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of Orleans, Citizens’ Bank, Mechanics and Traders Bank, Union Bank, and Consolidated Association of Planters—competed to underwrite expanding markets in land, cotton, sugar, and slaves, all of which could be purchased using paper money.
The beauty of bank notes was that as long as the public had confidence in their value, banks could print and circulate more paper currency than the amount of specie kept in their vaults. But when trust in that system failed, as it did when transatlantic credit markets contracted in the late 1830s, so too did banks, leaving businesses and individuals holding worthless paper notes. During the Panic of 1837—one of the worst financial crises in US history—banks suspended specie payments, and creditors ranging from state governments to individual property owners defaulted on their debts. The Panic of 1837 was not the only economic crash of the antebellum period. Markets followed a boom-and-bust pattern throughout the 19th century, with much of the credit available in the South prior to 1865 tied up in cotton and the enslaved laborers who picked it.
The era best represented in Money, Money, Money! is the Civil War, when the United States and its Confederate counterparts, including states, parishes, counties, towns, and even merchants, printed vast quantities of currency. Soon after seceding from the Union in early 1861, the Confederate States of America began printing its own paper banknotes. The earliest were printed in New York by the National Bank Note Company and smuggled across Union lines. Subsequent issues were printed in New Orleans;
Richmond, Virginia; and Columbia, South Carolina.
A.	and B. City of New Orleans, First Municipality, 200-dollar note (reverse and obverse sides)
October 30, 1837; engraving
by John V. Childs, engraver (New Orleans)
gift of Boyd Cruise, 1947.28
C.	Magee and George-(saddlers) three-dollar note
January 21, 1862; engraving
by Price Current Office, printer (New Orleans)
1970.19.4
D.	St. John the Baptist Parish three-dollar note (obverse side)
1862; engraving
2015.0426.3
E.	French sou (reverse side)
1722; copper
minted in La Rochelle, France 1978.137
Summer 2016
3