Confederate money went bust to boom

It wasn’t as if John A. Via didn’t have enough to worry about by the end of Civil War hostilities in the spring of 1865.

The ravages of the long conflict were being felt even in the isolated area of western Albemarle County where he lived. Food, clothing, crop seed and just about everything imaginable was hard, if not impossible, to find.

But perhaps his biggest woe came from the fact that he was left with $11,000 in worthless Confederate money. During the early phase of the war, Southerners proudly accepted the currency being churned out by the new government.

In April 1861 the Confederate States of America started issuing various banknotes in denominations from one-10th of a dollar all the way up to a $1,000 bill. Printing presses stayed hot, and by war’s end $1.7 billion worth of Confederate money had been issued.

Losing face (value)

Problem was, as the fortunes of war started tipping in favor of the Union, the money began losing its once strong purchasing power. By the time the most optimistic Rebels were beginning to realize that their cause was doomed, the currency was nearly worthless.

As the conflict entered its end game, people frantically tried to unload what Confederate money they had. A man who owed Via money tried to settle his account with the worthless stuff.

Via might have been living in an isolated area, but that hadn’t kept him from becoming painfully aware that his sizable nest egg wasn’t worth the container it was held in. No deal, he told the man.

The stuff of souvenirs

Via and countless others had only one hope of recouping at least a bit of the value of the Confederate money they had. That was to sell it as souvenirs or keepsakes from a bygone era.

As a collector’s item, the worthless money had something going for it that could enhance its allure. Nearly all the Confederate bills issued were hand signed and numbered, thereby giving them a personal touch.

Within a decade of war’s end, a fad for collecting the currency started in England. During the 1870s and 1880s it sort of caught on in Northern cities as well.

Newspaper stories during that period told of Yankee businessmen buying it up in the hope they could turn a tidy profit by selling it to others. It turned out to be less than a brilliant plan, and most of it remained unsold.

One of the problems was that there was just so much Confederate money around. And that was the real stuff — never mind the counterfeited bills that flooded the South during the war.

Criminals got into the counterfeiting racket, but they weren’t alone. The Union distributed fake money throughout the South, producing the desired effect of creating massive inflation.

As time went by Confederate money entered a sort of collecting netherworld where even though it was old, it wasn’t that old. When a cache of $1 million in Confederate money was found in the 1950s, its value was placed at less than $100.

But something was about to occur that finally got Confederate money climbing slowly upward on the scale of worth. It was the Civil War Centennial, from 1961 to 1965.

In 1957 the federally funded United States Civil War Centennial Commission was created. A great many activities were planned to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the nation’s bloodiest conflict.

The centennial fueled a renewed interest in the war, and suddenly everything from Minie balls to Confederate money were hot collector’s items. These were inexpensive things that could directly link the buyer to the war.

As people from all over the nation and world visited Civil War battlefields throughout the South, there were ample opportunities to buy souvenirs. Confederate money was ideal, because it offered cheap pieces of artwork with a history.

The notes came in a wide range of themes and with pictures of personalities of the day. For example, one series of $100 bills had a picture of slaves happily laboring in a field.

Other bills carried images of George Washington. Also depicted were CSA president Jefferson Davis, and Confederate general Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson.

The centennial ended, but people’s fascination with the Civil War remained strong. Books such as Shelby Foote’s masterpiece trilogy, “The Civil War: A Narrative,” helped to do this.

Then, in 1990, Ken Burns’ Public Broadcasting Service documentary “The Civil War” presented the conflict in a way that had never been done before. The 11-hour miniseries became the most successful in PBS history.

Once again, the value of Confederate money increased — and it hasn’t stopped yet. Today, a person still can purchase the most common Confederate bills for less than $100, but rarer series can command prices in the five-figure range.

During Via’s life the value of his $11,000 holding in Confederate money was practically nil. When he died, the money was divided among his descendants.

One of them was Vera V. Via, who for many years wrote a history column for The Daily Progress. In August 1958 she wrote a story about how her distant relative had been left with a pile of worthless Confederate bills.

She finished the column by saying that the day might come when Confederate money would have more value as a collector’s item than it ever did as a medium of exchange.

History has shown that she couldn’t have been more correct.