In 1912, the United States Treasury department gifted the University of Missouri libraries a collection of bills from the Confederate States of America. This collection includes 135 monetary notes, all using the Criswell Numbering System.
“Confederate currency was first issued at the beginning of the Civil War and used widely in the South as a legitimate means to purchase goods and services. Some currency was printed by the Confederate States of America as a whole, some by individual states, and some by private banks. The bills in our collection were all issued by the Confederate States of America. Due to various printers, confederate currency tended to vary from printing to printing and state to state. Bills issued by the C.S.A. were hand signed and individually numbered by the Treasurer and Register, however, the duty became taxing with the number of bills produced, so secretaries were hired to sign the bills in later printings. It was not uncommon for notes to be printed on a single side or cut unevenly. Ultimately, by the end of the war, Confederate currency was nearly worthless, in part due to forgery as well as the loss of confidence in the Confederacy” (MU Special Collections Website)
This collection includes 50 cent, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 dollar bills. All the bills in this collection were printed in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. They were printed from 1861 – 1864 and were signed by a variety of treasurers and registers. The bills are in various physical conditions, with many having wrinkles, holes, stains, and tears. Images on the bills included many famous Confederate figures such as Jefferson Davis, R.M.T. Hunter, Judah P. Benjamin, and Lucy Pickens. They also depicted symbols and figures the Confederacy considered important, such as bales of cotton, the goddess of war Minerva, and the capital building in Richmond, Virginia.
This collection was digitized in November of 2019 using a Plustek OpticBook A3000 Plus. They were cropped and straightened using Adobe Photoshop. Photos are in color with an optical resolution of 600 dpi.
