A Counterfeiter's Paradise
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202, A small, slightly built
Memminger’s early life: Capers, The Life and Times of C. G. Memminger, pp. 7–36; for his career as a lawyer and politician, see pp. 136–289. See also Hammond, Sovereignty and an Empty Purse, pp. 258–259.
202–203, If Chase’s job
Difficulty of Memminger’s position: Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters, pp. 319–321. Confederacy’s first Treasury notes: Richard Cecil Todd, Confederate Finance (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1954), pp. 90–93.
CHAPTER EIGHT
204, The prisoners began
The scene: Daily Richmond Examiner, June 30, 1862, and Joseph Gibbs, Three Years in the “Bloody Eleventh”: The Campaigns of a Pennsylvania Reserves Regiment (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), pp. 127–130.
204–205, An onlooker caught
“a counterfeit of the Philadelphia manufacture”: Daily Richmond Examiner, June 30, 1862. “This note is well calculated…”: Richmond Daily Dispatch, April 15, 1862.
205, In May, the editors
“Who is this man Upham?…”: Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 31, 1862. “well known to many Virginians…”: Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 2, 1862. The Dispatch probably had the largest readership in the South, according to Ford Risley, The Civil War: Primary Documents on Events from 1860 to 1865 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004), p. 5.
205–206, The venom of
“The attempt to pass…”: Daily Richmond Examiner, June 30, 1862.
206, Upham’s method had
Upham’s advertising campaign: George B. Tremmel, A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency: History, Rarity, and Values (Atlanta, GA: Whitman, 2007), pp. 40–41. On p. 40, Tremmel reproduces the March broadside.
206–207, At first it seemed
A copy of the May flyer, dated May 30, 1862, is held by the Books & Other Texts Department of the Library Company of Philadelphia.
207–208, Upham faced lots
Origins of counterfeit Confederate notes: Judith Ann Benner, Fraudulent Finance: Counterfeiting and the Confederate States: 1861–1865 (Hillsboro, TX: Hill Junior College Press, 1970), pp. 26–35, and Tremmel, A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency, pp. 23–28. Illicit cotton trade, including figure about prices: Stuart D. Brandes, Warhogs: A History of War Profits in America (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), pp. 92–95.
208, The biggest passers
Role of soldiers in passing counterfeits: Benner, Fraudulent Finance, pp. 26–30, and Tremmel, A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency, p. 26. Philadelphia was a railway transfer point for soldiers from New England, New York, and New Jersey heading south, according to Russell F. Weigley, “The Border City in Civil War, 1854–1865,” Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, ed. Russell F. Weigley, Nicholas B. Wainwright, and Edwin Wolf, 2nd (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), pp. 398–399.
208–209, Without the Northern
Pope’s command and the influx of counterfeits: Benner, Fraudulent Finance, pp. 28–29. “subsist upon the country”: from Pope’s General Order No. 5, quoted in John J. Hennessy, Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999 [1993]), p. 14; see pp. 14–20 for more on Pope’s orders. “fortified with exhaustless…”: Edward Alfred Pollard, Southern History of the War: The Second Year of the War (New York: Charles B. Richardson, 1864), p. 94; on the same page, in a footnote, Pollard quotes an Upham circular found on a Yankee prisoner. Aside from northern Virginia, the Ozarks region between Missouri and Arkansas was another major entry point for counterfeit Confederate money passed by Union soldiers; see John Bradbury, “‘The Bank of Fac Simile’: Economic Warfare in the White River Valley, 1862–1863,” White River Valley Historical Quarterly 32.3 (Spring 1993), pp. 7–8.
209–210, Most Union commanders
Nathan Levi’s arrest and “confederate notes were not money…”: Lowell Daily Citizen and News, September 16, 1862. Accusations that Sherman knowingly allowed soldiers in his jurisdiction to pass counterfeits: Benner, Fraudulent Finance, p. 31. Case in Culpeper, Virginia: George Alfred Townsend, Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, and his Romaunt Abroad During the War (New York: Blelock, 1866), pp. 244–245. Another Union officer who didn’t approve of counterfeiting was Brigadier General Milo S. Hascall, who issued an order in Ohio threatening to punish his men for passing fake bills; quoted in Tremmel, A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency, p. 70.
210, The role of Union
“wherever an execrable…”: Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 31, 1862. A key factor in the Southern view of Northern economic practices was the Panic of 1857, which reaffirmed the belief among Southerners that their economy was beholden to irresponsible Yankee speculators; see Kenneth M. Stampp, America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 [1990]), pp. 229–230. “[s]peculators and thieves…”: from a diary entry dated February 16, 1863, included in Julia Ellen LeGrand Waitz, The Journal of Julia LeGrand, New Orleans, 1862–1863, ed. Kate Mason Rowland and Agnes E. Croxall (Richmond: Everett Waddey, 1911), pp. 131–132.
211, On March 10, 1862
The article, including all quotes: Philadelphia Inquirer, March 10, 1862.
211–212, The counterfeiter almost
I’m grateful to George Tremmel for corresponding with me about the Inquirer article. He made a persuasive case that the unnamed counterfeiter in the report couldn’t have been Upham.
212, If Seward or Stanton
Union sponsorship of counterfeiting is the subject of endless speculation. Brent Hughes, in The Saga of Sam Upham: “Yankee Scoundrel,” rev. ed. (Inman, SC: Published by the author, 1988), p. 12, sketches a potential scenario whereby federal officials gave English banknote paper seized from Confederate blockade-runners to Upham in order to aid his business. Paper wouldn’t be the only material officials could provide; Confederate plates also fell into Union hands, according to Benner, Fraudulent Finance, p. 12. However, as Stephen Mihm points out in A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 325, no evidence exists to support the theory that Union authorities conspired to aid Upham or any other counterfeiter of Southern currency.
213, The legislation took
Impact and significance of the Legal Tender Act: Bray Hammond, Sovereignty and an Empty Purse: Banks and Politics in the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 225–229. The law specified that the greenbacks couldn’t be used to pay import duties or the interest on government bonds and notes; in those cases, payment had to be in coin.
213, Such a dramatic
Debate in Congress over legal tender: ibid., pp. 179–224. Representative Lovejoy’s argument: Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters, p. 313.
214, While Hamilton had
For more on the radical nature of the expanded federal role, see Hammond, Sovereignty and an Empty Purse, pp. 25–26, 226–227. Union’s suppression of civil liberties: Clinton L. Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), pp. 224–239. The Confederacy also suspended habeas corpus, although to a more limited degree.
214–215, To adapt the Constitution
“If no other means…”: from an address by Thaddeus Stevens, dated January 22, 1862, quoted in Hammond, Sovereignty and an Empty Purse, p. 193.
215, Among the many
Chase’s stubbornness on the specie issue and opposition to the Legal Tender Act: ibid., pp. 60–186, and Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1987), pp. 145–150.
215–216, The qualities that
December crisis: Hammond, Sovereignty and an Empty Purse, pp. 131–163. “a thousand dollars…”: from a letter by Chase to John T. Trowbridge, quoted ibid., p. 82.
216–217, Christopher Memminger
Financial plight of the South: ibid.,
pp. 254–260, and Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters, pp. 319–321. Proliferation of shinplasters and “greasy, smelt bad…”: Benner, Fraudulent Finance, pp. 16–17. Some of the Confederate notes bore interest; the March 1861 issue bore an annual interest rate of 3.65 percent, or one cent a day for each one hundred dollars, due in one year. Memminger hoped that people would consider them an investment and hold them rather than spend them.
217, None of these
Confederacy’s resistance to making paper notes a legal tender: Hammond, Sovereignty and an Empty Purse, pp. 255–257.
217, Memminger also dealt
Memminger’s logistical problems: Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters, pp. 321–323, and Benner, Fraudulent Finance, pp. 5–10. Stone lithography technique and its -disadvantages: Tremmel, A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency, pp. 3, 309–310. Number of different engraving firms and note varieties: Benner, Fraudulent Finance, pp. 11–12. It wasn’t until the December 2, 1862, issue of Confederate Treasury notes that Memminger issued only one design for each denomination, according to Tremmel, A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency, p. 17.
218, Counterfeiters exploited the
“[W]e are well aware…”: from a letter by Memminger to Ebenezer Starnes, dated August 20, 1861, included in Raphael P. Thian, Correspondence of the Treasury Department of the Confederate States of America, 1861–’65, appendix, pt. 4 (Washington, DC, 1879), pp. 176–177. I’m grateful to George Tremmel, Bob Schreiner, and Tom Carson for digitizing the works of Raphael P. Thian.
218–219, Nearly a thousand
Absence of news from the front: Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 22, 1862. Scene at the jailhouse and the gallows and “a number of painted…”: Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 23, 1862. Relative calm in Richmond after McClelland’s failed Virginia campaign: Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate State of Richmond: A Biography of the Capital (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), pp. 100–102; on p. 22, Thomas includes a detailed map of Civil War–era Richmond showing the route of the Virginia Central Railroad.
219, John Richardson, alias
Richardson’s backstory, trial, and sentencing: Benner, Fraudulent Finance, pp. 40–42, and Richmond Daily Dispatch, 1862: April 2, 7; May 8, 22; August 14, 18, 21, 22, and 23. Richardson was convicted in the Eastern District of Virginia on April 5, 1862, and sentenced to “be hanged by the neck until he be dead,” according to William Morrison Robinson, Justice in Grey: A History of the Judicial System of the Confederate States of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941), p. 206. Robinson discusses the cases of other convicted counterfeiters; many were pardoned or saw their sentences commuted by Jefferson Davis.
219–220, Executing an immigrant
“skulking out of…”: Richmond Daily Dispatch, April 7, 1862. Counterfeiting crisis: Tremmel, A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency, pp. 5–7, and Benner, Fraudulent Finance, p. 15. “The panic and excitement…”: from a letter by B. C. Pressley to Memminger, dated August 25, 1862, included in Raphael P. Thian, Correspondence of the Treasury Department of the Confederate States of America, 1861–’65, appendix, pt. 5 (Washington, DC, 1880), pp. 604–605. See also various letters to Memminger on subject of counterfeiting on pp. 601–607.
220, Memminger responded by
Memminger’s measures: Tremmel, A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency, pp. 6–7.
220, Meanwhile, the Yankee
Arrest of William P. Lee: Daily Richmond Examiner, July 26, 1862. Union presence in Elizabeth City: Alex Christopher Meekins, Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and the Civil War: A History of Battle and Occupation (Charleston: History Press, 2007), pp. 42–43.
220–221, Despite the heavy
All quotes: Daily Richmond Examiner, July 26, 1862. While the government in Richmond couldn’t legally compel people to accept its Treasury notes, individual states passed laws that monetized graybacks by requiring banks to accept them on deposit and use them to settle interbank balances. They were also made receivable in payment for state taxes and dues; see Gary Pecquet, George Davis, and Bryce Kanago, “The Emancipation Proclamation, Confederate Expectations, and the Price of Southern Bank Notes,” Southern Economic Journal 70.3 (January 2004), pp. 618–619.
221, In August, while
Upham’s August flyer is reproduced in Tremmel, A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency, p. 41.
221–222, By the summer
The Second Battle of Bull Run took place on August 28–30, 1862, and Lee ordered his troops to cross the Potomac into Maryland on September 4, 1862; see James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 81–90. Lead-up to emancipation: David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 373–376. The Battle of Antietam: Harry Hansen, The Civil War: A History (New York: Signet Classic, 2002 [1961]), pp. 249–263, and Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2008), pp. 66–69.
222–223, Lincoln’s embrace of
Shifting perception of the war in the South: Pecquet, Davis, and Kanago, “The Emancipation Proclamation,” pp. 622–623. “publicly advertised…”: from Davis’s message, included in Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865, vol. 5 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1905), p. 297; for the full message, see pp. 297–299. “[P]rinted advertisements…”: from Memminger’s report, included in Raphael P. Thian, Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury of the Confederate States of America, 1861–’65, appendix, pt. 3 (Washington, DC, 1878), p. 76.
223, These warnings prompted
Debate in Confederate Congress: Tremmel, A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency, pp. 8–10. “principal places of trade”: from a letter by Memminger to Alexander Hamilton Stephens, dated August 26, 1862, included in Thian, Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury of the Confederate States of America, 1861–’65, appendix, pt. 3, pp. 81–82. Approval of death penalty for captured enemy soldiers with counterfeit money: Tremmel, A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency, p. 10. “I entirely concur…”: from a letter by Memminger to B. C. Pressley, dated October 17, 1862, included in Raphael P. Thian, Correspondence of the Treasury Department of the Confederate States of America, 1861–’65, appendix, pt. 4, p. 367.
223–224, On Christmas Day
The scene and “[N]o little gunpowder…”: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1866), pp. 224–225. See also Joseph G. Dawson, “Jones, John Beauchamp,” American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-00879.html. Weather in December 1862 in Richmond: Robert K. Krick, Civil War Weather in Virginia (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007), pp. 78–80.
224, Jones was better
“A portion of the people…”: Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, p. 200. Transformation of Richmond into a rowdy capital: Thomas, The Confederate State of Richmond, pp. 65–70; Thomas discusses the winter of 1862 on pp. 111–112 and the city’s population on pp. 24, 128. For more on prostitution in wartime Richmond, see Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 13, 1862. Rise of gambling, prostitution, and crime: Ernest B. Furgurson, Ashes of Glory: Richmond at War (New York: Knopf, 1996), pp. 99–100.
224–225, What made life
Rising prices: Thomas, The Confederate State of Richmond, pp. 73–74, 87, 113–114. Cost of a Christmas turkey in 1862: Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, p. 224. Steady decline of the grayback: Marc D. Weidenmier, “Turning Points in the U.S. Civil War: Views from the Grayback Market,” Southern Economic Journal 68.4 (April 2002), pp. 886–889. Drawing on quotations from Southern newspapers, Weidenmier charts the grayback price of a gold dollar over the course of the war. On August 15, 1862, after holding steady at two Confederate dollars per gold dollar since May 2, the price of gold in graybacks begins to increase. “He says Mr. M.’s head…”: Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, p
. 211. “headstrong, haughty…”: ibid., p. 242.
225, To his credit
Memminger’s efforts to warn Congress: Richard Cecil Todd, Confederate Finance (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1954), pp. 109–120. “Like the moon’s…”: from a report by Memminger delivered on January 10, 1863, quoted ibid., p. 110. Vicious cycle of Confederate paper credit: Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters, pp. 328–329. For more on Confederate inflation and the vilification of Memminger, see Furgurson, Ashes of Glory, pp. 190–191.
225, Too much paper
The link between war news, Southern expectations, and Confederate values has been well documented: see Pecquet, Davis, and Kanago, “The Emancipation Proclamation,” pp. 616–630, and Weidenmier, “Turning Points in the U.S. Civil War,” pp. 875–890.
225–226, In the second
Prices of a gold dollar in graybacks: Weidenmier, “Turning Points in the U.S. Civil War,” p. 887. Impact of Antietam, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Northern congressional elections on the value of the grayback: ibid., pp. 875–885, and Pecquet, Davis, and Kanago, “The Emancipation Proclamation,” pp. 617–629. As Weidenmier shows, the value of the grayback didn’t perfectly track Confederate war fortunes: it didn’t always rise with a battlefield victory and fall with a battlefield defeat. However, the evidence does suggest that the grayback’s decline from August 1862 onward reflected the hardening Southern view of the war as a longer, costlier conflict—and the corresponding spike in skepticism over whether the Confederate government would ever be able to exchange its notes for specie. Even if the notes couldn’t be redeemed for coin, a negotiated peace would have left Southern state governments intact; their courts could uphold the legality of the grayback and make arrangements for its retirement. This possibility also became more remote as the war went on.