Rebel Currency

From the New Orleans Delta.

The old table of school days, “ten mills make one cent, ten cents one dime, ten dimes one dollar,” is “played out.”  A dime or a dollar, in hard spelter, is a sight good for diseased optics, and a five minute’s survey of ten dollars in specie would cure the most hopeless case of Asiatic cholera.  But we have a new table of currency, and it is published here, free of charge, for the benefit of those who choose to cut it out and post it up for reference:

10 omnibus tickets make half a dollar

5 Schelke's beer tickets make a man drunk, invested in lager.

10 Krost's beer tickets make one city shinplaster.

1 handful of shinplasters (with the pictures worn off) make a man cuss.

10 half dollars make a fool of a poor man.

25 beer tickets (schelke's or Krost's) make half a cinq.

40 beer tickets, 10 omnibus tickets, 1 handful of shinplasters and nary half dollar, make an honest man steal. If they don't, we should like to know what will.

By the way, while we are laughing up North at the Rebel currency, let us not forget that paper money is getting ahead in this region at a rate which is dangerous to the public interests.

– Published in The Dubuque Herald, Dubuque, Iowa, Friday Morning, February 7, 1862, p. 1