page_title: Confederate government of West Virginia
section_title: Currency
hierarchical_section_title: Confederate government of West Virginia / Confederate postal service and currency / Currency
caption_attribution_description: English: Mercer County, Virginia, 75-cent note, issued on May 1, 1863, in the town of Princeton.
context_page_description: On June 20, 1863 the U.S. government created a new state from 50 western counties of Virginia to be named "West Virginia". This was done on behalf of a Unionist government in Wheeling, Virginia, approved by Congress and President Lincoln, though it was done with a low participation of the citizens within the new state. There remained a large number of counties and citizens who still considered themselves as part of Virginia and the Confederacy which, in turn, considered the new state as part of Virginia and the Confederacy. In 1861 the 50 counties contained a population of 355,823 whites, 2,782 freemen, 18,371 slaves, 79,515 voters and 67,721 men of military age. West Virginia was the 6th most contested state during the war, with 632 battles, engagements, actions and skirmishes.
  Although considered a loyal Union state by the Federal government, the new state nevertheless gave half of its soldiers to the Confederacy and was the only border state which did not give the greater portion of its men to the Union. While the Union army held much of the territory of the new state, large sections remained in the hands of guerrillas and bushwhackers.
context_section_description: Confederate currency was mostly used in the eastern and southern counties, somewhat less in the central counties. It was often used by Confederate officers to pay for goods taken during raids through Union-held territory. Many of the notes issued by Virginia during the war contained a portrait of Jonathan M. Bennett, the state auditor, and a native of Lewis County. Confederate bonds were also issued. The payrolls of West Virginia's Confederate soldiers would have provided much of the currency stock in the state.
   In 1863 Dr. Thomas B. Camden, of Weston, Lewis County, sold his horse for $140 in Confederate currency prior to being imprisoned at Camp Chase with his wife and children. Legal cases involving the use of Confederate money to pay off debts, buying land, slaves and other financial transactions occupied West Virginia courts for many years. In 1873 the state legislature passed a bill that required Confederate money used in contracts between 1861-1865 to be based on the true value at the time of the contract. In areas where the Union army had gained control many merchants were reluctant to accept the money, as during Loring's occupation of Charleston.
  By the beginning of the Civil War the Confederacy had just begun the issuance of a national currency. United States currency was still being used, and eventually Confederate paper currency was in production, but there was no coinage, although attempts had been made for its production. Local towns and cities in Virginia, such as Leesburg, began to issue their own paper scrip in small denominations in order to handle small daily transactions, though this scrip was not legal. On March 29, 1862, the General Assembly passed an act allowing counties, as well as towns with a population of 2,000 or more, to issue scrip for transactions under five dollars. Three cities with populations under 2,000 were specifically allowed to issue scrip, one of which was Lewisburg. The counties of Monroe, Greenbrier and Mercer also began to issue low value scrip.
caption: Mercer County, Virginia, paper currency, 75-cent denomination, 1863
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image DateTime": "2012:12:24 01:50:42", "Image ExifOffset": "2142", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "0", "Thumbnail YResolution": "0", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4316", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5161", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "06860ADE1BB443819ABB1CCFE27C7806", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}