A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency:
When I was 10 or 11 years old my grandfather gave me two pieces of Confederate currency. I was elated. Wow, I had some Confederate money for my small (with dreams of growing) collection of Civil War stuff. To this day I don't know if those bills are good, fakes, souvenirs, counterfeit or what. I was more interested in guns, swords and uniforms than paper money so I never bothered to take a good look at them or try to find out what they really were. Never in my early days would I have believed that people would actually collect counterfeit Confederate currency. However, it seems that even during that sectional strife, people were actually producing and collecting such objects. People in the North desired souvenirs from the war, and an enterprising Philadelphian, Samuel C. Upham, saw a way to make a buck - and that quickly became literally. His first pieces of facsimile Confederate notes were marked at the bottom border "Fac-Simile Confederate Note - Sold Wholesale and Retail by S.C. Upham, 403 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia." All too soon the bottom border was cut off and these notes were being passed as bona fide Confederate currency – in the South! Other counterfeiters soon copied Upham's bills, made their own printing plates, or ordered bills from Upham without his codicil on the bottom. In New York City, St. Louis and some parts of the seceded states, others began counterfeiting Confederate currency. The problem became such a crisis for the Confederate economy that Secretary of the Treasury Christopher G. Memminger and members of the Confederate Congress labored to withdraw from the economy all legitimate Confederate currency of the series being copied and to have a new series printed. Memminger and his successor, George A. Trenholm, continued to deal with this issue. Both believed that the U.S. Government was behind the counterfeiting scheme (and to a certain extent it was). There were spies and counter-spies working in the U.S. Treasury Department, and the U.S. Government did dispense counterfeit currency to spies and undercover agents working in the South. Besides all of the above sources, offshore sources as well - counterfeiters in England, the Atlantic islands and the European continent - flooded the Confederacy with bogus currency, some extremely well printed and some fairly easy to identify as fraudulent. All of the above is woven into a masterfully written story of intrigue, spying and counter-espionage. The result is a readable and enjoyable book. The second section of the book constitutes an illustrated catalog, in color, of all of the known Confederate counterfeit bills. It includes a short synopsis of their origin, detectability, value, and rarity or availability on the collector market today. The author does note that the fraternity of "Confederate counterfeit currency has a relatively small overall collectable population"; yet those who do collect these items are avid and very serious. Thus this catalog is of great value to the advanced collector as well as to the novice. Finally, a chapter discusses the printing processes used in the counterfeiting of Confederate currency, bogus/fantasy signatures found on counterfeit Confederate currency and various margin imprint locations on those bills. Counterfeit Confederate Currency is fascinating even for those who are more interested in the implements of war or the blood and guts of battles. As a catalog of known counterfeit bills, bonds, notes, shin-plasters, etc., it is a worthy volume for any collector's library. It is very well written, interesting, informative and beautifully illustrated. Although I previously knew nothing about the subject, I can highly recommend this fine publication. Reviewer: Michael J. Winey Michael J. Winey, who has a BS in history and MS in history museum training, was a curator for more than 25 years and is retired from the U.S. Army Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pa.
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Illustrated, photographs, appendices, notes, bibliography, index, 331 pp., 2007, Whitman Publishing LLC,