The First Named Woman on American Paper Currency: Lucy Pickens

Bank of Washington, NC 

     Paper currency dates back centuries in America. The Massachusetts Bay Colony issued notes to fund military expeditions in 1690. The Continental Congress issued notes to finance the Revolutionary War. Of course, these notes quickly lost their value, leading to the phrase “not worth a Continental.” 

   Most states, or banks, issued their own paper currency in the Federal and Antebellum periods.  Many of these notes featured women. A $50 note from the Bank of Washington, North Carolina from 1855 featured five women. A $5 1858 note from the Merchants’ Bank of South Carolina features a woman with the state seal. Likewise, a woman is portrayed on the $100 note from The Union Bank of Augusta, South Carolina. These three examples all have something in common. The woman is not an actual person, but the personification of Liberty. She is portrayed holding a spear with a liberty cap on top. This item is closely linked to the French Revolution, when the “pileus,” a hat worn by freed Roman slaves, was adopted as one of the symbols of the revolutionary forces. Similar to the Scythian cap, with which it is often conflated, the pileus represents freedom, so iconographic figures of Liberty frequently wear it or hold it aloft.

   Confederate currency also featured women, often Native American women, and at times Greek or Roman goddesses, such as Victory (Nike), Athena, or Justice, which all appeared on various $100 notes. But the Confederate Treasury Department broke with tradition by placing Lucy Pickens on three different notes.

Lucy Holcombe Pickens 

   Often referred to as the “Queen of the Confederacy,” Lucy Holcome Pickens is an interesting story. She was born in La Grange, Tennessee, in 1832, and when she was 16, moved with her family to Marshall, Texas. In 1858, she married Col. Francis W. Pickens, a very wealthy South Carolina planter. Colonel Pickens and his bride were soon were on their way to Russia, where he served as United States ambassador. Lucky became a favorite at the Russian Court of Czar Alexander II. On returning to the United States, and South Carolina, Colonel Pickens was elected governor of South Carolina in December 1860, three days before the state legislature voted to secede from the Union. Lucy was in Charleston and watched the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861. Colonel Pickens continued to serve as governor of South Carolina through December 1862.

   Lucy Pickens was honored in many different ways. In the spring of 1861, she reviewed and presented a flag to the “Lucky Holcombe Legion.” She had sold her Russian jewels to help finance the Legion. Based on a proposal made by Confederate Treasury Secretary Christopher Memminger, in December 1862, Lucy Pickens’s portrait appeared on the Confederate $100 bill, and the Confederate $1 bill. She would also appear on revamped $100 notes in April 1863 and February 1864.[1]

    Colonel Pickens died in January 1869. Lucy never remained, but managed three different properties, raised her daughter, worked to have a monument erected to the Confederate dead in Edgefield, and worked to have George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, declared a historical monument.

   Lucy was the only named woman on a piece of currency until Pocahontas, who appeared on the US $20 bill from 1865 to 1869, and again in 1875. Martha Washington appeared on the US $1 Silver Certificate in 1886.

 

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[1] Greenberg, ed., The Women’s War in the South, 293-296.

He almost got away: Holcombe Legion and the night after South Mountain.

    Sometimes you just find accounts that make a person laugh out loud. As I was reading through an account by a member of Holcombe Legion (SC), I stumbled across one such account. William P. Dubose was adjutant of the infantry portion of Holcombe's Legion (he later served as chaplain). In September 1862, he had been ordered to take a small group of his soldiers and scout towards the battle field of the previous day at South Mountain, trying to ascertain if Federal troops are still around. Dubose has moved his men forward, and then leaves then while he scouts on ahead. He actually flanks a Federal line, coming up in their rear.

Private Jackon A. Davis of Co. E, Holcombe Legion (LOC)

   In the darkness, Dubose has not seen anything, when all of a sudden, he hears "Halt!"

   I stopped immediately, wondering whether it was the voice of the enemy or one of my own men in search of me. I could see one or two figures not more than twenty steps in front of me, but I could not distinguish the uniform. Robert Rutledge's cloak [which Dubose had borrowed] as a civilian's, with a c cape falling over the arms with slits in the side of the body for armholes. My arms were within the slits, holding the pistol [also borrowed]. I quietly cocked it and slowly moved over to the figures before me, which were between me and my own men. They made no movement as I approached and I hoped very strongly still that they were my men. As I approached to within a very few feet my immediate antagonist and myself, simultaneously recognized each other as enemies. He thought I was one of his own men. As he jerked up his gun, I was near enough to ward it off with one hand and with the other attempt to draw my pistol from without the cloak. In the necessary scuffle, the pistol being cocked, discharged itself prematurely. At once, thinking himself shot, with a load yell, the man dropped his gun and precipitated himself upon me. Instantly the woods were alive. My effort then was simply to get away. In the scuffle that ensued, I several times nearly did so, but my antagonist was a much larger and stronger man that I was, and I finally had to surrender to numbers."

Dubose was captured, and spent the next several weeks at Fort Delaware as a prisoner of war. This account was found in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Surprisingly, there appears to be no history of Holcombe Legion.