Period Artifacts

When the Southern slave states seceded from the Union, they joined and became their own nation, namely the Confederate States of America. As part of their independence, they wrote their own Constitution, created their own flag and printed their own money. This section outlines the history of the Confederate flag and currency.

Currency

The Confederate Constitution guaranteed the Confederate states the right to print their own currency. The capitol, first housed in Montgomery, Alabama and then in Richmond, Virginia, printed huge quantities of paper money to finance the war. Some of the states printed money as well, and overall the Confederacy issued about two billion dollars of paper notes during the war.

Because of counterfeiting done by northern printers, the South's financial structure began to collapse. One Philadelphia printer advertised $2,000 worth of phony Confederate dollars for 50 cents. North Carolina, which had printed over twenty million dollars of Confederate notes, found its economy falling as food and clothing prices began to escalate rapidly. Wheat prices rose over 1,600 per cent, and flour prices over 2,800 per cent. Previous stapes like sugar and tea became so expensive that North Carolinians found substitutes. North Carolina issued over 150 varieties of notes.

As a result, the Federal government established a national standard for currency after the Civil War. This standard led to the chartering of several national banks, including the First National Bank of Charlotte, which was in 1865 the first North Carolina bank to receive a charter. Later efforts to standardize the financial system led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in 1913.

Source: www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/gallery/cwcur.html

TOP