Charles Bastille
1 min readJul 18, 2021

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I love money and stamps.

Unless at some point you made a public display of your notes outside of some county courthouse to HONOR the people involved, I would KEEP these. They are awesome to look at, and the story behind it is instructive on slavery.

As reported by Atlas Obscura:

-- In putting images of slaves hoeing cotton fields, loading carts, or carrying bags of corn on its currency, the Confederacy affirmed its unashamed reliance on slavery as a fundamental part of the Southern economy. Furthermore, as Louisiana State University journalism professor Jules d’Hemecourt put it, stamping the cash with such imagery alongside mythological Greek gods and goddesses made a dogged statement that slavery “would continue to exist in perpetuity, protected by law and sanctioned by tradition, and all but divinely ordained in iconography.”. --

-- https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/object-of-intrigue-confederate-currency

If anything, confederacy currency is a reminder of the scourge of slavery and the Confederacy's raison d'etre. It is of significant historical interest, whereas statues are done in honor of their subjects.

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Charles Bastille
Charles Bastille

Written by Charles Bastille

Author of MagicLand & Psalm of Vampires. Join me on my Substack at https://www.ruminato.com/. All stories © 2020-24 by Charles Bastille

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