Texas Confederate Money Washington Co .50 UNC

Your Price: $135.00

Item Number: Washington Co. TX 50cents

Manufacturer: CSA - Confederacy Capital - Montgomery AL, Richmond VA

Quantity:

Texas Confederate Money Washington County Uncirculated 50 cents

CSA Washington County Texas 50 cents

A very nice choice crisp uncirculated piece of Civil War Confederate scrip from Washington County Texas and dating from the Civil War period. There is no date as this note was never issued, but was made in the 1860s and was supposed to be issued from Brenham, Texas in the amount of 50 cents. It is a wonder any of these Texas Confederate scrip still exsist as this note was printed on thin tissue like paper. This example is still crisp with very nice dark printing and coloring and great embossing. There is a train on the left end, fifty cents is printed across the middle in red and the back is very interesting, it has TEXAS printed in bold green lettering. A very nice example of Civil War confederate scrip from the great state of Texas. The pictures show the front and back of the actual Confederate Money that is for sale.

Brenham Texas 50 cents confederate money issued during the 1860s and grading choice crisp uncirculated

Some history of Brenham and Washington county Texas during the Civil War period

By 1860 there were 15,215 people living in Washington County; the 7,941 slaves made up more than half of the population. Farmland had expanded to encompass 365,000 acres, including more than 76,000 acres of improved land. Over 24,400 bales of cotton and more than 541,000 bushels of corn were produced that year; the number of livestock had also grown to include 11,600 milk cows, 35,000 cattle, and 27,000 swine. About 20,500 sheep were also reported that year, and 30,500 pounds of wool were produced. In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War,over 95 percent of the electorate supported secession. Numerous Washington County residents volunteered for service in the Confederacy. Two companies from Washington County, Company E of Brenham and Company F of Longpoint, served in the Fifth Texas Cavalry; the "Dixie Blues" of Hood's Texas Brigade were also raised. The number of slaves grew significantly during the Civil War, possibly due to southerners fleeing west with their slaves. According to county tax records, the slave population increased to 8,663 by 1864.

Union troops entered Brenham in 1865, and after the spring of 1866 the town was occupied by two companies of federal troops. Because of the area's large population of ex-slaves, an agency of the Freedmen's Bureau was also established there. Relations between the federals and the white population were often tinged with hostility. D. L. McGary, the editor of the Brenham Banner, frequently attacked the Freedmen's Bureau in his paper, and his arrest by federal authorities in 1866 led to increased tensions. On September 7, 1866, after McGary had been released, three federal soldiers were shot during an altercation at a dance. Other soldiers returned to the scene, arrested two citizens, and then set a fire that burned down part of the town. The town gained a reputation for the "unreconstructed" Southern mentality of its white residents. In 1869 Brenham was the site of the Democratic Editors Convention, which denounced, among other things, the idea of black suffrage.

The local economy was disrupted and altered by the Civil War and the subsequent emancipation of the many slaves. In the years after the war most of the large plantations were broken into small tracts and sold to arriving immigrants or rented to tenant farmers or sharecroppers; by 1880 about two-thirds of the farmers labored on rented land. The economy was stimulated, however, by the thousands of immigrants, many of them from Germany, who moved into Washington County during the late 1860s and the 1870s.