Numismatics of 1861 PART THREE
Editor’s Note: This is a three-part article, the first two parts of which have appeared in previous issues. It is the final installment.
Most of the March 2, 1861, two-year notes were sold to banks in New York, Philadelphia and Boston, although wealthy families purchased them as well. The notes were sold at par and were usually paid for in gold, although unredeemed 1857 Treasury Notes could also have been used. Very few of the original March 2 notes were used as circulating currency, and most were redeemed by the Treasury at the close of the allotted two-year period.
The only surviving $50 circulating note, so far as known, was sold by Heritage at auction in February 2005 for $368,000. Otherwise, all that has been seen by this writer of the original (two-year) March 2 emissions are uniface proofs. The extraordinary collection of U.S. paper money formed by Jim O’Neal, and sold by Heritage in May 2005 at St. Louis, contained the complete four-piece set in proof impressions, all but the $100 with both sides. Unless the same person purchased all of these, it will be a very rare collection that contains all four such notes.
The $22.5 million raised by issuing the original series of March 2 notes barely made a dent in the enormous expenditures facing the government after Fort Sumter.
