Volume 32, Number 3 - Spring 1993
"The Bank of Fac Simile"
Economic Warfare in the White River Valley, 1862-1863
By John Bradbury
Economic warfare is not a new concept and it does not require military genius to realize that an enemy can be largely defeated by destroying the economic props of its military power. William T. Sherman’s destruction of the industry and food-producing areas of the Confederacy during his March to the Sea is the classic example of purposeful economic warfare during the Civil War. But even before Sherman set out to make the enemy howl in the Deep South, Union soldiers in the Ozarks had been working on the Confederate economy in a manner that was also personally profitable. The agent of economic warfare in southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas was counterfeit Confederate currency.
The counterfeit trade seems to have grown up in the fall of 1862 when the federal Army of the Frontier faced Major General Thomas C. Hindman’ s resurgent Confederate army in northwest Arkansas. The details of the scheme are related in letters and memoirs by Iowa soldiers. Although it must have been difficult to keep such a good thing quiet, there is no mention of counterfeit money in any of the accounts by soldiers from other states who served in the Army of the Frontier.
The earliest note of the scheme comes from Captain Chester Barney, whose 20th Iowa Infantry bivouacked 29 September 1862 at "Camp Mush" (Pond Springs) not far from the old battlefield at Wilson’s Creek:
It was here that I learned that many of our men had commenced a large business in Confederate currency, or what seemed just as good, the fac simile money, which was deemed by the rebel sympathizers better and safer than greenbacks. Having learned of this weakness of our "Southern brethren" before leaving Rolla, many of them had bought large amounts of this spurious trash which only purported to be an imitation of the Confederate note, and were now passing it off freely in the way of trade, but always in such amounts as required at least some change in return. We met here many who were willing to exchange "Lincoln Greenbacks for this fac simile stuff, dollar for dollar, and as the boys had purchased it at Rolla for about the original cost of the paper, they made quite a handsome profit in this transaction. ... The Bank of"Fac Simile" will have a large run if it redeems all its notes our boys put in circulation in Missouri and Arkansas. (1)
Captain Barney went on to say that "Gus," a former slave accompanying the 20th Iowa Infantry, had turned entrepreneur. Gus had even passed off to one suspicious Ozarker a large, strange-looking note which he claimed was a "new style" Confederate note. It proved to be a label from a patent medicine bottle.
William 0. Gulick and troopers of the 1st Iowa Cavalry found the same advantageous economic attitudes existed further south. From Cross Hollows, Arkansas, he wrote to his mother on 26 October 1862:
What people there are her [sic] are strong secesh & very ignorant. They will take Confederate notes rather than Lincoln greenbacks. And the joke is they don't know the genuine C. S. scrip. So many of the boys have sent to St. Louis and got shinplasters struck off at .50cts per $100.00 and (sell) (trade) them here for their full face value and in some cases get Lincoln green in change—(2)
The word must have spread among the Iowa troops of the Army of the Frontier, but doesn’t seem to have gotten to the natives who were taking the worthless money. However, the printers in St. Louis may have capitalized on the sudden interest in rebel money by raising their rates for printing the bogus bills. Walter Lee, the regimental quartermaster sergeant of the 22nd Iowa Infantry at Rolla, learned of the lucrative trade from another Iowa soldier headed home from the front. Lacking any opportunity at Rolla to make money for himself, Lee sounded almost envious as he described the scheme to his father on 30 November 1862:
Sam Mitchel... took home four good horses with him. He bought them with Confederate scrip. He say’s the boy’s are making money down there They send to St. Louis and buy this imitation Confederate money for about 3 cts on the dollar and buy any thing they want of the secesh and get green backs for change He says they would rather have that than our money. (3)
The trade in spurious Confederate money continued after the Battle of Prairie Grove in December 1862.
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Even after that battle, which resulted in the virtual dissolution of the rebel army in northern Arkansas, southern sympathizers still accepted Confederate currency. Sergeant Benjamin McIntyre’s regiment, the 19th Iowa Infantry, was posted in northwest Arkansas after the battle. At a camp on Osage Creek in Carroll County, he noted in his diary on 11 January 1863:
The people in the neighborhood of our camp, all of which are protected by orders from our commanders, are very accommodating — Selling us anything they have we wish & and will either take Confederate or greenback notes for the same & many of our boys have a pretty good supply of down south money. (4)
Sergeant McIntyre’s comment is the last known reference to the Army of the Frontier’s economic warfare in the Ozarks. When the army left for Vicksburg the counterfeiting scheme seems to have left with the troops.
Perhaps the secesh finally pulled the wool from their eyes and refused to take bogus money any longer, or perhaps the Union victories of 1862-1863 finally debased both genuine and counterfeit Confederate currency to the point that it was truly worthless.
Confederate money today is highly collectible and is frequently seen in antique shops in the Ozarks. Souvenir shops often carry reproductions which bear the legend "facsimile" as part of the engraving. Somewhere there must be a shop which has a few pieces of the "genuine counterfeit" article. Let the buyer beware, as they say, or the soldiers of the Army of the Frontier might have the last laugh.
Editor’s note: Civil War specialist John Viessman provided samples of money issued during the 1860s that we include with this article, beginning right page.
Notes
1. Chester Barney, Recollections of Field Service With The Twentieth Iowa Infantry Volunteers (Davenport, Ia.: Davenport Gazette, 1865), 54-55.
2. Max H. Geyer, ed., "The Journal and Letters of William 0. Gulick," Iowa Journal of History and Politics 28 (1930), 564.
3. John W. Lee to father, John Walter Lee papers, State Historical Society of Iowa—Iowa City.
4. Benjamin F. McIntyre, Federals On the Frontier, ed. by Nannie M. Tilley (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963), 97.
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