March 15, 1861, The Hancock Jeffersonian (Findlay, Ohio)

If Director Snowden's proposal had taken traction, all the 1861-O half dollars and Twenty Dollar pieces, regardless of which Government or State had issued them, would have been declared no longer a le-gal tender, and refused to be accepted by the United States for any dues or customs. Apparently Dahlonega and Charlotte were still considered loyal, or possibly thought not to have struck coins and therefore are not addressed in the Director's appeal.

While this proposal appears to have gone nowhere, the Post Office in August 1861 came out with re-designed U.S. postage stamps and instituted a short period for exchanging old stamps for new, and then demonetized all previous U.S. postage stamps. To this day, the postage stamps issued by the U.S. Government previous to 1861 cannot be used as valid postage. The reasoning was the CSA could raise considerable sums of money by selling U.S. postage stamps that were recovered from taken over Post Offices located in the South. The new Confederate States of America Post Master General in April 1861, ordered all Post Offices in his charge to return all U.S. postage on hand back to Washington, D.C. Few apparently complied with his directive.

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