Confederate
Currency
 Obverse of Criswell's T-64 $500 Feb.y 17th 1864 |
"The Confederate States of America dollar was first issued into circulation in April 1861, when the Confederacy was only two months old, and on the eve of the outbreak of the Civil War. Banknotes were ultimately issued in $1/10, $1/2, $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500, and $1,000 denominations with a variety of designs, issuers and redeemable obligations. The amount of currency issued under the various acts of the Confederate Congress totaled $1.7 billion. Bills were released in 72 different note types in seven series from 1861 through 1864. At first, Confederate currency was accepted throughout the South as a medium of exchange with high purchasing power. As the conflict progressed, however, confidence in the ultimate success waned, the amount of paper money increased, and their dates of redemption were extended further into the future. The inevitable result was depreciation of the currency, and soaring prices characteristic of inflation. For example, by the end of the conflict, a cake of soap could sell for as much as $50 and an ordinary suit of clothes was $2,700. Near the end of the war, the currency became practically worthless as a medium of exchange. When the Confederacy ceased to exist as a political entity at the end of the conflict, the money lost all value as fiat currency. Since there were many types of Confederate notes as well as notes issued by the states of the Confederacy, and since banks could issue their own notes, counterfeiting was a major problem for the Confederacy. Many of these contemporary counterfeits are identifiable today and they can be as valuable to a collector as a real note . . ." — Confederate States of America dollar at Wikipedia
"Walter L. Thomas, County Historian of Mitchell County, North Carolina, describes wartime conditions for women with this picture of Mrs. Aaron Thomas:
She with a large number of small children was compelled to cultivate her corn crop at night by the light of the moon. There were just not enough daylight hours in the day for her to do all the tasks that must be done and still cultivate her crop. She would get all the children to bed and to sleep, and then go out to the fields to work at night. Despite this arduous manual labor, provisions were so scarce that she and her children survived only by the desperate expedient of serving two meals a day instead of the customary three. She and the children became so accustomed to the two-meal-per-day regime that after the war was over and provisions had become plentiful they never really enjoyed the third meal again. During the war this mother had saved her soldier husband's pay to buy a place for themselves when the war was over, and on his return from service all that she could present him was a bundle of worthless Confederate money."— True Tales of the South at War: How Soldiers Fought and Families Lived, 1861-1865, by Clarence Poe (1961)
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