What Are The Intricacies In The Currency Reform Act Of 1864

In April of 1861 the bloodiest war that America had ever been involved with broke out between the states in the Union and the Confederate States of America. This war was costly for each side in terms of man power and finances. In order to counteract the financial drain that the war was putting on the Confederacy’s economy the treasury began producing sheets of bonds that could be bought by the public and then sold back to the Confederate government at the end of the war. I am interested in researching these bonds because I have grown up seeing them in my house for as long as I can remember. My family has always had 4 prints of these bonds hanging in our house . After having looked at these bonds for so long, I have noticed the intricacies

Burdekin and Farrokh K. Langdana there a table that outlines the receipts and expenditures of the confederacy from February seventeenth, 1861 to October first, 1864. From studying this table it is easy to see how much money was raised from bond purchases during small periods of time. Interestingly enough, the table is able to reflect the Currency Reform Act of 1864 because the value of bonds sold from October 1 1863 to April 1 1864 jumps dramatically from approximately one hundred fifty-five million dollars in bonds sold to two hundred seventy-three million dollars in bonds sold. This jump was caused by many people going to trade in their large denomination bills for Confederate bonds that payed four percent interest. Over the nearly four years covered by this table the cumulative sum of all of the bonds sold totaled approximately five hundred thirty-one million dollars. This represents a little more than twenty-three percent of the total revenue of two billion dollars taken in by the Confederate government from February of 1861 to October 1864. The five hundred thirty-one million dollars raised also helped pay for a little more than twenty-five prevent of the Confederacies total expenditures of the majority of the war. After looking over the data it becomes fairly easily to tell that Confederate bonds were decently effective at funding the confederacy since they were able to pay for one

To even be able to print the bonds with all of the intricacies and various designs, someone had to engrave a printing plate with various tools that were used to remove very small pieces of the plate at a time. Typically it would take a very good engraver a very long time usually a few months to do so. Once the plates were engraved they would be fitted to the printing press. This is where one of the major differences from today and then occurs, the printing presses that they were using the rotary printing press still which ran relatively slow compared to the blinding speed of modern day automated presses. The next step in the process would be to ink the plates, begin printing onto the paper, and finally trim the newly printed bonds or bills. If someone looks at the bond they will notice that the main security feature on the bonds is the intricacy of the printing its self. This is the other major difference between the printing of currency in the 1860’s to modern day. Then they just used intricacy to deter counterfeiters but now the United States Bureau of Printing and Engraving uses intricacies, security threads, color shifting ink, watermarks, and holographic strips to deter