1 Dollar

City Bank was one of dozens of state-chartered institutions flooding antebellum America with competing paper currencies, and by 1857 the system was visibly straining. The Panic of 1857 — triggered in part by the collapse of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company in August of that year — caused widespread bank suspensions across the northeastern United States, and notes from smaller chartered banks became essentially unredeemable almost overnight.

The American Bank Note Company had only formally consolidated under that name in 1858, meaning this note was almost certainly produced by one of its predecessor firms — likely Danforth, Wright & Co. or a closely affiliated house — using the ABNC imprint retroactively assigned in catalog records.