Cotton Money
COTTON MONEY
COTTON MONEY, certificates issued by banks on baled cotton, generally used in commercial and financial operations by planters in the Old South. When secession demoralized the cotton exchanges, growers called on the Confederate government to issue cotton money. Mississippi, the only state to comply, issued $5 million in treasury notes to be advanced on 1861 cotton stored and pledged for delivery by owners. Although planters clamored for additional issues of cotton money, the legislature refused to issue notes on cotton raised after 1861. Before the cotton money was repudiated in 1869 as part of the Confederate debt, more than half of it had been redeemed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ball, Douglas B. Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Johnson, Ludwell H. Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1958.
John K.Bettersworth/a. r.
See alsoConfederate States of America ; Currency and Coinage ; Money ; Tithes, Southern Agricultural ; Tobacco as Money .