Interesting and Amusing

National Bank Notes Were Filled
with Historical Scenes and National Symbols
In 1862, Salmon Chase, Secretary of the Treasury under President Lincoln, was on a mission to stabilize money and banking in the United States. This was no simple task. The Free Banking Era produced an estimated 35,000 different varieties of American currency, and over one-third of them were estimated to be counterfeit. Paper money was in a state of complete chaos. Chase proposed a system of national banks, which required a federal charter to issue a new standardized national currency. He moved to promote this new national currency by imposing a 10 percent tax on all state-issued notes in circulation. Chase's banking reforms were spelled out in the National Bank Act, which he almost single-handedly established in February 1863.

National Bank notes were a great success. They were patriotic on national level, yet they still allowed individual states to show pride of issuance. A $20 note issued by the Atlas National Bank of Cincinnati depicted the Battle of Lexington on its front side while proudly displaying Ohio's state seal on its reverse side. Other historical scenes, such as Thomas Jefferson presenting the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin drawing electricity from the sky with his kite, and Christopher Columbus landing in America, graced National Bank notes for over 50 years.

In 1870, a group of 10 national banks, nine of them in California, to issue National Gold Bank notes redeemable in gold. The California gold banks, which were located in Santa Barbara, San Jose, San Francisco, Petaluma, Oakland, Sacramento, and Stockton, issued these rare notes to reduce the burden of handling gold in the form of dust and nuggets. Directly traceable to the California Gold Rush of 1848, only 300 National Gold Bank notes are known to exist today.