Publisher's Synopsis
"In 1690, the Massachusetts Bay Colony became the first government in the Western world to print paper money, the imagery for which initiated an indigenous American art form of remarkable dynamism and originality. After the Revolutionary War, disillusioned by how quickly its promiscuous printing of Continental currency had led to hyperinflation, the government of the United States left it to private institutions, such as state-chartered banks, to carry on this American tradition. Bank notes, adorned with a vast variety of images, soon became the fledgling country's primary currency. In 1861, in response to the pressures of the Civil War, the federal government began to take charge of the paper-money supply by creating a national currency and a national banking system. At the same time, the Confederate States of America was creating a competing self-image, which was also heavily indebted to bank-note vignettes. Issued in 1896, the Silver
