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| Confederate Paper Money One Hundred Dollars 1864 Lucy Pickens "Queen of the Confederacy" |
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| Confederate Money One Hundred Dollars |
Confederate Currency $100 Dollar Bill from Richmond, Virginia February 17th 1864 Lucy Pickens "Queen of the Confederacy", representing Women of the South. T-65 (929,200 total issued)
This Confederate Money was issued from Richmond Virginia during the Civil War on February 17, 1864. In the center is Lucy Pickens, the wife of the governor of South Carolina during the war. The left vignette are figures portraying the army and artillery branches of the military and on the right is a portrait of George Wythe Randolph, who served the Confederate States of America as secretary of war during the Civil War.
Inscriptions: "Two years after the ratification of a treaty of peace between the Confederate States and the United States of America, The Confederate States of America will pay to the bearer on demand One Hundred Dollars/ Richmond Feb. 17th 1864/ Keatinge & Ball Columbia SC"
Lucy Petway Holcombe Pickens (June 11, 1832 – August 8, 1899) was a 19th-century American socialite of Tennessee and Texas, known during and after her lifetime as the "Queen of the Confederacy". Described as "beautiful, brilliant, and captivating" by her male contemporaries, she helped shape the stereotype of the "Southern belle." Born into a planter's family, she moved with them to Marshall, Texas, the seat of Hamilton County, at age 16.
She married Colonel Francis Wilkinson Pickens of South Carolina in 1858, after he was nominated as United States ambassador to Russia. They returned to the United States in 1860 and he was elected as governor of the state several days before the legislature voted to secede from the Union. After the war and during Reconstruction, they struggled to keep their upland plantation of Edgewood productive, adapting to changed labor and the aftermath of war. After her husband died in 1869, Lucy Pickens adjusted to life as a young widow, and learned how to run the plantation.
She was born to Beverly LaFayette Holcomb and Eugenia Dorothea (Hunt) Holcomb at their family plantation near La Grange, Tennessee. She attended La Grange Female Academy before switching to a finishing school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with older sister Anna Eliza, from 1846–1848.
In 1848, the Holcombes moved to Marshall, Texas. They lived in the Capitol Hotel in the county seat while waiting for the construction of the main house and outbuildings for their cotton plantation Wyalucing. Several years later, Lucy wrote a novella entitled The Free Flag of Cuba, a romanticized account of the exploits of Cuban freedom fighter Narciso López. It was published in 1854 under the name "H. M. Hardimann." Until the early 21st century, it was believed to have been lost.
In the summer of 1857, Lucy met Colonel Francis Wilkinson Pickens of South Carolina, an older widower who proceeded to court her, but with little success. In January 1858, after his defeat for a Senate seat, he accepted an appointment as the US ambassador to Russia. Suddenly she accepted his previous proposal, and they were married at Wyalucing on April 26, 1858. He was old enough to be Lucy's father and had daughters from his two late wives.
The Pickens took two household slaves to Russia with them, Lucinda and Tom. Lucy became a favorite at the Russian court of Alexander II. She and her husband were befriended by Alexander and his wife Maria Alexandrovna. While in Russia, Lucy gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Francis Eugenia Olga Neva. The tsar and tsaritsa became godparents of the Pickens' daughter, and the tsar nicknamed Francis as Douschka, meaning "Darling" in Russian.
Lucy taught Lucinda to read and write in English, and to speak French and Russian. The young slave woman cared for Douschka and later returned with the Pickens to South Carolina.
A longing for South Carolina and worries about its leaning toward secession caused the Pickens family to return home in August 1860. They settled at the Pickens plantation of Edgewood, located in the "up country" region of the state. Francis W. Pickens was elected governor by the General Assembly of South Carolina on December 17, three days before the legislature voted to secede from the Union.
An advocate of secession, Lucy Holcombe Pickens was the only woman to be depicted on the currency of the Confederate States of America (three issues of the $100 CSA bill and one issue of the $1 CSA bill, which were printed in Columbia, South Carolina). She was also featured on one issue of $1000 CSA loan certificates. In April 1861, Lucy and friends witnessed the shelling of Fort Sumter from a rooftop in Charleston. In November 1861, a unit of the Confederate States Army was formed; it was called the Holcombe Legion in her honor. She designed and sewed its flag. It is claimed that she financed its equipment by the sale of some of the jewels given to her by the tsar.
During the war years, Pickens lived much of the time at her husband's plantation of Edgewood. There she had to get along with his daughters from earlier marriages, and manage overseers and, through them, the slave force. Her own family's plantation Wyalusing in Marshall, Texas, was used as the base of the Trans-Mississippi Agency of the Confederate Post Office during the war.
After the war, Francis W. Pickens chose to take the oath of loyalty in order to gain amnesty offered by President Andrew Johnson, who had succeeded to office following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The provisional governor of South Carolina, Benjamin F. Perry, thought Pickens was unlikely to be pardoned for his part in the way as he was worth more than $20,000. Lucy, then visiting her family in Texas, sold some of her jewelry, including pieces given to her by the tsar in Russia, to raise money for them.
Many freedmen stayed to work at Edgewood as sharecroppers, but the transition to free labor was wrenching. Lucinda stayed with Lucy Pickens to continue caring for Douschka. Francis' valet Tom left them after the end of the war and migrated to the North. Lucy accepted an offer to be Vice-Regent of South Carolina for the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, formed to purchase and preserve founding father George Washington's plantation along the Potomac River south of Washington, DC. Beset by problems and taxes, her husband was able to retain only Edgewood (with her help), selling or losing to taxes his plantations in Mississippi and Alabama.
In 1869 Francis died. Lucy, a young widow at 37, had to learn how to manage their plantation and affairs.
George Wythe Randolph
George Wythe Randolph (March 10, 1818 – April 3, 1867) was a lawyer, planter, and Confederate general. He served for eight months in 1862 as the Confederate States Secretary of War during the American Civil War, when he reformed procurement, wrote the conscription law, and strengthened western defenses. He was President Thomas Jefferson's youngest grandson by his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph.
Randolph was born in 1818 at Monticello near Charlottesville, Virginia, to Martha Jefferson Randolph, the daughter of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., a descendant of Pocahontas and John Rolfe' son, Thomas Rolfe. Their youngest son, he was named in honor of George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and law professor of his grandfather Thomas Jefferson. He was also related to the seventh governor of Virginia, Edmund Randolph, who served in George Washington's cabinet as the first Attorney General of the United States, as well as colonist William Randolph through both his mother and father's sides of the family.
Randolph briefly attended preparatory schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Washington, DC, where his mother sent him to distance him from family troubles. His father had incurred much debt. He served as a midshipman in the United States Navy from 1831 to 1839 and began attending the University of Virginia while in the service.
Marriage and family
On April 10, 1852, he married the young widow Mary Elizabeth Adams Pope (1830–1867). They had no children.
Career
After studying at the University of Virginia, Randolph "read the law" with an established firm and was admitted to the bar in 1840. He practiced law in Charlottesville, Virginia, and he and Mary lived at his plantation of Edgehill. They moved to the capital of Richmond in 1849. He became active in the community as well as having his law practice. He founded the Richmond Mechanics' Institute and was an officer in the Virginia Historical Society.
As the Confederacy formed after southern states' secession, the United States divided into two hostile camps and the sections moved toward open conflict. A special delegation, composed of Randolph, William B. Preston and Alexander H.H. Stuart, traveled to Washington, D.C. where they met President Abraham Lincoln on April 12, 1861. Finding the President firm in his resolve to hold the Federal forts in the South, the three men returned to Richmond on April 15.
Randolph was commissioned a major in the Confederate Army, and later served as a colonel of the artillery in the Battle of Big Bethel. He was promoted to brigadier general on February 12, 1862. Mary Randolph was active in the Richmond Ladies Association, which organized welfare and relief for the war effort.
Randolph was appointed by Jefferson Davis as Secretary of War on March 18, 1862, and he took office on March 24, 1862. He helped reform the department, improving procurement and writing a conscription law similar to one he had created for Virginia. He was most well known for his strengthening the Confederacy's western and southern defenses, but came into conflict with Jefferson Davis over this. With weakening health due to tuberculosis (TB), he resigned on November 17, 1862.
Post-Civil War
In 1864, Randolph took his family to exile in Europe, staying in England and France. They returned to Virginia in 1866. He died of tuberculosis in March 1867 at his Edgehill plantation. He is buried at Monticello in the Jefferson family graveyard.
Legacy and honors
Randolph was portrayed on the $100 bill printed by the Confederate States of America.