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Counterfeit & "Spurious" Notes
Counterfeit One Hundred-Dollar Note
Dated "Feb. 17th, 1864."
Over-issues of currency, the tightening Union blockade, and rebel defeats after Gettysburg doomed any hopes that southern moneys would recover from their downward spiral. Counterfeiting was but one other persistent problem. Throughout the war, northern and foreign printers produced numerous fake Confederate notes as souvenirs and for clients who smuggled them into the South. One Philadelphia printer advertised to sell $2,000 in Confederate notes for 50 United States cents. Exhibited here are a genuine $100 Confederate note and a counterfeit produced in Havana, Cuba. In a side-by-side comparison, the counterfeit (bottom) is fairly easy to detect. Notice the differences in the details of the soldiers and the lack of refinement of in the counterfeit's central portrait of Lucy Pickens.

Front

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Verso

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