> The American Civil War took place from
April 12th 1861 to May 26th 1865 (4 years, 1 month and 2 weeks). The Southern
States suffered currency counterfeiting, rampant hyper-inflation and a
multitude of forged tax receipts.
> To reduce monetary forgeries, the Secretary of the
Treasury for the Confederate States of America [CSA] outsourced the
manufacturing of special printing electrotype plates to S. Straker & Sons
(Great Britain). They were designed for more complex back printing on the
Confederate 1864 - issue Treasury Notes that were never used… OH WHAT A
STORY!
> At the start of 1863, the Union blockade in the
American Civil War was capturing over half of all blockade runners attempting
to enter the South. The Union Navy had crippled the CSA’s cotton exports (98%
of their Economy) and prevented smugglers running arms and ammunition into any
of the CSA’s eight major ports along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
One of these ports, Wilmington North Carolina, enjoyed
protection in the shadow of Fort Fisher and relative success in the face of the
blockade. But after March 1864, the CSA officials abandoned hope that a special
set of Chemicograph printing plates for their final series of currency would
ever reach Wilmington’s defensing wall at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.
> Christopher Memminger, the first CSA Secretary of the
Treasury, approved outsourcing the manufacture of those new printing plates.
S.G. Jamison, one of his staff, wrote in a report that “The style is so
different in the two countries”, and so the new notes would be more difficult
for the Union to imitate. The CSA hired Straker to create the plates. Thay made
them using an electrotyping process, a drawn-out electric chemical procedure
called ‘Chemicograph’. Once completed, they were first shipped to Nassau in the
West Indies on multiple voyages and then were to be run by those smugglers into
Wilmington. Well, did NOT work out! The Union Navy captured most… if not all of
them.
> For all their detail however, the plates were
never used for issued CSA currency due to their seizure. An entry in
the American Journal of Numismatics a decade later mentions a man named Charles
Chaplin had purchased some of the plates (found in the attic of a CSA General!)
before they were melted for much needed WAR scrap metal. A common practice of
the Union Navy after confiscating cargo from blockade runners.
> In the early 20th century one complete set came into
the possession of Philip H. Chase (a Harvard and MIT Engineering
Graduate, prominent collector and author of several works on CSA currency – his
passion!). He struck limited editions from them starting around 1949. His
articles and advertisements appeared in ‘The Numismatist’ magazine throughout
the 1950s. He then eventually donated the original plates to the Smithsonian
Institution Washington D.C., where a full set still resides.
> Chase’s reprints are the only way collectors can see
what the intended backs would have looked like.
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Thank You for Looking! I'm an 'OLD' guy just trying to survive my RETIREMENT! Regards, Scott 😊