10 Cents State of North Carolina

North Carolina turned to J.T. Paterson & Co. in Augusta, Georgia, because by 1863 the Confederate states had largely exhausted their access to competent Northern and European printing houses. Paterson was one of a handful of Southern firms capable of producing fractional currency at any volume, and they printed for multiple Confederate states simultaneously — which is why collectors frequently encounter near-identical typography across notes from entirely different issuing authorities.

Fractional state notes like this one emerged largely because small-denomination coinage had vanished from circulation, hoarded almost immediately after hostilities began. Ten cents was a genuinely useful amount in daily commerce, and state-issued scrip filled a gap the Confederate Treasury never adequately addressed.