Confederate States of America Dollar - Designs

Designs

The South, being limited in skilled engravers and printers as well as secure printing facilities, often had to make do with unrelated designs in early banknote issues. Some such were abstract depictions of mythological gods and goddesses. Southern themes did prevail with designs of black slaves, naval ships, and historical figures, including George Washington. Images of slaves often had them depicted as smiling or happily carrying about their work. John Jones has recreated these images as large acrylic paintings in a contemporary series called "Confederate Currency: The Color of Money."

Since most of the engravers and bank plates were in the North, Southern printers had to lift by offset or lithographic process scenes that had been used on whatever notes they had access to. Many variations in plates, printing and papers also appear in most of the issues, due in large part to the limits on commerce resulting from the Union embargo of Confederate ports.

Some of the people featured on banknotes include Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Christopher Memminger, Robert M. T. Hunter, Alexander H. Stephens, Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, Clement Clay, George W. Randolph, and Lucy Holcombe Pickens, the wife of the Governor of South Carolina. There was even a bill featuring George Washington.

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Famous quotes containing the word designs:

    He began therefore to invest the fortress of my heart by a circumvallation of distant bows and respectful looks; he then entrenched his forces in the deep caution of never uttering an unguarded word or syllable. His designs being yet covered, he played off from several quarters a large battery of compliments. But here he found a repulse from the enemy by an absolute rejection of such fulsome praise, and this forced him back again close into his former trenches.
    Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)

    I have no scheme about it,—no designs on men at all; and, if I had, my mode would be to tempt them with the fruit, and not with the manure. To what end do I lead a simple life at all, pray? That I may teach others to simplify their lives?—and so all our lives be simplified merely, like an algebraic formula? Or not, rather, that I may make use of the ground I have cleared, to live more worthily and profitably?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    My own thoughts
    Are my companions; my designs and labors
    And aspirations are my only friends.
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)