The master hubs were engraved at Philadelphia and shipped to the branch mints (New Orleans, San Francisco, Charlotte and Dahlonega) to be used in the preparation of dies.
While the CSA definitely had individuals with the skill to design and engrave new hubs for Confederate coinage (as Jbuck noted, patterns were made) it is doubtful that they would have had the ability to do so given the wartime conditions in New Orleans (the mint workers were not inclined to work under duress) and the lack of raw metals needed to create new hubs, dies, and planchets. The Confederate states had some resources that were bountiful, but silver, nickel and copper were not foremost among them, and wartime hoarding had already driven many existing coins out of circulation. Despite those obstacles, the post-secessionist New Orleans mint still managed to strike over two million half dollars, quite an accomplishment given the lack of fresh dies available in the event of breakage and wear. They were hoarded as well (and a lot of them went down with the SS Republic.) It's likely that any other CSA-minted coinage would have simply been hoarded too, and base metals were more needed for cannon, shot, rifles, and other industrial and military uses.
When Davis later moved the Treasury from New Orleans to Columbus in 1862, most of the gold and silver went with him, and it was later dispersed throughout the South, stolen, embezzled, or allegedly even buried in part. The CSA couldn't even pay its own troops in coinage of any sort on many occasions and was mostly reliant on inflationary paper money, equally worthless promissory notes and interest-bearing war bonds along with the occasional Mexican silver coinage and - near the very end of the war - directly in silver and gold coins and bullion that had been hastily reallocated from the CSA's remaining Treasury holdings (at least that part of which hadn't already been absconded with by Jefferson Davis and his generals.)
While the CSA definitely had individuals with the skill to design and engrave new hubs for Confederate coinage (as Jbuck noted, patterns were made) it is doubtful that they would have had the ability to do so given the wartime conditions in New Orleans (the mint workers were not inclined to work under duress) and the lack of raw metals needed to create new hubs, dies, and planchets. The Confederate states had some resources that were bountiful, but silver, nickel and copper were not foremost among them, and wartime hoarding had already driven many existing coins out of circulation. Despite those obstacles, the post-secessionist New Orleans mint still managed to strike over two million half dollars, quite an accomplishment given the lack of fresh dies available in the event of breakage and wear. They were hoarded as well (and a lot of them went down with the SS Republic.) It's likely that any other CSA-minted coinage would have simply been hoarded too, and base metals were more needed for cannon, shot, rifles, and other industrial and military uses.
When Davis later moved the Treasury from New Orleans to Columbus in 1862, most of the gold and silver went with him, and it was later dispersed throughout the South, stolen, embezzled, or allegedly even buried in part. The CSA couldn't even pay its own troops in coinage of any sort on many occasions and was mostly reliant on inflationary paper money, equally worthless promissory notes and interest-bearing war bonds along with the occasional Mexican silver coinage and - near the very end of the war - directly in silver and gold coins and bullion that had been hastily reallocated from the CSA's remaining Treasury holdings (at least that part of which hadn't already been absconded with by Jefferson Davis and his generals.)
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"Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done." -- Louis D. Brandeis
"Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done." -- Louis D. Brandeis
Edited by paralyse
11/18/2024 4:34 pm
11/18/2024 4:34 pm




















