Financial History 100th Edition Double Issue (Spring/Summer 2011) | Page 44
Image used with permission from A Guide Book of Counterfeit Confederate Currency,
© Whitman Publishing, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Counterfeit $5 Confederate note printed by Samuel Curtis Upham, with his tag attached.
brisk. One customer after another came
in, and they all wanted the same thing:
not the Gazette but its competitor, the
Philadelphia Inquirer. Even after Upham
ran out of copies, people kept stopping by
to look for it. Puzzled, he asked one of his
patrons what made that day’s Inquirer so
sought-after.
The answer was on page one. Just below
the Gothic type of the newspaper’s title,
the editors had printed a copy of a $5 Confederate note. The Inquirer’s reproduction
was primitive: the original had been beautifully executed in red and black ink, with
finely textured etching that disappeared
in the transfer to newsprint. But people
didn’t care: they had never seen rebel
money before and were fascinated by it.
Upham wasted no time. He raced to
the Inquirer’s cast-iron headquarters, a
block away from his store, and persuaded
the publisher William W. Harding to sell
him a plate of the note. Then he called
on a nearby printer and ordered 3,000
copies on French letter paper. When the
bills were ready, he brought them back to
his shop and sold them for a cent each.
Along the bottom margin of the notes he
included a thin strip that read in small
print “Fac-simile Confederate Note — Sold
Wholesale and Retail, by S.C. Upham,
403 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia.” They
sold extremely well. The novelty thrilled
Philadelphians, most of whom expected
the war to be brief and glorious. They
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