Confederate Agent captured in Chicago: Short one-page LETTER headed Chicago Feb 10, 1862. From JEK to his parents. The letter starts out mundanely but ends most interestingly with: “A Confederate agent came on and engaged a firm to print a large quantity of Scrip for the C.S.A. They notified the police and went to work and in less than an hour after he had been taken and paid for his $300,000.00 worth of Scrip said agent was on his way to Fort Lafayette.” Fort Lafayette, located in New York Harbor, served as a Union prison during the war. Letter accompanied by U34, 3¢ pink entire with blue CHICAGO ILLS double-circle postmark and duplex grid. Owner’s handstamp (I have no idea who – let me know if you do) of OKO on inside flap of cover and back of letter. There is so much more to this story. I invite you to look up Samuel Curtis Upham, the Philadelphia dealer and Northern patriot who, in March 1862, began selling "fac-similes" of Confederate currency. These notes were printed with a clear indication that they were facsimiles and were considered legal because Confederate currency had no official legal status in the North. His counterfeit notes contributed to the devaluation of Confederate currency and exacerbated the rampant inflation in the South. Upham is well known to collectors of philatelic frauds. The man captured in Chicago was not named in the letter. $100.