10 Dollars Mechanics Bank - Tennessee

The Mechanics Bank of Memphis was one of a cluster of Tennessee state-chartered banks that filled the credit vacuum left by the expiration of the Second Bank of the United States charter. Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson — one of the most prolific antebellum security printers in the country — supplied notes to dozens of Southern banks simultaneously, working from a shared pool of engraved vignettes and border elements assembled into bespoke combinations for each client.

Tennessee's free banking law of 1852 loosened charter requirements considerably, and Memphis banks in particular expanded aggressively on the back of cotton trade finance. Whether the Mechanics Bank maintained adequate specie reserves against its circulating notes was a matter of ongoing public skepticism — a skepticism that proved well-founded for many similar institutions when the Panic of 1857 hit.