A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States
Listen to a short interview with Stephen MihmHost: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane
Few of us question the slips of green paper that come and go in our purses, pockets, and wallets. Yet confidence in the money supply is a recent phenomenon: prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Instead, countless banks issued paper money in a bewildering variety of denominations and designs--more than ten thousand different kinds by 1860. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation.
Their success, Stephen Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by a freewheeling brand of capitalism over which the federal government exercised little control. It was an era when responsibility for the country's currency remained in the hands of capitalists for whom "making money" was as much a literal as a figurative undertaking.
Mihm's witty tale brims with colorful characters: shady bankers, corrupt cops, charismatic criminals, and brilliant engravers. Based on prodigious research, it ranges far and wide, from New York City's criminal underworld to the gold fields of California and the battlefields of the Civil War. We learn how the federal government issued greenbacks for the first time and began dismantling the older monetary system and the counterfeit economy it sustained.
A Nation of Counterfeiters is a trailblazing work of history, one that casts the country's capitalist roots in a startling new light. Readers will recognize the same get-rich-quick spirit that lives on in the speculative bubbles and confidence games of the twenty-first century.
"1100301692"
A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States
Listen to a short interview with Stephen MihmHost: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane
Few of us question the slips of green paper that come and go in our purses, pockets, and wallets. Yet confidence in the money supply is a recent phenomenon: prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Instead, countless banks issued paper money in a bewildering variety of denominations and designs--more than ten thousand different kinds by 1860. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation.
Their success, Stephen Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by a freewheeling brand of capitalism over which the federal government exercised little control. It was an era when responsibility for the country's currency remained in the hands of capitalists for whom "making money" was as much a literal as a figurative undertaking.
Mihm's witty tale brims with colorful characters: shady bankers, corrupt cops, charismatic criminals, and brilliant engravers. Based on prodigious research, it ranges far and wide, from New York City's criminal underworld to the gold fields of California and the battlefields of the Civil War. We learn how the federal government issued greenbacks for the first time and began dismantling the older monetary system and the counterfeit economy it sustained.
A Nation of Counterfeiters is a trailblazing work of history, one that casts the country's capitalist roots in a startling new light. Readers will recognize the same get-rich-quick spirit that lives on in the speculative bubbles and confidence games of the twenty-first century.
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A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States
Listen to a short interview with Stephen MihmHost: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane
Few of us question the slips of green paper that come and go in our purses, pockets, and wallets. Yet confidence in the money supply is a recent phenomenon: prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Instead, countless banks issued paper money in a bewildering variety of denominations and designs--more than ten thousand different kinds by 1860. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation.
Their success, Stephen Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by a freewheeling brand of capitalism over which the federal government exercised little control. It was an era when responsibility for the country's currency remained in the hands of capitalists for whom "making money" was as much a literal as a figurative undertaking.
Mihm's witty tale brims with colorful characters: shady bankers, corrupt cops, charismatic criminals, and brilliant engravers. Based on prodigious research, it ranges far and wide, from New York City's criminal underworld to the gold fields of California and the battlefields of the Civil War. We learn how the federal government issued greenbacks for the first time and began dismantling the older monetary system and the counterfeit economy it sustained.
A Nation of Counterfeiters is a trailblazing work of history, one that casts the country's capitalist roots in a startling new light. Readers will recognize the same get-rich-quick spirit that lives on in the speculative bubbles and confidence games of the twenty-first century.
Stephen Mihm is Assistant Professor of History at University of Georgia.
Table of Contents
Contents Prologue: Confidence and the Currency 1. Bordering on Alchemy 2. Cogniac Street Capitalism 3. The Bank Wars 4. The Western Bankers 5. Passing and Detecting 6. Ghosts in the Machine 7. Banking on the Nation Epilogue: Confidence in the Country Abbreviations Notes A Note on Sources Acknowledgments Index List of Illustrations 1. Three-dollar note from Merchants Bank in New York, 1816 2. Five-dollar note from Abington Bank, 1859, stamped ¿counterfeit¿ 3. Thirty-shilling note, printed in New Jersey, ca. 1764 4. Stephen Burroughs as a young man in the 1790s 5. Stephen Burroughs near the end of his life, early 1830s 6. Cogniac Street, 2001 7. Thousand-dollar note of the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania, 1840 8. Lyman Parkes, counterfeiter, 1846 9. Counterfeit ten-dollar note, 1835 10. Satirical fifty-cent note, 1837 11. Daniel Brown, ca. 1830 12. Lucy Brown, ca. 1830 13. One-dollar note of the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company, 1837 14. Detail of Kirtland one-dollar note, 1837 15. One-hundred-dollar note of the Bank of Gallipolis, 1839 16. ¿Hard Times¿ token, verso (back) view, 1841 17. ¿Hard Times¿ token, obverse (front) view, 1837 18. James Brown¿s house in 2005 19. ¿Raised note,¿ ca. 1848 20. The Counterfeit Note, 1859 21. Van Court¿s Counterfeit Detector, 1858 22. Thompson¿s Autographical Counterfeit Detector, 1849 23. One-dollar note of the Concord Bank of Massachusetts, ca. 1850s 24. The siderographic process of engraving bank notes, 1852 25. Doctored bank notes, ca. 1848 26. Bank note illustrating Waterman Ormsby¿s ¿unit system,¿ ca. 1851 27. U.S. five-dollar note, ca. 1861 28. U.S. one-dollar note, obverse (front) view, 1862 29. U.S. one-dollar note, verso (back) view, 1862 30. Buying counterfeit Confederate notes, 1863 31. Five-dollar note of the First National Bank of Decatur, Michigan, ca. 1870 32. Five-dollar note of the Stones River National Bank of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, ca. 1872 33. Hanging of Henry Wirz at the Old Capitol Prison, 1865 34. William P. Wood, ca. 1865 35. William Michael Harnett, Still Life: Five Dollar Bill, 1877 36. Ten-dollar Federal Reserve note, obverse (front) view, 1914 37. Ten-dollar Federal Reserve note, verso (back) view, 1914
With imaginative research and crystalline prose, Stephen Mihm casts unprecedented light on the confidence games at the heart of early American capitalism. He also introduces us to an irresistible cast of characters, whose brazen exploits provide a new frame for understanding nineteenth century economic debate. A Nation of Counterfeiters is a brilliant synthesis of business and cultural history. This is a book to take seriously.
Michael Zuckerman
Mihm brings to teeming life a world most Americans never knew existed, a world in which every single purchase was inflected with an additional layer of anxiety about the very currency in which the purchase was to be transacted. Written with exceptional intelligence and bracing wit, A Nation of Counterfeiters is fresh, fascinating and altogether original. — Michael Zuckerman, University of Pennsylvania
Bruce H. Mann
A meticulous and imaginative reconstruction of an entire counterfeit economy that intersected and overlapped with the 'legitimate' economy. A Nation of Counterfeiters is marvelous and unusual history. There really is nothing like it in the literature. — Bruce H. Mann, Harvard Law School
Richard Sylla
Stephen Mihm's elegant study demonstrates that 'making money' once had a more literal meaning, when thousands of banks printed their own currency notes and numerous counterfeiters profitably imitated them. Mihm offers an absorbing and enlightening history of the complex relations between money, national stability, and the forging of American character. — Richard Sylla, New York University
Jackson Lears
With imaginative research and crystalline prose, Stephen Mihm casts unprecedented light on the confidence games at the heart of early American capitalism. He also introduces us to an irresistible cast of characters, whose brazen exploits provide a new frame for understanding nineteenth century economic debate. A Nation of Counterfeiters is a brilliant synthesis of business and cultural history. This is a book to take seriously. — Jackson Lears, author of Something for Nothing: Luck in America
