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| T-24 Richmond September 2nd 1861 $10 Confederate Money |
Confederate Currency 1861 $10 Dollar Bill T-24, Busts of Robert Hunter at lower left, child at lower right.
Description: This $10 Confederate note has a portrait of Robert M. T. Hunter on the left side and the portrait of a small child on the right side. The vignette of a small child at the right is the Reverend Dr. Alfred L. Elwyn, an abolitionist from Philadelphia, as a child. His identity is unknown when the portrait was selected. This note was printed with black and red or orange ink on either plain, watermarked, or paper containing red fibers. This note has no design on the back. Criswell lists this as Variety Cr 156 and Fricke has this as T24 PF1, which means it is printed on plain paper and Leggett, Keatinge and Ball were the engravers. 278,400 issued.Inscriptions: "Six Months after the ratification of a Treaty of Peace between the Confederate States and the United States, The Confederate States of America will pay to the Bearer Ten Dollars/ Richmond, Sept. 2nd, 1861/ Fundable in Eight Per Cent Stock or Bonds of the Confederate States of America/ Receivable in Payment of all dues except Export Duties/ Keatinge & Ball Richmond, Va."
Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (April 21, 1809 – July 18, 1887) was an American statesman born in Essex County, Virginia.
From 1861 to 1862 Hunter was the Confederate States Secretary of State; and from 1862 to 1865 he was a member of the Confederate Senate, in which he was, at times, a caustic critic of the Davis administration. He was one of the commissioners to treat at the Hampton Roads Conference in 1865, and after the surrender of General Lee was summoned by President Lincoln to Richmond to confer regarding the restoration of Virginia in the Union. From 1874 to 1880 he was the treasurer of Virginia, and from 1885 until his death near Lloyds, Virginia, was collector of the Port of Tappahannock, Virginia.
Early life and education
Hunter was born in Loretto, Essex County, Virginia, the son of James Hunter and Maria (Garnett) Hunter. He was a maternal first cousin of both Robert S. Garnett and Richard B. Garnett. He entered the University of Virginia in his seventeenth year and was one of its first graduates. While he was a student, he became a member of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society. He then studied law at the Winchester Law School, and in 1830 was admitted to the bar. From 1835 to 1837 he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Career
In 1837, Hunter was elected U.S. Representative as a States Rights Whig. He was re-elected in 1839, and became Speaker of the United States House of Representatives – the youngest person ever to hold that office. He was re-elected again in 1841, but was not chosen Speaker. In 1843 he was defeated for re-election.
He then changed parties, becoming a Democrat. In 1845, he was again elected Representative, and in 1846 was elected U.S. Senator, taking office in 1847. He was re-elected in 1852 and 1858.
In the Senate, he became chairman of the Committee on Finance in 1850. He is credited with bringing about a reduction of the quantity of silver in the smaller coins. He was the author of the Tariff of 1857 and of the bonded-warehouse system, and was one of the first to advocate civil service reform. In 1853 he declined President Millard Fillmore's offer to make him Secretary of State.
At the first session of the 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston, South Carolina, Hunter was a contender for the presidential nomination, but received little support except from the Virginia delegation. On seven of the first eight ballots, he was a very distant second to the leader, Stephen A. Douglas, and was third on the remaining 42 ballots. When the convention reconvened in Baltimore, most Southerners withdrew, including Hunter, and the nomination went to Douglas.
Hunter did not regard Lincoln's election as being of itself a sufficient cause for secession. On January 11, 1861, he proposed an elaborate but impracticable scheme for the adjustment of differences between the North and the South. When this and several other efforts to the same end had failed, he quietly urged his own state to pass the ordinance of secession. He was expelled from the Senate for supporting secession.
In July 1861, Hunter was appointed Confederate States Secretary of State. He resigned on February 18, 1862, having been elected a Confederate Senator. He served in the Confederate Senate until the end of the war, and was at times President pro tem.
As a Confederate Senator, he was often a caustic critic of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Despite this friction, he was appointed by Davis as one of three commissioners sent to attempt peace negotiations in 1865, and met with President Lincoln at the Hampton Roads Conference. After Lee's surrender, Hunter was summoned by President Lincoln to confer regarding the restoration of Virginia.
When it was suggested by some Confederates that their slaves should be armed in order to win the war against the Union, Hunter vehemently opposed the move, delivering a long speech against it.
From 1874 to 1880 he was the treasurer of Virginia, and from 1885 until his death was collector of the Port of Tappahannock, Virginia. He died near Lloyds, Virginia, in 1887.
Legacy
Hunter appeared in the 2012 film Lincoln, which included the Hampton Roads Conference. He was portrayed by Mike Shiflett.
Among his works was Origin of the Late War, about the causes of the Civil War.
In 1942, a United States Liberty ship named the SS Robert M. T. Hunter was launched. She was scrapped in 1971.
Hunter was pictured on the Confederate $10 bill.
Alfred L. Elwyn
Alfred Langdon Elwyn (9 July 1804 – 15 March 1884) was a nonpracticing physician, an author, a philanthropist and a pioneer in the training and care of mentally disabled in the US. In addition, Elwyn was one of the founding officers of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind in 1833, and later served as the Institution's president. Elwyn also headed a Pennsylvania agricultural society and farm school. In addition, Elwyn was president of a society for prevential of cruelty to animals. He served as treasurer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science between 1849 and 1870.
The town of Elwyn, Pennsylvania and the care and training facility Elwyn are named for Alfred Elwyn.
School for the mentally disabled
Elwyn travelled to Boston for a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1849. He had promised to take a letter from Rachel Laird, a blind girl living in Philadelphia, to Laura Bridgman (December 21, 1829 - May 24, 1889), who was a famous blind deaf mute in Boston. Bridgman was studying at the South Boston Institute for the Blind, and while there Elwyn visited a classroom for mentally deficient children run by teacher James Richards.
Elwyn was impressed with Richards' work, and resolved to do something similar in Pennsylvania. In 1852, with Richards, Elwyn established a training school for the retarded in Germantown, Pennsylvania. In 1853, the Pennsylvania State Legislature formally chartered "The Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-Minded Children" with Richards as its first superintendent in Germantown. The school soon outgrew its facilities in Germantown, and in 1857 a 60-acre (240,000 m2) farm was purchased in Media, Pennsylvania to house a new facility with help from the Pennsylvania legislature. The buildings were completed in 1859 and Elwyn, Richards and 25 students moved in on September 1, 1859. The school was officially dedicated November 2, 1859. Elwyn became head of the school in 1870.