Confederate Currency
Confederate money was printed in every denomination found in the North. This included fractional currency which was needed since there were no Confederate coins in circulation. By the end of the Civil War, over $1 billion worth of paper money printed by the Confederate nation was circulating or stored in warehouses. Since it was easy to counterfeit, considerable amounts were printed in the North and circulated in the South to debase the currency.
Perhaps the most famous of all the counterfeiters was Samuel C. Upham of Philadelphia. Strangely enough, Upham never represented himself as a counterfeiter of Confederate currency; rather, he advertised his lithographed notes as "facsimiles" and "mementos of the rebellion." On the margin of each and every note was printed "Fac-Simile Confederate notes sold, wholesale or retail. by S. C. Upham, 403 Chestnut Street, Phila."
He wrote: "I sold the notes as curiosities--mementos of the rebellion--and advertised them as such in several of the most widely circulated papers in the Union." He went on to say, "During the publication of those facsimile notes I was the 'best abused man' [by the rebels] in the Union. Senator Foote, in a speech before the rebel Congress, at Richmond, in 1862, said I had done more to injure the Confederate cause than General McClellan and his army..."
At the same time, in the South one found reckless printing of paper money not backed by gold or silver in a time when consumer goods were scarce. The result was the greatest inflation ever seen in America with the possible exception of the Revolutionary period.
While inflation was a problem in both the North and the South, it was far worse in the Confederacy. For example, in January 1862 the average value of one gold dollar in Richmond as compared with Confederate Treasury notes was $1.25, by March 1865 it was $60 to $70. In comparison, the average value of one gold dollar in New York compared with U.S. currency was $1.03 in January 1862, and $1.79 in March 1865.
Near the end of the war, Confederate citizens' confidence in their national currency eroded completely. The Southern public began to rely on barter or on U.S. currency obtained through a black market. In fact, the superior value of Northern greenbacks even caused them to be used to some extent in paying Confederate soldiers.