Keatinge & Ball relocated from Richmond to Columbia, South Carolina in 1862 after increasing pressure on the Confederate capital made continued operations there untenable. The firm became the Confederacy's most prolific printer by volume, though working under chronic shortages of quality ink, plate steel, and banknote paper — the last often sourced from European suppliers running the Union naval blockade.
The watermark on this series was one of the few meaningful anti-counterfeiting measures available, since the Confederacy lacked the industrial infrastructure to enforce tighter controls. By late 1862, Northern counterfeit operations — some commercially organized in the Ohio Valley — were flooding Confederate territory with convincing fakes of exactly this denomination.
Keatinge & Ball relocated from Richmond to Columbia, South Carolina in 1862 after increasing pressure on the Confederate capital made continued operations there untenable. The firm became the Confederacy's most prolific printer by volume, though working under chronic shortages of quality ink, plate steel, and banknote paper — the last often sourced from European suppliers running the Union naval blockade.
The watermark on this series was one of the few meaningful anti-counterfeiting measures available, since the Confederacy lacked the industrial infrastructure to enforce tighter controls. By late 1862, Northern counterfeit operations — some commercially organized in the Ohio Valley — were flooding Confederate territory with convincing fakes of exactly this denomination.