Although
the infant United States had a functioning national mint from 1792, that entity
was incapable of providing the growing country with the money it needed.
Americans depended on foreign coinage, especially the "Mexican Dollar," or Piece of Eight, to meet their requirements. And from 1800 onward, they increasingly relied on paper currency - issues of private banking institutions--to provide the money essential for exchange, the capital needed for growth.
Fancy vignettes or engraved scenes began appearing on the notes early in the century, and it soon became possible to mass produce such images, combining, adding to, and cropping them as required.
Three categories of people became and remained popular subjects for representation: Native Americans, women, and African Americans--an irony, for none then took part in the cash economy.
Native Americans were sometimes represented as participants in real history, as on a Nebraska note of 1858, where they flee from contact with the Pilgrims. But they were more often shown in what whites supposed were "typical" activities and poses, hunting and the like. More common still was their depiction encountering the white man's notion of Progress and not quite knowing what to do about it.
A dismounted figure sees a train for the first time on another
Nebraska note, and he is confused. On encountering Progress, the native
may simply turn and flee, as he does on a much earlier note
from New York . The point of all this imagery is that it had to be flattering
to whites, the people who were making and circulating the notes upon which the
figures appeared.
So Native Americans might lead each other into the nineteenth century (as on another Nebraska note, where a wife implores her husband to consider the merits of the Industrial Revolution; or they might be led there by generous white instructors: a white woman teaches her Native American sister the joys of settled agriculture.
The latter image suggests that the depiction of Native Americans could easily move from the real to the surreal. Three examples of what could happen will suffice: a Texan note showing a seminude maiden; an Iowa note with a young woman crossing a stream, who bears a striking resemblance to Eliza from Uncle Tom's Cabin; and a toddler on a Connecticut note, who paddles his canoe away from the white man's idea of civilization.
Women were presented in a variety of ways through the years. Some of the earliest depictions formed the 1830's equivalents of pinups, but these images soon gave way to occasional portraits of historical figures, more frequent glimpses of "typical" women in daily activities. They worked in agriculture most commonly, either with or without their husbands, brothers, and sons.
Based
on the testimony of the notes, the profession
of milkmaid was also exceedingly popular among young women (but it is more
likely that the bankers and engravers put these maids on the notes to represent
innocence, youthfulness, and purity; attitudes which seemed at risk as the Industrial
Revolution began to change the nation).
Factory scenes show that change was indeed under way, and that women were in the vanguard of it. One of those large but cashless groups so frequently depicted on the money was actually beginning to earn and spend it!
African Americans had no such prospects at the time. They do not begin appearing
on bank notes until fairly late in the period (during the middle 1850s), and
they are almost always seen in slavery. The demand for their depiction came
about suddenly, a part of the growing importance of the slavery question at
the time. Caught off guard, printers at first simply blackened
white faces, recycling earlier images.
But "real" African Americans soon began appearing, almost always seen in agricultural
pursuits, especially those revolving around the growing and shipping of "King
Cotton."
The agitation against slavery assumed a critical importance
by the end of the 1850s, and Southern banks demanded and obtained notes which
depicted their view of the African American: an
Uncle Remus who drowsed at his work, an amiable chucklehead, in bondage
for his own good.
The apotheosis of this new depiction was reached on notes printed at the
very end of the period, where a smiling mother holds a laughing child--who
plays with a branch of cotton, which enslaves them both.
By the time this note was in circulation,
a Civil War had broken out over whose view of the African American was correct,
whose view must prevail. By the time the conflict had ended four years later,
the era of the private bank had become one of the many casualties to the demands
of the war. And these old notes, with their marvelous images, began the journey
from private money into public memory.
