A Confederate bill under the bed

After my grandmother, Helen Chandler Adams Ingham, died in the summer of 2003, we began the gradual, yearslong process of cleaning out the house on Oak Crest Lane in Wallingford. So it was probably late 2003 or early 2004 that Mom and I first came across a box of miscellanous papers under my grandmother's bed. I'm fairly certain the City of Wilmington scrip I wrote about last month was in the box. Probably some old wills or deeds, too.

And so was an envelope with "P E R S O N A L" and "CONFEDERATE $100 BILL" typed on it.

As advertised, inside the envelope was a taped and tattered piece of Confederacy currency, a $100 bill. It features an image of Lucy Pickens (1832-1899), aka "Queen of the Confederacy," in the center, bears an issue date of February 17, 1864, and states that it is redeemable "two years after the ratification of a treaty of peace." It would not turn out to be redeemable. After the Confederates surrendered to conclude the American Civil War in 1865, the more than $1 billion in currency they had issued became utterly worthless. It holds modern-day value only for collectors. 

I have no idea why members of my family held onto this Confederate $100 bill. I do know that my great-grandfather, in particular, was a Civil War buff and had numerous books on the topic. Occam's Razor suggests someone simply found it an interesting collectible and/or it was forgotten about for decades at a time. 

I don't think anyone in that part of my family tree — most of whom lived in Delaware, Pennsylvania or Maryland — was a Confederate supporter or sympathizer, but of course I have no way of knowing what may have been in their hearts and minds. My grandmother did extensive family genealogical research, and I still have many of the papers and documents she tracked down. (No one else wanted them, really.) I haven't examined closely what my distant ancestors' specific relationship with slavery was, but even if there was nothing direct, we know that nearly all white Americans, North and South, benefited from the long existence of that hateful, dehumanizing, institutionalized oppression.

I'm not going to keep this bill. I feel no need to be the person in the family line who passes it down to another generation, even further removed from any original rationale for keeping it. It's interesting as ephemera, of course, but I don't need it residing in a drawer or envelope.