Upham left home at the age of 20, abandoning his family's hopes he would go into farming or blacksmithing, instead finding work in New York City as a clerk.

In the book he writes, "Descriptions of a life on the ocean wave read vary prettily on shore, but the reality of a sea voyage speedily dispels the romance."

On returning to Philadelphia Upham resumed his family role, fathering two sons and supporting his wife and children with a stationery and toiletries shop.

Cotton smugglers in the south quickly began buying Upham's novelty notes, trimming off the notice at the bottom and flooding the Confederate economy with the bogus bills.

Before long Upham was advertising what he called "mementos of the Rebellion" in the New York Tribune, Harper's Weekly, and other papers.

of Lincoln's administration genuinely feared that to permit an enterprise like Upham's to carry on from the North would provoke southerners to retaliate by counterfeiting northern currency.

Upham vehemently denied this claim, but likely would have gone to trial had U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton not personally intervened to dismiss the case.

allege Stanton was also Upham's source for genuine banknote paper, in a deliberate effort to destabilize the Confederate economy.

[2] By the end of the war other printers were making and selling their own counterfeit bills, prompting Upham to lower his prices.