CONFEDERATE MONEY TAKEN: German Shopkeepers unaware That Civil War Is Over in 1909

[Stauffenberg]

"When the South failed to rise again (at least in Confederate form), many Southerners were left sitting on giant piles of worthless currency from a defunct country. Tough luck, to be sure, but what they may not have known was that they could just have taken a voyage to Germany to recover some of their lost value. On May 30, 1909, The New York Times ran a story under the headline “CONFEDERATE MONEY TAKEN: German Shopkeepers Apparently Ignorant That Civil War Is Over.”

According to the story, many merchants, hoteliers, and café proprietors in Berlin were still accepting Confederate cash that hadn’t been worth its face value in over four decades. The American consulate in Berlin had been fending off German businessmen who were trying to exchange their notes from, say, the Bank of Richmond for German currency. Whoops. The article closed with the line “[S]ome of [the merchants] have left the consulate convinced that the United States Treasury has really ceased payment and is ashamed to admit it.”

Read the full text here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/86004#ixzz24IkLsr8z
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http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/86004

I guess you might say those German shopkeepers were easy marks...

[Pocus]

Excellent story... Akin to this town in the US who was still siding with the confederate (complete with flag on the city hall) decades after the end of the ACW. Details, you want details? Wait for Our Gracious Queen to return!

[Stauffenberg]

Excellent story... Akin to this town in the US who was still siding with the confederate (complete with flag on the city hall) decades after the end of the ACW. Details, you want details? Wait for Our Gracious Queen to return!

Yes I want the details!

I am imagining "The Lost Cajun Platoon", last heard of in 1898 in a New Orleans newspaper that reported:

Passengers on a steamboat heading south near Port Barre spent some anxious moments flat on the deck as their ship took musket fire from both banks of an unknown bayou their ship had sailed into, the captain apparently lost and seeking a way through the maze of waterways created by a recent rise in the river levels. Mike Martin, an ex Union officer in General Nathaniel Bank's army who was on the boat, reported seeing the stars and bars and men in butternut brown giving the famous rebel yell although, he added: "well I am sure it was the rebel yell, but hell, these men sounded old."

apy: apy:

[Xaloc]

great stories, thanks for share it

[WildCat]

Terrible pun but fascinating story. Thank you for sharing both