No matter how much you think you know about a note, every once in a
while something still catches you by surprise.
Take, for example, the 1862 Confederate States of America $1 notes.
They were printed by Blanton Duncan, one of the Confederacy’s printers
who was never too far from controversy.
Characteristically, Blanton Duncan reportedly decided that the first
$1 note issued by the CSA should have enhanced protection against
counterfeiting. He accomplished this by adding a green 1 ONE protector.
This added another step to the printing process (each color had to
be printed separately) and, therefore, also added cost.
CSA Treasury officials took exception to this unsolicited
improvisation and refused to pay Duncan’s invoice.
The rest of the run of more than 2 million notes was produced
without the green protector.
That’s all well and good, but I don’t know how many people have
taken a close look at the vignette on the left end of the note that
appears to be a maiden holding a shield.
“So?” you might wonder. Maiden-holding-shield vignettes, after all,
seemed to be a dime a dozen during the antebellum period. But this
one, I found, is a little different.
Look closely at the shield. Right there is a sun face, a rather
peculiar thing to find on a shield any self-respecting maiden of the
day would be holding.
A little poking around suggests that this appears to have some
connection to the national coats of arms of either Argentina or
Uruguay, at least to my eyes.
But why would Duncan or some other official pick a vignette
incorporating the coat of arms of some South American country? The
answer is probably that the vignette was a stock cut that happened to
be available and was deemed attractive enough to make do.
The objective was, after all, to get these notes into circulation as
quickly as possible. So, even if this were an unusual selection, not
many would have had any idea about the South American connection and
fewer still would care about it, even if they did know.
But, you know collectors; we like to delve into the minutia and
wonder, “Why would they do that?”
Often times the simple answer is:
“Because they could!”