5 Dollars State Bank, South Carolina

Baldwin, Adams & Co. and Baldwin, Cousland & Co. were related firms operating out of New York and Philadelphia respectively during the 1850s — both descended from the same engraving lineage and often shared plate work, which accounts for the dual printer credit on notes from this series. The State Bank of South Carolina was one of the longer-lived state-chartered institutions in the antebellum South, surviving the various banking panics that eliminated competitors throughout the 1840s and 1850s.

By 1857, South Carolina's state banking system was operating under considerable pressure from the national debate over hard-money versus paper currency. This note circulated for only a few years before the Civil War disrupted all Southern banking and the State Bank wound down its operations.