A newly discovered Confederate military issuer with ties to one of the Civil War’s most heralded commanders will be featured in the Stack’s Bowers Galleries Official Auction of the Whitman Coin & Collectibles Winter Expo in Baltimore, Maryland.
The issuer is Major William W. Morrison and he issued the T-41 $100 Confederate note pictured above on April 18, 1863. Morrison was a native of North Carolina and from a prominent family in the western part of the state. His father, Robert Hall Morrison, was a well known Presbyterian minister who became the first president of Davidson College. William was one of ten of Robert and Mary Morrison’s children who lived to adulthood. Interestingly, William’s six sisters each married prominent Confederate military and civic leaders. One of those sisters, Mary Anna, married future Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson in 1857.
Before the war Morrison worked for his uncle, Senator William Alexander Graham, in the U.S. Department of the Navy. He was appointed a Captain in the Confederate Army on July 19, 1861 and sent to his post in the District of Pamlico at Goldsboro, North Carolina, where he served in the Commissary Department. He was promoted to Major on September 26, 1861. Morrison first served under General Richard C. Gatlin until he was replaced in March of 1862. Morrison is listed as a Major and Assistant Commissary of Subsistence on the staff of General Daniel H. Hill in July of 1863. He was paroled at Charlotte, North Carolina on May 20, 1865 at the conclusion of the war.
The note has been graded Choice About Uncirculated 58 EPQ by PMG and has an estimate of $2,500 to $3,500. Morrison’s manuscript on the back is nicely penned and reads in full "Passed April 18, 1863 by Wm W Morrison Major & C.S. Ast." There is also a January 1864 interest paid stamp from Raleigh, North Carolina attesting to this note’s time spent in the Tar Heel State.
