In the 19th century, American currency was in flux. Before the Civil War, paper money was not standardized, meaning that every private bank issued unique notes, many of which looked nothing like the green pieces of paper we know today. The iconography was eclectic, ranging from nationally predictable images (like George Washington and the capital’s monuments) to regionally specific designs, featuring everything from bullfrogs to Santa Claus.
One example of Washingtonian currency is a five dollar bank note, issued by the Metropolitan Bank in 1854. On the left, it features a nude figure of the Roman god Mercury wielding an overflowing bag of coins. To the right is a large ship, and centrally we see two women, an eagle and a cornucopia. In overlain red block letters, appears the word “FIVE.” At this point in time, there were thirty banks in the D.C. area, which means that there were dozens of different local currencies in circulation, in addition to bills that visitors brought from other parts of the country.
With as many as 1,500 private banks in the United States printing their own bills, counterfeiting was rampant. After all, the chaotic currency system made it a relatively easy task. False bills could be deemed “spurious” or “altered,” the former indicating that they were pure fakes, and the latter referring to real bank notes with written-in markups. Beyond fabricating known bills, some counterfeiters would make up fake banks, hoping that they could successfully pass a false bill to someone else. In the slang of the time, this was known as “shoving the queer”.
While the bank system was decidedly exploited by people who profited from fake money, it was also broken from within. Just as the design on paper bills varied widely, so did the reliability of private banks: many did not have the capital to back up their money. Without standardization, the use of paper bank notes sometimes resembled a barter system, where low-mark bills from trustworthy banks were considered more valuable than high-ticket bills from bad banks.
Indeed, suspicion was so high that banks and individuals would employ popular counterfeit detectors, which were guides that listed and described all of the known banks and bogus bills. The onus to prevent scamming fell to individuals, so most paper money was treated with skepticism. According to the Department of the Treasury, “In 1839 one guide listed 20 issues of fictitious banks; 43 banks whose notes were counterfeited; and descriptions of 1,395 counterfeit notes in circulation.”