25 Cents State of South Carolina

The Bank of the State of South Carolina was one of the few state-chartered institutions in the Confederacy that maintained genuine public confidence throughout most of the war — partly because the state government stood directly behind it. This fractional note was issued specifically to address the near-total disappearance of small silver coinage from circulation after 1861, a problem acute enough that streetcar fares and small retail transactions had become logistically difficult across the South.

Columbia-printed Confederate fractionals from 1863 are often found with uneven ink strike, a consequence of wartime supply degradation rather than careless production.