Has anyone ever heard of this coin or token?
BillJones
Posts: 35,069 ✭✭✭✭✭
On page 92 of Bill O’Reilly’s new book, “Confronting Evil,” it says the Confederate general and KKK founder, Nathan Bedford Forest reaches into his purse and pulls out a silver 50 cent piece issued by the Bank of West Tennessee. It has Lady Columbia, symbolic of the new world, on the obverse and a tobacco leaf on the reverse.
I am not aware that banks issued silver coins in 1861 or before. They did issue fractional notes and lots of other paper money. Has anyone seen or heard of any piece like this?
Retired dealer and avid collector of U.S. type coins, 19th century presidential campaign medalets and selected medals. In recent years I have been working on a set of British coins - at least one coin from each king or queen who issued pieces that are collectible. I am also collecting at least one coin for each Roman emperor from Julius Caesar to ... ?
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Only 50¢ denomination from Tn was a note, that I'm aware of. Did the coin have a photo in the book or just a description?
Jim
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest....Abraham Lincoln
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.....Mark Twain
Perhaps it was a foreign coin which circulated at that time that was secured from that bank.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
No, no photos.
I have some issues with what I have read so far. The first “evil leader” was the Roman emperor, Caligula. Fair enough. Caligula was insane and cruel, deserved to be assassinated because in Rome, there was usually no other way to change leadership.
The trouble is the author made the claim that was the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire. He extrapolated over 400 years, all the way out to the ultimate fall in 475. The trouble is the time of the Adoptive Caesars was in the offing. Historians agree that the Adoptive Caesar period marked the golden age of Rome. The empire reached its largest land mass, and all the leaders except last emperor, the insane Commodus, are rated from better than average to great, by Roman standards. Caligula was bad, but his reign did not mark the beginning of the end for the Eastern Empire.
Bill’s “historical” books are best treated as historical fiction. All of them play fast and loose with the details. In short, they deliberately make up crap.
Never heard of it, but I think it may have looked similar to this if it existed. Just playing around with images this morning.
Mr_Spud
That’s a great looking coin which fits the description, but it does not have a first half of the 19th century “minted at the East Podunk, backwoods mint,” look to it. Most of the private minters didn’t do that well, especially with a fairly large coin, like a half dollar.
Here’s the prompts I used
Mr_Spud
AI
Have you actually read any of his books?
Yep. They’re entertainment but garbage as actual history. He doesn’t write them himself you know.
Most agreeable to your analysis, @BillJones. At least we now have the opportunity to fact check before spreading misinfo, although many do not. Write, print and go.
Jim
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest....Abraham Lincoln
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.....Mark Twain
I don't want to get into this. This is not the place. I do know he collaborates with other authors and he gives them credit. My opinion is that there are so many O'Reilly haters that if the books were fiction he would've been exposed immediately. That has not happened. History has been rewritten over the past few decades. Anyone that was taught those fictional and half truth rewrites would automatically believe that O'Reilly is in effect lying. I'll choose to believe someone who has done extensive research on a subject as opposed to 99% of teachers, professors, and reporters who do zero research and have an obvious agenda.
BTW, did you know that Eric Clapton writes the music to his songs, but someone else writes the lyrics. Yet Clapton takes credit for writing the song and lyrics. He also stole the piano coda in the song Layla from Rita Coolidge but refused to give her writers credit. That's disappointing to me, but it is a fact.
Like I said, this is not the place for this discussion. I didn't start it but this will be my last post on it. If you want/need the last word, go for it.
I only posed the question because I read this and had never heard of such a piece during 65 years as a collector. It is not in the Rulau book or any other reference I have.
Dude, lighten up. I don’t hate O’Reilly or have an agenda. However, I do have the ability to know when his books have made up history. For instance in Killing Lincoln he says 30 million people saw Lincoln’s funeral train.
I’m sure you can see how stupid that is and easily verified as being false. In the OP, do you really think NBF pulled out a 50c piece as described? His books are filled with these kind of made up details.
Like I said in my original post, if you read his books, they’re best understood as historical fiction.
An unsubstantiated report from a thoroughly discredited source.
What could possibly be wrong?
This is a lot of hullabaloo over "50 cent coin" vs "50 cent note".
O'Reilly uses collaborators in the same way as James Patterson. And to both of their credits, they give credit to the collaborator rather than use ghost writers like most former politicians. Read them and enjoy them, or don't.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
So, you're saying that the entire population of the US didn't see the train?
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
His writers should avoid making claims which are not based in fact. They did not have to go into such detail without the facts. He could have written, “Forest pulled out a half dollar,” without going into detail which was over the top.
Making detailed descriptions, that goes into so much detail, which some specialist readers might question, undermines the credibility of the author’s other conclusions. Those of us who have studied what was in circulation at the time would question such specificity. The author has no idea what Forest used, if he made the purchase at all. Given my previous studies, 50 cents sounds high for a shot of rum. Ten or even 25 cents sounds more reasonable.
it was one of many craft rums of the time; this one from the house of Jefferson Davis and family. The boutique distiller, "JD," survived until 1871 when it was sold to a whiskey maker from Kentucky.
I've never heard of such a piece and doubt one ever existed. Historical falsehoods abound. Tales of the Roman emperors were mostly written long after their reigns had ended so who knows what is fact and what is fiction.
I'm not defending the slight inaccuracy.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
I'm not aware of any banks, anywhere in the United States, that issued their own tokens, though it was a common enough practice in Britain and Canada. If a bank was well-stocked enough with silver, it almost certainly would have already been in the form of silver coin, given the government's very economical offer to take your bullion and turn it into coin at no charge. There's just no economic incentive for banks to make their own tokens, when printing their own paper money was far more "normal", not to mention much cheaper.
The Bank of West Tennessee" certainly did exist back then, and did issue it's own banknotes. I don't know if they issued a 50 cent note, but the given description is not entirely unreasonable for such a note to fit that description (except that low-face-value notes more often than not were uniface and sowould have had nothing at all on the back).
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.