Genesee Valley Bank, 2 dollars, c. 1855 (proof)
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Pictures From A Distant Country 10-13: Front Royal, VA, Bank of Manassa, 5 dollars, 1859 10-14: Kirtland, OH, Kirtland Safety Society, 10 dollars, 1837 10-15: New York, NY, Clinton Bank, 3 dollars, c. 1844 (proof) 10-16: Lawrenceburg, TN, Lawrenceburg Bank of Tennessee, 5 dollars, c. 1857 (unissued) 10-17: Montpelier, VT, Vermont Bank, 5 dollars, 1849 10-18: Hollidaysburg, PA, Central Bank of Pennsylvania, 5 dollars, 1859 10-19: Winchester, VA, Bank of Winchester, 50 dollars, c. 1860 (unissued) 10-20: Mount Holly, NJ, Farmers Bank of New Jersey, 3 dollars, c. 1852 (proof) 10-21: East Haddam, CT, Bank of New England, 2 dollars, 1860 10-22: Springfield, IL, Clark’s Exchange Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1852 (proof) 10-23: Cherry Valley, NY, Central Bank of Cherry Valley, 1 dollar, c. 1842 (proof) 10-24: Richmond, VA, James River and Kanawha Company, 5 dollars, c. 1840 (unissued) 10-25: Muncie, IN, fort Wayne & Southern Rail Road Company, 3 dollars, 1854 10-26: Sault De Saint Marys, MI, Bank of Chippeway, 5 dollars, 1838 10-27: New York, NY, Empire City Bank, 1 dollar, c. 1852 (proof) 10-28: Buffalo, NY, Buffalo City Bank, 10 dollars, c. 1853 (proof)
CHAPTER 11 11-1: Charleston, SC, Bank of the State of South Carolina, 1 dollar, 1862 11-2: Richmond, VA, Bank of Richmond, 5 dollars, 1861 11-3: Richmond, VA, Virginia Central Rail Road Company, 10 dollars, 1861 11-4: Atlanta, GA, Mechanics Savings Bank, 5 dollars, 1863 11-5: Danville, VA, Danville Savings Bank, 50 cents, 1862 11-6: Roxboro, NC, Bank of Roxboro, 5 dollars, 1861 11-7: Winchester, VA, Corporation of Winchester, 50 cents, 1861 11-8: Lynchburg, VA, Merchants Bank of Virginia, 2 dollars, 1861 (unissued) 11-9: Pamplin’s Depot, VA, Appomattox Savings Bank at Pamplin’s Depot, 1 dollar, 1861 11-10: Richmond, VA, Commercial Bank, 1 dollar, 1862 11-11: Trenton, NJ, Merchants’ Bank, 2 dollars, 1861 (unissued) 11-12: Trenton, NJ, Merchants’ Bank, 1 dollar, 1861 (unissued) 11-13: Williamsport, PA, Borought of Williamsport, 10 cents, 1863 11-14: Pittston, PA, C. Sherwood, 15 cents, 1863 11-15: Allentown, PA, Nathan Shafer, 3 cents, 1863 11-16: Oil City, PA, Oil City Bank, 5 dollars, 1864 11-17: Norristown, PA, Bank of Montgomery County, 1 dollar, 1865 11-18: State of Florida, 2 dollars, 1863 11-19: State of Mississippi, 20 dollars, 1863 11-20: State of Arkansas, 5 dollars, 1865 11-21: Confederate States of America, 20 dollars, 1861 11-22: Confederate States of America, 100 dollars, 1862 11-23: Confederate States of America, 500 dollars, 1864 11-24: United States of America, demand note, 10 dollars, 1861 11-25: United States of America, demand note, 5 dollars, 1861 11-26: United States of America, demand note, 20 dollars, 1861 (proof) 11-27: United States of America, legal tender note, 100 dollars, 1862 11-28: United States of America, national bank note, Atlantic National Bank of Boston, 1 dollar, 1865 11-29: United States of America, national bank note, Second National Bank of Watkins, New York, 5 dollars, 1864 (face) 11-30: United States of America, national bank note, Second National Bank of Watkins, New York, 5 dollars, 1864 (back) 11-31: United States of America, national bank note, North National Bank of Boston, 50 dollars, 1864 (face) 11-32: United States of America, national bank note, North National Bank of Boston, 50 dollars, 1864 (back)
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Pictures From A Distant Country 11-33: Lowell, MA, Appleton Bank, 500 dollars, c. 1860 (proof) 11-34: United States of America, national bank note, Appleton National Bank of Lowell, 500 dollars, 1865
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