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10 Dollars Eastern Bank of Alabama
| Issuer | Eastern Bank of Alabama |
|---|---|
| Year | 1858 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Large numeral 10 appears in each upper corner. The central vignette portrays a mule-drawn wagon loaded with cotton bales being transferred onto a steamboat by enslaved workers, a scene emblematic of the antebellum Southern cotton economy. A secondary vignette at the lower left shows a slave picking cotton in the field, while a portrait of a young woman occupies the lower right. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is unprinted or plain, bearing no vignettes or decorative elements, consistent with many mid-nineteenth-century American territorial and state-chartered bank issues of this period. |
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| Comments |
The Eastern Bank of Alabama was chartered in 1854 with its principal office at Eufaula, a prosperous cotton-trade town on the Chattahoochee River. Like most Alabama state-chartered banks of the 1850s, it operated under relatively loose specie reserve requirements, and its notes circulated regionally at varying discounts depending on confidence in its redemption capacity at any given moment.
The American Bank Note Company imprint places this squarely in the period immediately following ABNCo's 1858 consolidation of several competing New York security printers — this note was among the early issues produced under the merged house.
Alabama banks were ordered to cease specie payments in 1861, and most of their outstanding circulation became worthless within a few years. Surviving examples from Eastern Bank are not common.