5 Dollars Central Bank of Tennessee

The Central Bank of Tennessee was a short-lived state-chartered institution, and by 1855 it was operating in a Tennessee banking environment still dominated by the Bank of Tennessee and the Union Bank — both of which had survived the wave of failures that swept through Southern state banks in the 1840s. Notes of the smaller chartered banks from this period circulated at discounts that varied wildly depending on distance from the issuing branch, a practical problem that fueled demand for published "bank note reporters" among merchants throughout the antebellum South.

Tennessee's free banking law of 1852 reshaped which institutions could legally emit currency, and notes printed in this transitional window are worth examining for their bond-deposit backing details.