5 Dollars

Keatinge & Ball were Richmond's principal Confederate note printers, operating under constant material constraint — ink shortages, worn plates, and increasingly poor-quality paper plagued later printings of this series. This note dates from the earlier phase of that arrangement, before conditions deteriorated badly.

The Confederacy's decision to fund the war largely through note emission rather than taxation proved catastrophic. By late 1864, inflation had rendered five-dollar notes nearly worthless in daily transactions. P#17 in particular circulated heavily in the eastern theater and survivors frequently show the wear to prove it.