$10,000 Bill Sent to N.Y. for Safe Keeping

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$10,000 Bill Sent to N.Y. for Safe Keeping

A rare $10,000 bill is getting a new home. The bill - one of 15 large-denomination bills at a Chase Bank branch in Green Bay - was shipped to the bank's corporate archives in New York for safe keeping.

The $10,000 bill bears the likeness of Salmon P. Chase, for whom the bank was named. Chase was a U.S. senator who served as treasury secretary under President Lincoln.

The large bill was discovered in a bank customer's safety deposit box after the owner died 20 years ago. The woman's family exchanged the currency at face value, and the bank stored the bill in a plastic sleeve for protection.

But bank officials decided the bills would be safer at the JP Morgan Chase & Co. corporate office in New York. The bank sent the bills there last month by armored truck.

The government stopped printing bills larger than $100 in 1945 and hasn't issued any since 1969. The Green Bay bills were printed in 1934.

"The bills had been in our vault so long that many of us were sad to see them go, but we're glad to know that historic bills will be properly preserved," said Green Bay branch manager Carrie Liebhauser.

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Salmon P. Chase
As secretary of the treasury in President Lincoln's cabinet from 1861 to 1864, during the first three years of the Civil War, he rendered services of the greatest value. That period of crisis witnessed two great changes in American financial policy, the establishment of a national banking system and the issue of a legal tender paper currency. The former was Chase's own particular measure. He suggested the idea, worked out all of the important principles and many of the details, and induced the Congress to accept them. The success of that system alone warrants his being placed in the first rank of American financiers. It not only secured an immediate market for government bonds, but it also provided a permanent uniform national currency, which, though inelastic, is absolutely stable. The issue of legal tenders, the greatest financial blunder of the war, was made contrary to his wishes, although he did not, as he perhaps ought to have done, push his opposition to the point of resigning.

The first U.S. federal currency was printed in 1862, during Chase's tenure as Secretary of the Treasury, thus it was his responsibility to design the notes. In an effort to further his political career, his own face appeared on a variety of U.S. paper currency. Most recently, in order to honor the man who introduced the modern system of banknotes, Chase was on the $10,000 bill, printed from 1928 to 1946 (this bill is no longer in circulation).

SOURCE: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_P._Chase