Memphians, you will accept CSA money - or else
P.G.T. Beauregard’s Fiat: Accept Confederate Money or Get Arrested
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch May 22, 1862:
Confederate Monkey [Money] at Memphis.
–General Beauregard has taken the Confederate credit in hand at Memphis. as will be seen by the following order. It is an example which, we hope, will be followed everywhere:
Headquarters, Memphis,may 10.
The following order, in compliance with orders from Gen Beauregard, is published for the information of the public:
1. The Civil Governor and Provost Marshal will arrest all parsons [persons] who refuse to take Confederate money in all ordinary business transaction. No mere subterfuge on the part of the person or persons refusing will suffice to screen the offender from the penalties of this order.
2. Banks, banking-houses, and all incorporated companies are hereby required to take Confederate notes as currency in the transaction of their business.
3. All persons will distinctly understand, that nothing in the least degree calculated to discredit the operations of the Government will be tolerated, or treated as anything else than what it is disloyalty.
4. A rigid commence with the order is expected, and it will be vigilantly and promptly executed.
By order of
Thos D. Rosser.
Colonel Commanding Post.
Confederate paper
The Memphis Appeal says:
The South has two kinds of enemies–first, those who come from the North as open foes, with guns in their hands to subjugate us, Solidly proclaiming their mission. Secondly, those in our own mids, who lake sucking assassins, blatant with wordy professions of loyally and devotion, strike at one cause by refusing to receive Confederate money.
Keep your eye upon the misereres who refuse Confederate money. They will be the first among us to take the oath of allegiance to Lincolns Government to save their property.
The Provost Marshal has received instructions from the military authorities to require the Banks at Memphis to take “Confederate notes as currency in the transactions of their business, and to arrest as disloyal all persons who refuse Confederate money in ordinary business transactions.” These instructions the Provost Marshal will vigilantly and rigidly enforce.
Memphis in 1860's
As Wikipedia points out, Confederate currency was issued with a redemption date set at a certain number of years after a peace treaty with the Union.
The photo of George Peter Alexander Healy’s painting of General Beauregard is licensed by Creative Commons.
