10 Dollars Bank of Louisiana

The Bank of Louisiana was one of the few antebellum Southern banks that maintained a genuine reputation for sound specie backing — a reputation that made its notes trusted well beyond state lines before the war. By 1862, that standing was under severe strain. New Orleans fell to Union forces in April of that year, and notes issued in the months immediately preceding or following the occupation exist in a murky legal and chronological zone. Some Bank of Louisiana paper from this period circulated under Confederate authority, some briefly under Union military occupation, and distinguishing which notes saw which regime often comes down to serial ranges and manuscript dates.

Printing in occupied or soon-to-be-occupied New Orleans in 1862 was itself a logistical problem — the usual Northern bank note engravers were by then entirely inaccessible to Louisiana institutions.