TIL of Samuel Upham, a Philadelphia merchant who printed over $15 million Confederate dollars from 1862-63. The fake notes widely circulated in the South. When investigated by the US Government, his case was dismissed as it’s not illegal to counterfeit currency of a country not recognized by the US.

Read more: https://www.phillymag.com/news/2017/03/24/11-things-might-not-know-samuel-upham/

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  1. The kicker:

    > About this time [May 1862], rather mysteriously, the notes, which had hitherto been printed on letter stock, began to appear on fine-quality banknote paper. Some people claim that the U.S. Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, provided Upham with the paper after it was seized in a Union blockade. (Stanton is the man who, upon Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, famously declared, “Now he belongs to the ages.”) By summer, Upham’s counterfeits were superior in quality to the real thing.

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