A Grand Old Flag

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Our nation’s semiquincentennial celebrations are in full swing. What better subject to discuss than the use of the American flag on paper money? It’s not so evident today, but before and during the Civil War, the flag appeared quite frequently on notes. Its use in the South during the war was a little more problematic and led to some interesting situations, which I will explore later.

While important from the nation’s founding, the flag became a focus during the War of 1812 when Francis Scott Key was inspired to write what would become known as the “Star-Spangled Banner” after watching the flag fly defiantly over Fort McHenry in Baltimore during a British assault on September 12-14, 1814.

Early Uses

As vignettes on bank notes became more widespread beginning in the 1820s, the flag often appeared as part of patriotic designs. One of the earliest banks to embrace the concept was the Jefferson Bank of New Salem in Ohio. While the bank was a commercial failure, lasting less than a year in 1817-18, its notes were innovative, with each having a vignette related to the War of 1812. The $1 featured the Battle of New Orleans, which was fought after the war had ended due to the late arrival of news that the Treaty of Ghent had been signed two weeks earlier. The $3 bears a scene from the Battle of Lake Erie, an improbable naval victory for the United States, fought more than 500 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. The $5 is believed to depict treaty negotiations in Ghent, Belgium. The American flag appears on both the $1 and $3, with the $3 having the most prominent image of the national banner.

During the remainder of the pre-Civil War era, vignettes became more detailed, artistic, and complex, and the flag continued to be a part of many designs. Pictured here are a few representative examples of flags on notes from the 1830s through the ’60s.

The Republic of Texas

In the 1830s, another national flag was featured on a bank note, that of the Republic of Texas. After achieving independence from Mexico, the Republic of Texas issued massive amounts of paper money, including a $50 note issued under the banner of the Texas government in Houston. The note, which was issued in 1838-39, featured a sailor doffing his hat, holding a flag that has multiple stripes but only one (“lone”) star. The Republic of Texas adopted the “Lone Star” flag in January 1839, just after this note was designed and issued beginning in 1838. What had in fact happened was that the bank note company—Draper, Toppan, Longacre & Co.—had modified an earlier version of one of its vignettes with an American flag by removing all of the stars and replacing them with a single star. The flag depicted on the government of Texas $50 was, in fact, the ensign of the First Texas Navy, which some sources suggest served as the de facto national flag of the republic alongside the so-called Burnet flag from 1835 to 1839.

The Civil War

With the beginning of the Civil War, the use of patriotic vignettes incorporating the flag, unsurprisingly, dramatically increased. One unusual situation involved the first $100 Treasury note of the Confederate States of America. 

In the final weeks leading up to the war, National Bank Note Company was under intense pressure to design and produce notes for what would soon become a belligerent government and deliver them before the commencement of hostilities. One of the measures taken was to use vignettes that were already prepared. The vignette of America was selected for the $100 Treasury note. This design depicted an allegorical woman draped in the Stars and Stripes standing by a Federal-style shield. While time was of the essence, National Bank Note Company still made subtle modifications to the vignette to “de-federalize” it. The number of stripes on the shield was reduced and many of the stars in America’s drapery were obscured to make the “Star-Spangled” effect far less obvious. So, in a sense, the Star-Spangled Banner made an appearance on an issue of the Confederacy, albeit in a highly modified format. For its part, the Confederacy did depict its national flag on several issues, with the most impressive appearance being on the 1864 $500 issued during the last year of the war.

After the Civil War

As state bank notes and scrip gradually disappeared after the war, the national flag made fewer appearances on paper currency. Perhaps one of my personal favorites, however, appears on the Series 1918 $1 Federal Reserve Bank Note, which was authorized in the closing months of World War I. The back, engraved by Robert Ponickau, showcases a wonderful vignette of a bald eagle carrying a large American flag. The description of this design is a worthy place to end this article, “Long may she wave.”

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A version of this article appears in the July 2026 issue of The Numismatist (money.org)

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