History Buffs....

i am sure that they were ued by both sides, the south did not have a supply of there own coinage, so the US coinage was in use as well as the spanish milled dollar and frech franks, most people do not realize that the frech word for 10 is dix, and it is said that the south was called dixie because of the prevalance of the french 10 frank that came up from new orleans, or the land of dixie

I'm sure that, over time, IHC's did get get around the country. Remember also, people were moving to the western states from all other parts of the US, including the NE and S, and a lot of those people probably had IHC's in their pockets to spend out west.

All of the branch mints struck gold or silver coins when they first began operation because it was far too dangerous to transport the ingots from the mines to Philadelphia so the government built the branch mints as needed to strike coins "in place" for use in the local economy. Dahlonega and Charlotte struck only gold coins. New Orleans was gold and silver. New Orleans' strategic location along the Mississippi River made it a magnet for commercial activity. Large quantities of gold from Mexico also passed through its port annually. It was also located relatively near to gold deposits recently discovered in Alabama. San Francisco and Carson City struck gold and silver from the rich mines located in California and Nevada. The Denver Mint opened as an assay office in 1858 when gold was discovered in Colorado. In 1904 the government decided to convert the assay office to a full working mint and it opened as such in 1906. The mints in New Orleans, San Francisco and Carson City also made it easier and safer to get the gold and silver coinage for circulation into those areas rather than have to ship such coins from Philadelphia. Thieves didn't rob the shipments of copper and nickel coin as the reward versus risk was much lower.

Ed
ANA LM-3175

Generally speaking of course, circulating coins have no borders. There are various coins that are known to have circulated in the South, before and during the Civil War. Such coins are known by "virtue" of their having been counterstamped by a southern merchant. Perhaps, the most famous of the southern, counterstamped coins are the Schiller "seige" coins. J.B. Schiller operated the Sazerac Coffee House in New Orleans in the early 1860's when Union forces held the city under seige. Schiller counterstamped Indian cents with his name and an X to indicate redenomination to be accepted as a "dime." To cite a few other, southern counterstamps: "MANSION HOUSE" in Alexandria, Va.; "G. ERICHSON" of Houston, a gunsmith. There were some other merchants in Texas and Tennessee who also stamped circulating coins. I note that these counterstamps are all quite rare, being extremely limited in number. That fact certainly attests to the limited circulation of coins in the South. It's perhaps noteworthy that these counterstamped coins were issued along the periphery of the southern states.