America Had No Paper Money Until 1862 — What Did People Actually Use?

For the first 86 years of its existence, the United States had no federally issued paper money. Not a single government-printed dollar bill. So what did Americans actually use to buy, sell, and settle debts? The answer is stranger than you'd expect — tobacco leaves, clamshells, foreign coins from the Spanish Empire, and eventually thousands of private banknotes printed by anyone who could open a bank, including outright criminals. This video traces the bizarre and chaotic history of American money from the earliest colonial settlements through the Civil War, when the U.S. government was finally forced to print paper currency to survive. Along the way, we cover the collapse of the Continental dollar (which became so worthless people wallpapered their shops with it), the Constitutional ban on state-issued currency, Alexander Hamilton's Coinage Act, Andrew Jackson's war against the Second Bank of the United States, the insanity of the wildcat banking era when a third of all currency in circulation was counterfeit, and the desperate passage of the Legal Tender Act of 1862 that gave birth to the greenback — the ancestor of every dollar bill in your wallet today. This is a story about trust, power, and what happens when a nation has to build an economy from nothing. If you enjoyed this, subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss the next deep dive. #money #history #finance #americanhistory #economics #currency #gold #civilwar #banking #dollar #greenback #federalreserve #alexanderhamilton #andrewjackson #wallstreet #inflation #papermoney #goldstandard #documentary #financialhistory