500 Dollars

By the time Keatinge & Ball produced this note in 1864, the Confederate Treasury was in freefall. Richmond had lost access to most of its earlier suppliers, including the Northern bank note firms it had quietly relied on before the war, and the Columbia printing house was working under severe materials constraints — ink shortages, degraded paper stocks, and increasingly irregular watermark quality are all documented in surviving examples from this period.

The $500 denomination was effectively notional. Inflation had so thoroughly eroded Confederate purchasing power by early 1864 that this face value represented far less than its prewar equivalent, and public confidence in further emissions had collapsed. The April 1864 currency reform, which forcibly exchanged old notes at a discount, preceded this issue — making it one of the last significant denomination runs before the currency became worthless entirely.

Keatinge & Ball relocated operations to Augusta, Georgia, before Columbia fell to Sherman in February 1865.