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5 Dollars Bank of Lexington - North Carolina
| Issuer | Bank of Lexington |
|---|---|
| Year | 1860 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Dollar (1785-date) |
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| Obverse description | Black letterpress print on plain paper with a red underprint. Three intaglio-engraved vignettes compose the central design: at left, a slave picking cotton in the field; at centre, two white females seated atop a cotton bale amid the cotton field; at right, two enslaved figures loading a cotton bale onto a vessel under the supervision of a white male overseer. The note is payable at Graham and bears the imprint of the American Bank Note Company, New York, with the State of North Carolina and Bank of Lexington legends rendered in bold typeface. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Reverse is unprinted, leaving the plain paper surface entirely blank apart from two handwritten endorsements in ink applied at lower centre and right, likely period endorsements by holders or merchants. |
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| Comments |
The Bank of Lexington was a small state-chartered institution in Davidson County, and by 1860 it was operating in the final window before secession rendered North Carolina's antebellum banking infrastructure effectively obsolete. When the state left the Union in May 1861, notes from banks like Lexington continued circulating under increasingly strained conditions — Confederate currency and state treasury notes soon competed for public confidence, and smaller bank issues were frequently discounted or refused outright.
The American Bank Note Company engraving is characteristically fine work for the period. Notes from minor Southern institutions printed in New York are sometimes found with pen-cancelled or rubber-stamped alterations made after the printer relationship became politically untenable.