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The Crevasse

The Crevasse is a print designed to decorate a banknote. The print was produced from a steel engraving in the second half of the 19 century. The engraving depicts a scene of a dock with riverboats. On the left side of the image, black men load cargo onto the Robert E. Lee, a riverboat. At right, black men work to fill a crevasse, or they break in the levee. At the far right, a white man stands holding a rifle. The presence of the Robert E. Lee riverboat and the use of slave labor imply that the scene takes place in a southern river port. Given that the use of slave labor was controversial, I assumed that a northern bank would not have issued currency with this print; therefore, the commission for this particular engraving must have come from a southern bank.

The Crevasse is a print designed to decorate a banknote. The print was produced from a steel engraving in the second half of the 19th century. The engraving depicts a scene of a dock with riverboats. On the left side of the image, black men load cargo onto the Robert E. Lee, a riverboat. At right, black men work to fill a crevasse, or they break in the levee. At the far right, a white man stands holding a rifle. The presence of the Robert E. Lee riverboat and the use of slave labor imply that the scene takes place in a southern river port. Given that the use of slave labor was controversial, I assumed that a northern bank would not have issued currency with this print; therefore, the commission for this particular engraving must have come from a southern bank.

Ambiguity creeps into the analysis though because I do not know the exact destination of the engraving nor do I know the intent of the receiving institution. The designer and engraver produced the print in New York, but the location of the group that commissioned the engraving is left unknown. While it shows a scene in what is likely a southern river port, the engraving may not have necessarily been used to produce currency in a location fitting the scene. If I am correct in assuming that a northern bank would not have issued this currency, then this print would have reflected some sense of pride in the issuer’s place. The image may have represented the issuer’s hometown or local port, or it would have at least reflected some pride in representing southern economy. However, it is possible that a northern institution would have issued these notes as a means of propaganda to show the evils propelling the southern economy.

Baldwin, Bald & Cousland Engraving

This source is similar to The Crevasse in that it is also a print made from a steel engraving. The print was produced in 1853, and it depicts two white children working a wheat field. The image shows a vast, flat rural horizon with bundles of wheat stacked throughout. Given the use of white child labor and the landscape, I assumed that the print was used to decorate a rural midwestern banknote. White child labor was typically used in rural midwestern areas as the high initial cost of buying slaves and the cost of maintaining living quarters and providing food proved unprofitable. The tracts of land were often small enough and the work relatively less intensive, so a family could effectively work the landscape employing free labor from the farmers’ children.

However, this analysis is flawed because it is impossible to determine the destination of the banknote; a similar problem arose with The Crevasse. The print was designed and produced in New York, but the location of the commissioning bank is left unknown. Here, the banknote could have reflected a pride in place if a rural midwestern bank commissioned it, as the bank would like to portray the underpinnings of the local economy. However, it is possible that an unrelated bank commissioned the print in which case the bank likely wanted a diverse selection of images to decorate notes of different values. In order to alleviate the concerns presented with analyzing banknote engravings for their appreciation of place, I would have to find the actual banknotes to show that the images were used in the area displayed.

Banknote Reporter’s ‘Latest Counterfeits’ Article

The “Latest Counterfeits” article was published on March 23, 1861. It was an article included in an edition of Hodge’s Bank Note Reporter, which was a weekly publication that provided information on the currencies in circulation. The publication reported the regional and national currencies, counterfeits and banks at risk of bankruptcy. This article listed currencies in the New England area whose legitimacy were spurious or had been definitively altered. It named the banks from which they came, the banks location, the denominations that were altered and the images displayed on the notes. This article was used to advance my argument that bank notes changed the idea of place because they gave Hodge the opportunity to define regional economies. In this article, Hodge restricts the “New England States” region as Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. It cited five banknotes in total.

This analysis is flawed for a couple of reasons. The first being that Hodge’s judgment in determining relevant banknotes was likely biased. Hodge and his newspaper were based in New York, so this publication was more focused on the New England currencies that frequently circulated through New York. Therefore, he may not have been fully qualified to define regional economies as they were supported by several currencies of smaller bases that did not make their way to New York. In this case, he was not so much defining regional economies as he was reporting on the distant banks that influenced the New York economy. Moreover, he would have without a doubt missed several of these smaller currencies, limiting the usefulness of his newspaper everywhere but New York. While these considerations certainly create hesitation in employing this source to advance my narrative, the fact that Hodge’s Bank Note Reporter was published nationally with a specific focus on each region of the country leads me to believe that he had robust knowledge of each regional economy within the United States.