5 Dollars Canal Bank, 'Redback'

The Canal Bank was one of Louisiana's most durable antebellum financial institutions, chartered in 1831 and surviving — remarkably — through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and several regional banking panics before finally closing in 1895. The 'Redback' nickname derives from the distinctive red-tinted reverse printing, a colorization technique Toppan, Carpenter adopted in the early 1850s partly as an anti-counterfeiting measure, predating the federal greenback program that would make colored reverses a national standard.

Louisiana's strict specie-reserve banking laws under the 1842 Banking Act meant Canal Bank notes generally maintained parity with gold longer than comparable Southern issues — a reputation that gave this paper real commercial reach outside the state.