Three Confederate Bills (featuring Hymenopterans and Agricultultural Allegories)

My roommate and I were talking about the history of the United States and the subject of times when states printed their own money came up. One of these times was during the era from 1777 to 1789 when the new nation was governed by the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union (the not-very-successful precursor to the constitution which left the new states plunged in debt and squabbling with each other). Another time when the states printed their own money was during the civil war when the southern states each printed wads of increasingly useless paper money to hold up the faltering southern economy. Sadly I could not find any pretty samples of the former online, but I did discover some images of North Carolina paper money from the Civil War.

The notes are surprisingly lovely with Roman and agrarian symbolism and hand-written copperpoint calligraphy. A the top of this post is a ten-cent note (coins were expensive to make and metals were needed for the war—although soon rampant inflation did away with sub-dollar bills). The hornet’s nest symbolizes anti-Union defiance and military puissance. The second note down is a seventy-five cent note which features the allegorical figure of commerce surrounded by hives of industrious bees which represent prosperity and fruitful labor.  Thhe note below is a twenty-five cent note which features a very Roman looking (and bare-breasted!) imager of the goddess Ceres, the kind mother of agriculture—which was the root and mainstay of the southern economy. Such money became worthless even before the war was lost: money printed with hymenopteran insects and naked ladies must have seemed like a good idea, but apparently it did not hold up the same way as bills with dead presidents and creepy Masonic images!

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