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Auctions Bring New ABNC Die Use to Fore
 | By Fred L. Reed III, Bank Note Reporter
January 09, 2008 |
Last fall I wrote here about American Bank Note Co. die #141, which brought President Abraham Lincoln's visage to the public on millions and millions of U.S. Demand Notes and Legal Tender Notes issued during the Civil War. The use of Charles Burt's Lincoln image on these greenbacks was a political statement. It was meant to win over public opinion to accepting a fiat currency under the exigencies of war, and also to bind public sentiment to the successful prosecution of that armed conflict.
I recently signed a book contract with Whitman Publishing to author a book Abraham Lincoln, Image of His Greatness: Ideal, Idol & Icon, which will give me the opportunity to reflect upon a half century of personal Lincoln awareness. This book will provide me a canvas to expand upon my conviction that money images helped create the Lincoln persona that has carried down to our present time. If all goes according to plan, the book will be out later this year, in plenty of time to capture public enthusiasm surrounding Lincoln's birth bicentennial in 2009.
The Lincoln columns last fall struck a responsive chord with Bank Note Reporter readers, and this time I will follow up with newly elicited information. Next time I will be able to return in earnest to the Legal Tender counterfeiting story which began in an abbreviated fashion last month.
More on Aug. 10, 1861
First, however, lets get down to basics on the issue of federal Demand Notes. For years, the Friedberg reference Paper Money of the United States (which we all have used for 55 years and counting!) has speculated that the date Aug. 10, 1861, which appears on U.S. Demand Notes was the first day this currency was issued to the public.(1) In this column in Chapter 30 several months ago, the present author reported that Demand Notes were officially first issued to the public on Aug. 26. I had good reason to publish that date (which I also had put forth more than a decade ago in another publication), because I was relying on information provided by the Treasurer of the United States Jas. Gilfillan.(2)
Additionally, I have recently found that the New York Times reported on Aug. 6, 1861, that the plates for the $5, $10 and $20 Demand Notes were then "in preparation by the American Bank Note Company of this City; but it will be a fortnight (i.e. two weeks, fourteen nights), perhaps, before the work is completed."(3) Demand Notes could not possibly have been issued to the public on Aug. 10!
But the question persisted: if Aug. 10 weren't the date of first issue, why was it important enough to inscribe on the Demand Notes? Additional light on this dilemma is now available by way of an article published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, ironically enough on that very date, Aug. 10, 1861.(4)
The main thrust of this lengthy article was to recount Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase's attempts to interest large and small investors in purchasing the newly authorized 7.3 percent interest-bearing treasury notes, authorized by the Acts of July 17 and Aug. 5, 1861, in amounts of $50-$5,000. Chase had published a circular to that effect, the newspaper noted.
According to the article, the 10th of August, 1861, was chosen as the effective issue date for accrual of interest for the interest-bearing notes, which themselves (for reasons not clear) bear the date of Aug. 19, 1861.(5) What this Aug. 10 date has to do with the non-interest-bearing Demand Notes, which were also authorized by the Acts of July 17 and Aug. 5, 1861, is still unclear to the present writer. Perhaps, locating Chase's circular, or a close reading of the 1861 Finance Report would clear these questions up.
Lincoln die #141 follow up
Good feedback on this series of columns is a continuing pleasure. Reader Leslie Deerderf calls attention to a seeming omission in a previous installment of this series, wherein I quote poet and Lincoln historian Carl Sandburg's appraisal of the importance of Lincoln's image on our paper money, but without offering a citation.
Sharp eye (I'm glad to see BNR readers are carefully following these articles). For Leslie and others who may have wondered about my lapse, I'll go you one better. I'll show you Sandburg's own words as Figure 1. In Sandburg's summary chapter on previous Lincoln biographers in his 1940 Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln biography,(6) he reproduces the Lincoln die #141 image from a $10 Demand Note and offers his insightful opinion which is illustrated here.
Sandburg wrote: "On the 50-cent greenbacks and on the $10 bill (above) a steel engraving representing Lincoln's face became familiar to all who looked at it."
We also can supply additional details on the item shown as Figure 4 in that study (Reed-5 in the "genealogy" listing, BNR, September 2007, p. 56), a counterfeit detector plate. As noted in my prior text, author Winfred Porter Truesdell described this plate as bearing either "Plate 3" or "Plate 4." This time around we show a similar redacted vignette plate card with the label "Plate 3" and the imprint "AMERICAN BANK NOTE COMPANY." Contrast that to the item shown in my previous column with the imprint "American Bank Note Co., New-York & Boston" and the plate number cut off, which we presume now to have been "Plate 4."
The differing plate numbers and imprints indicate the two examples came from different counterfeit detectors, or different editions of a counterfeit detector. The illustration of Plate 4 (Figure 2 here) was provided courtesy of David Yount, co-editor of The Rail Splitter. This item appeared in their fall Sept. 27 annual auction as lot 841 where it fetched a nice price of $345 (including 15 percent buyer's premium).
I also discovered after column 30 went to print, that the Lincoln die impression of ABNCo #141 which appears on World's Columbian Exposition tickets, actually appears on two serial number varieties of tickets. Shown in the earlier article was a ticket having an "A" to the left of the ticket dates. This time I illustrate an example of the ticket sans "A" as Figure 3. No wonder these souvenir tickets have proven so plentiful for decades. At least two million of them were presumably printed. Various additional designs (without Lincoln) are known. Paid attendance topped 27 million. So now the question is: was there a "B" series of tickets with Lincoln's image? If you have one, contact the author! I'd like to illustrate it.
I am also reminded by several readers that a small photograph of Lincoln souvenir ticket 52696 (Reed-16 in the die #141 genealogy) was encapsulated behind mica on a large aluminum World's Columbian Exposition admission pass medal. A bust of the great Italian explorer Cristoforo Colombo appears on its opposite side. These attractive souvenirs are much in demand from exposition and so-called dollar enthusiasts, bringing several hundred dollars and upwards in the marketplace. Shown as Figures 4 and 5 is a nice Numismatic Guarnaty Corp. AU-53 slabbed example from the author's collection.
Transfer roller die for ABNCo plate 141
Stack's Capital City Sale at Atlanta's Whitman Coin Expo offered an interesting glimpse of how my fabled ABNCo die #141 came to appear on such a wide variety of government and commercial work undertaken by the company. As part of the ABNCo archives distribution of plates and dies, Stack's offered as Lot #1578 a roller (cylinder) transfer die for my Lincoln portrait impression. Of course, the transfer image of Old Abe is a mirror rendition of the original engraved plate.
The item was described in the catalog as: "Steel. Height: 1.75 inches; Diameter: 2.75 inches. Portraits of Lincoln and Washington both in plain oval frames. The die also includes an engraving of Liberty represented by a standing female figure leaning against a small column and holding a liberty cap on pole. A shield, fasces and olive branch are at her side. Lustrous light steel gray with just a few minor handling marks." The die is numbered 2792 on both top and bottom.
This fabulous piece of Lincolniana was sold at the Oct. 11 evening session of the Stack's sale. I can now report on that sale. With an opening bid of $120, the piece was hammered home at $1,035. This steel cylinder is shown as Figure 6 in this article. It now happily resides in the Fred Reed collection next to the original portrait die in an honored place in this author's "Lincoln Room." Both will be prominently featured in my upcoming book.
Additional Lincoln die #141 update
I didn't have to wait long after publication of the previous article to get an update of yet another use of ABNCo's Lincoln die #141. Reed-12 on the list of derived uses for which the portrait was employed was an 1876 Centennial certificate for Dwight Co. with images of Lincoln and his fellow presidents (Figure 9, BNR, September 2007, p. 56). I also noted a notation on the back of our proof that indicated certificates were also printed for Meriot, Hooper & Co., although this author has never seen one.
The new item is similar to the above, but printed for Great Falls Co. It appeared as Lot 1600 in session four of the Oct. 17-19, 2007, H.R. Harmer sale of items from American Bank Note Co. archives. The item was designated as a "trademark label proof," and it might be noted that this example has "Meriot, Hooper & Co." penciled in the top border, also. I illustrate it here as Figure 7, courtesy of Dr. Robert Schwartz. The certificate brought $575 in the sale. It could be thought of as Reed 12b in the die #141 genealogy.
Additional Lincoln die #141 update, encore
Perhaps the final ABNC commercial use of its historical Lincoln die #141 image was in 1994, 133 years after Charles Burt laid down his graver. ABNCo produced a souvenir card for the American Stamp Dealers Assoc. show, Postage Stamp Mega-Event in New York City Nov. 3-6. This 8.5 x 11-inch souvenir card has an intaglio impression of the same Lincoln portrait that appears on Demand Notes and Legal Tenders with ornate frame (die #141A). It also features a lithographic enlargement of the 1869 90-cent stamp produced by it's then competitor National Bank Note Co., as well as a very large lithographic impression based on the Charles Burt die #141 likeness of Lincoln as ornamentation.
Souvenir card collectors know this item as SO-135. As frequently encountered on ABNC reprints of this type, the legend on the card contains an error. (The company's scholarship leaves much to be desired in its later years!) The card says the Burt engraving (die #141) dates to circa 1865, when as detailed here earlier this die was completed in early 1861. The souvenir card, which would be Reed-23 on the die genealogy chart, is shown here is Figure 8.
John C. Browne follow up
John C. Browne was one of the greatest - some (including this author) contend THE greatest - collectors of Confederate Currency of all time. He was born in 1838 and flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A portion of Browne's estate, including his legendary "first" Confederate Currency collection, was auctioned by Stan. V. Henkels and his son, Stan. Jr., 1304 Walnut St., Philadelphia, in two sessions on July 28, 1922.
Brown was a generalist. In addition to CSA currency, which Browne collected for more than 50 years, the Henkels' sale included Browne's Colonial and Continental paper money, Fractional Currency and coin collections, as well as many of his historic photographs, large selections of Union and Confederate patriotic covers, medals, tokens, Browne's Lincolniana, minerals and gem stones.
Browne was also an avid photographer and collector of Americana, especially the aforementioned Lincoln items. An antiquarian, a Republican and an especially ardent follower of President Abraham Lincoln - not unlike the present writer - Browne was a collector of all items associated with our 16th President and the late war he superintended.
In my own pursuit of Lincolniana for my forthcoming book on Old Abe, I recently came across a vintage publication, which was indebted to Browne for an especially choice Lincoln image. Lincoln biographer Ida M. Tarbell announced in the November 1895 issue of McClure's Magazine that her journal was undertaking publication of a new Lincoln bio.(7)
Publisher S.S. McClure was as infatuated with The Great Emancipator as was John Browne. Historian Judith Rice records how he turned the McClure offices into a "Lincoln Bureau" for collecting and disseminating Lincoln information to the public. "Eventually, these findings would be 'dovetailed' into a new account of the president's life."(8)
As can be seen, the image reproduced here as Figure 9 was photographed "after a print formerly in the collection of Mr. J.C. Browne of the same city [Philadelphia]." Browne's soulful Lincoln portrait is a rare one, probably taken in his hometown of Springfield, Ill., around 1858-1859. Lincoln's "battered and bronzed look" demonstrates vividly his melancholy even before the devastating war that was to come.(9)
Postage Currency follow up
In a recent column I discussed private fractional notes nominally redeemable in Postage Currency or Fractional Currency. These issues were particularly ironic since the laws authorizing government shinplasters specifically forbade such private shinplasters. Interestingly enough, one of the fall John J. Ford liquidation sales (Part XIX, Oct. 11, 2007) included two notes that jogged this old cranium. The Ford notes (one of which is shown as Figure 10, Lot 930 in the sale) were issued by Adolph Pearl, manufacturer of tobacco. Printed by New York City lithographer Ferd. Mayer, the 10-cent notes, labeled "Tobacco Currency," were "exchangeable for all United States Stamps." Although undated (they bear a curious "Act July 20, 1868" at top), they were most likely issued during the small change shortage of summer/fall 1862 when postage stamps circulated willy nilly.
Lot 930, described as a uniface lithographic proof on thick paper, brought a reasonable $345. The companion Lot 931, also a proof but folded, fetched only $138 a terrific bargain I would think. These two examples probably hadn't seen the light of day for many decades since they first entered the Ford hoard. Ford was notoriously secretive and unaccommodating of colleagues doing research. And since he himself published virtually nothing - although he owned virtually everything in his omnivorous collecting fields - they were doubtless unknown to many collectors. Apparently they were unknown to my friend Gordon Harris, who ably cataloged New York scrip in 2001, but unfortunately not Pearl's interesting "Tobacco Currency" exchangeable for postage stamps.(10)
The unprecedented redemption clause alone would be worth putting on the record in this column, but ruminating over the notes fortuitously brought additional dividends - the old cranium part. I recalled a note I discovered about a year ago sequestered at the Library of Congress, which is also shown here as Figure 11.
This is another 10-center, obviously from the same enterprise but styled here as Pearl & Obrieght, No. 12 Cedar St., New York. This example appears to be an essay of some kind also. It is on unevenly cut paper with considerable selvage, and no imprint. Also styled "Tobacco Currency," with another but different George Washington portrait, this note is "receivable for Postage Currency." It had escaped my memory when I compiled the column which ran in these pages (sorry), but the Stack's sale of the related pieces proved fortuitous.
Due to the difference in the redemption clause, my guess is that the LOC example anticipated to be received for postage currency was issued after the Ford examples receivable for postage stamps. Unfortunately this LOC note also missed Gordon's book, proving again that the burden of a cataloger is never completed.
A personal note
I welcome comments and questions on any of the topics covered in this column and can be reached via e-mail at fred@spmc.org or by U.S. mail at P.O. Box 118162, Carrollton, TX 75011. If you wish a written response, please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope, but be aware that if your question/comment is of a general nature it may be addressed in a future column instead.
Endnotes
1. See for example, Arthur L. Friedberg and Ira S. Friedberg, Paper Money of the United States, 18th ed., Coin & Currency Institute, 2006, p. 11.
2. See Jas. Gilfillan, Treasurer of the United States, "Report of the Treasurer of the United States," in Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances for the Year 1881, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1881, p. 455.
3. "Monetary Affairs," New York Times, Aug. 6, 1861.
4. "The New Loan - The Appeal of Secretary Chase," BDE, Aug. 10, 1861.
5. See Gene Hessler, An Illustrated History of U.S. Loans, 1775-1898, BNR Press, 1988, pp. 214-219.
6. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years-III, vol. 5, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1939, first edition, p. 387.
7. Tarbell authored a two-volume Life of Abraham Lincoln in 1900.
8. Judith A. Rice, "Ida M. Tarbell: A Progressive Look at Lincoln," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter, 1998 at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/19.1/ rice.html
9. Charles Hamilton and Lloyd Ostendorf, Lincoln in Photographs: An Album of Every Known Pose, Dayton, OH: Morningside Press, 1985, p. 31.
10. Gordon Harris, New York State Scrip and Private Issues, privately printed, 2001.
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