I was just reading an article about
Samuel Curtis Upham. In 1862, he started producing “perfect facsimiles” of Confederate money. He openly advertised these “mementos” in papers across the north and sold them by mail. Union troops apparently bought these “memento’s” in great number, removed the tab that proclaimed the note to be a facsimile, and spent them like currency in the South. By 1863 Upton had produced 15 million dollars worth of bills that union troops ferried into the south.
I love the line in the Richmond Daily Dispatch that complained that Upton’s notes appeared, “
wherever an execrable Yankee soldier polluted the soil with his cloven foot.”
I just had to post a link to an article with that line.