CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Prior to the Civil War some states had their own form of currency, because with no federal currency to use, it was hard to decipher real money from fake.
The way we think of money today is very different from the way people thought of it then.
“Money is stable, doesn’t change very rapidly. It’s reliable. We don’t have to worry about counterfeits. We don’t have to worry about whether or not someone will accept it. It is simply there to serve its purpose as an interchange,” Bob Schreiner said.
According to Schreiner, that really wasn’t the case in North Carolina or the United States before 1865.
“A very confusing situation during that time. It was one in which you couldn’t trust what you might have in your pocket. That might be money and might be fraudulent. It was a very problematic time in terms of money,” Schreiner said.
Schreiner is the curatorial specialist for the exhibit of North Carolina money inside Wilson Library at UNC Chapel Hill.
“But to, to just see how much different things were in the past than they are in the present is sort of the essence of history. And we learn to some extent to compare what we do today with what was done in the past,” Schreiner said.
He explained colonies controlled by Great Britain weren’t allowed to make their own money before the Revolutionary War.
“The object was to have all of the money. And at that time money meant coins of gold and silver and copper of intrinsic metal value. It wasn’t money unless it as an object was worth something,” Schreiner said.
It meant in order to buy something from Great Britain it had must be paid for in coins of intrinsic value.
“So that meant our flow of coins went to Great Britain, and we never had enough money here. Great Britain would let the colonies produce paper money, which everyone hated, because everyone wanted coins of intrinsic value,” Schreiner said.
North Carolina then produced about 25 different issues of paper money, the images on the money in that time helped people accept the money, because it was attractive and had images they recognized.
“If they didn’t know that it was good, it looked good and might be good enough to let them accept it and transaction,” Schreiner said.
In 1799 gold was discovered in North Carolina and changed the way money was thought of again.
“Some private entrepreneurs set up a mint in North Carolina. They were jewelers and goldsmiths from Germany originally. And they produced coins from what miners brought to them,” Schreiner said.
Then, almost 40 years later, the state lobbied the federal government for a mint in Charlotte.
“Private coins that were sound value. So you take your bullion to them, they would assay, which means determine its purity, melt it and make coins,” Schreiner said.
This new mint became the largest in the colonies and continued the evolution of money until the federal government took over after the Civil War.
“People take money for granted now, not in terms of having enough, but in terms of being what’s in your pocket. You can spend readily. It wasn’t always the case,” Schreiner said.
The Wilson Special Collections Library is located on Polk Place on the UNC Chapel Hill campus. The library is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and closed on the weekends.
