The Money That Only Worked If the South Won the War

April 2, 1865. A little before midnight, a pile of freshly printed Treasury notes is burning in front of the Confederate Capitol in Richmond, while a train at the depot is loaded with the last half million dollars of the treasury's gold. Four years earlier, that paper had been worth ninety-five cents on the gold dollar. This is the story of the grayback: why a government with no money in its treasury chose to print instead of tax, what the strange sentence on every note actually promised, how prices in Richmond rose ten percent a month for two and a half years, why the 1864 currency reset failed, and how a billion dollars in paper stopped being money in the space of a signature. Chapters 0:00 The bonfire and the train 0:49 A treasury with nothing inside 1:29 The sentence on every note 2:04 The bet holds 2:20 The arithmetic arrives 2:37 Everybody prints 3:00 The Richmond bread riot 3:37 The 1864 reset 4:22 The money was a mirror 4:53 Richmond prices, March 1865 5:38 Back to the square 5:53 A treaty that can never be signed 6:48 The Fourteenth Amendment 7:02 What happened to the paper Sources Eugene M. Lerner, "Money, Prices, and Wages in the Confederacy, 1861-65," Journal of Political Economy, 1955 Eugene M. Lerner, "The Monetary and Fiscal Programs of the Confederate Government, 1861-65," Journal of Political Economy, 1954 Douglas B. Ball, Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat, 1991 J. B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, 1866 (Richmond prices) Confederate Currency Act, February 17, 1864 Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Section 4, 1868 Paper Trail is a documentary channel about money, power and the decisions that changed economies. Every film follows one story and shows how it actually unfolded, told in hand-cut paper collage built from archival photographs, documents, banknotes and maps. Subscribe:    / @papertraileconomics   #EconomicHistory #Documentary