NEW BOOK: SIGNERS AND ISSUERS OF CONFEDERATE BONDS

The Confederate Treasury made a consequential decision in its early days, contrary to that of the U.S. Treasury: to have Treasury officials hand-sign each and every Treasury note and bond. This decision seemed reasonable if the war were short, but after four years of conflict the Confederacy eventually printed over $1.5 billion in notes and over $700 million in bonds. This meant that 80 million notes needed to be hand-signed by the Register and Treasurer, and nearly 1 million bonds needed to be hand-signed by the Register, initialed by two clerks as Recorder and Enterer, and its coupons signed by another clerk. Clearly too immense of a job for the Register and Treasurer themselves, the Treasury hired clerks to do the signing. In the end, 371 Treasury employees hand-signed Treasury notes and nearly 100 employees signed and initialed bonds and their coupons.

In our 2022 book Confederate Treasury Notes: The Signers and Their Stories, we told the story of the signers and origins of the Treasury notes. Though initially all Treasury employees were men, by the end of the war all signers of Treasury notes were women. Overall, two-thirds of the note signers were women. Many of these women were young and most were of high social standing, privileged, and educated, not to mention with good penmanship. This decision to employ women as Treasury clerks had enormous and long-lasting social consequences: their experiences, responsibilities, and opportunities opened the door for post-war work opportunities and choices that women never had before, forever changing the societies in which they lived.

In our new book, The Signers and Issuers of Confederate Bonds, we add a new chapter to this story by describing the operation of the Treasury in issuing its bonds. As with Treasury notes, Treasury bonds were signed by many employees: six men signed the bonds as Register or Assistant Register, 32 women and 22 men signed bond coupons as clerks, and nearly 40 men initialed bonds as Recorders or Enterers to show that the bonds were officially listed in the Treasury's registers. Our new book identifies and gives biographies of these men and women. We present a section coupling the name of each signer or initialer of Treasury bonds and coupons and an image of the signer's signature or initials, which allows readers to quickly and easily identify the signers and initialers of any bond or coupon. We also describe the operations in the Treasury Department and the professional activities of these employees including the process of issuing bonds.

 

Many of the bond signers and initialers had remarkable lives. Martha Mittie Morris, a signer of bond coupons and notes, was an indomitable fixture in the Richmond art scene into the 20th century. Sarah Pumphrey, a coupon signer, owned an estate as feme sole with her husband as trustee, a rarity in that time. Margaret Bronaugh, a coupon signer, was a U.S. government clerk before and after signing Confederate bond coupons. Monimia Cary was an affluent single mother who besides signing bond coupons and notes was also a hospital nurse. Coupon signer William W. Dennison was a controversial U.S. agent of the Pawnee and Otoe-Missouria tribes in Nebraska before the war and father of Eliza Dennison who signed Confederate Treasury notes. George Dabney, a coupon signer, and James M. Boyd, an Enterer who initialed bonds, were consummate university professors. Henry D. Capers, who was Chief Clerk of the Treasury and initialed bonds as Enterer, was a physician, soldier, lawyer, financial officer, entrepreneur, professor, and biographer. William R. Teller, a coupon signer, was coal merchant in Cuba with former Confederate General Fitzhugh Lee. Robert Tyler, the Register of the Treasury and signer of bonds and coupons, was the son of former U.S. President John Tyler.

Together, our two-volume series brings to life the financial documents of the Confederate Treasury that are so popular with many collectors. It places these documents and the people who produced them in the context of their historical and societal times. This perspective personalizes Treasury bonds and notes and gives numismatists new ways of collecting them.

 

• A history of the Confederate Treasury Department and its Note Bureau and Register's Office where Treasury bonds were issued.
• Original research on the Treasury employees who hand-signed and initialed their names on bonds and their coupons. These include six men who as Register or Assistant Register signed bonds, 32 women and 22 men who as clerks signed bond coupons, and 31 men who as Recorders or Enterers initialed bonds to show that they were listed in Treasury's official registers.
• A detailed description of the professional activities of the employees in the Register's Office including the process of issuing bonds.
• A section coupling the name of each signer or initialer of Treasury bonds and coupons and an image of that signer's signature or initials, allowing quick identification of the signers and initialers.
• 164 page soft cover book with perfect binding, sized 8 1/2 inch by 11 inches

ORDER INFORMATION
Cost: $29.95 + postage ($5 domestic)

Payment Methods:
Electronic: Venmo @Charles-Derby-1, Zelle charlesderbyga@yahoo.com
Check by Mail: Charles Derby, 204 Sycamore Ridge Dr., Decatur, GA 30030

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NEW BOOK: CONFEDERATE NOTE SIGNERS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v25/esylum_v25n44a02.html)

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