15 Cents 'Fractional Currency' - 4th series

Fractional currency was a wartime improvisation. The hoarding of coins after 1861 — silver and gold vanishing almost immediately from circulation as metal premiums spiked — left the Union with no practical means of making change. The 4th series, introduced in 1869, was itself a corrective measure: earlier issues had proven easy to counterfeit, and the Treasury added a Treasury seal and reworked the intaglio work accordingly.

The National Bank Note Company's involvement reflected the same security contracting logic driving the period's larger currency reforms. Spinner's flamboyant signature — a deliberate anti-counterfeiting flourish he cultivated over decades — appears on this note as it does across the fractional series.