18. An American Counterfeiter 



It remains for someone more diligent and more 

 persistent, or perhaps more fortunate, in his 

 search than I have been to exhume the external 

 framework of the rousing good story of intrigue 

 and perilous adventure that follows. The names 

 of the participants, the exact dates, the location 

 of the bleak island in the St. Lawrence River near 



Montreal, and the fate of the others in the coun- 

 terfeiting ring — all these data would be interesting, 

 but our ignorance of them detracts none at all 

 from the irrepressible delight with which we 

 read our final lesson in the higher branches of the 

 art of papermaking. 



.[Nicholas Biddle, then president of the U.S. Bank, 

 had more faith in security against counterfeiting in 

 the quality of the paper and its water marks, than he 

 had in the most complicated and elaborate engraving. 

 I have frequently heard him argue that engraving, 

 no matter of what quality, could be secretly imitated 

 with but little chance of discovering the operator, but 

 that a paper that could only be produced by ma- 

 chinery of magnitude and of great cost, beyond the 

 reach of the counterfeiter could not be hid away. 

 Many curious devices in water marking were tried 

 at his suggestion. At one time he brought us a 

 specimen of French paper with a shaded water mark. 

 It had evidently been made on a vellum-faced mould, 

 most probably of soft copper wire in which undula- 

 tions were formed by dies analogous to those used in 

 embossing paper cards. The pulp deposited in the 

 depressions made a slight difference in the thickness of 

 the paper, which being reduced to the uniformity 

 requisite tc take a fair impression from the engraved 

 plate, by compression in finishing caused the dark 

 shade around the wire water mark sewed in the bot- 

 tom of the depressions. These were very difficult 

 moulds to make. The under facing or foundation 

 wires that are about ?{ 6 -inch apart on the wooden bars 

 of the mould had to be bent by hand to suit the de- 

 pressed portions of the wire face. When these paper 

 moulds were completed Mr. Biddle remarked that 



he now felt safe against the counterfeiters, for they 

 must first obtain moulds and then some mill to make 

 the paper, and he did not believe the owner of any 

 mill in the country could be found so unprincipled 

 as to join them. 



How little he dreamed of what Yankee ingenuity 

 could accomplish. Not long after the issue of notes 

 printed on this security paper, the most perfect 

 counterfeits the bank ever had to contend with were 

 put in circulation. 



It was several years before it was learned how the 

 counterfeiters had obtained the peculiar water-marked 

 paper, in fact not until the old United States Bank had 

 become a Pennsylvania State Institution, 169 and when 

 the facts were learned it was in so singular a way 

 savoring more of romance than reality that I must be 

 excused for what may run into a long digression in 

 relating them. 



During the frequent conferences with Mr. Nicholas 

 Biddle, in hope of reaching some mode of preventing 

 counterfeiting bank notes, I learned in confidence 

 much of what had been done in the detective line and 

 its results by an unsuspected officer of the bank whose 

 position was high, and who had become so much in- 

 terested in the pursuit that in disguise he affiliated 



1,19 This is probably the date from which one must start in order 

 to track down court records. The United States Bank was 

 succeeded by The Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania 

 on March i, 1836. 



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