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38 THE CAPITOL DOME a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the Treasury. Demand notes were successful at first. But as wartime expenses ballooned and citizens redeemed demand notes too quickly, banks began to run out of coin. 18 The only solution for the Treasury was to turn paper notes from simple IOUs into legal tender. The value of paper was now based solely on faith in the government's credit, rather than on physical stockpiles of gold or silver. 19 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Legal Tender Act on February 25, 1862, and United States Notes, or "greenbacks," were born. 20 Greenbacks earned their nickname from the green ink printed on the note backs. While the reason for the ink color is not definitively known, it possibly served two purposes. First, counterfeiters at the time forged notes photographi- cally, so the green would register as gray on film. Second, it may have covered up traces of "security ink" that was used on note faces and tended to bleed through the paper. Secu- rity ink, which was green due to the presence of a chromium compound, provided another deterrent to counterfeiting because forgers might chemically remove any colored ink before photographing the black designs, create the counter- feit note from the photograph, and then reapply color to the fake note, but security ink could not be washed off of the paper without destroying the note. Green ink had been printed on the backs of currency prior to United States Notes, but the latter were the first to be widely known as "greenbacks." 21 The full Capitol was used for the first time on the $2 United States Note, Series 1869 and retained until Series 1928 (fig. 13). The note features the earliest known BEP vignette of the building, attributed to Luigi Delnoce in 1868. The view is from the northeast, with the Senate wing in the foreground. There are no trees, lawns, or shrubbery, but the scene is busy with carriages and pedestrians. A glimpse of the cityscape can be seen on the far right. This engraving was also used for a $2 Treasury note, the $5 National Currency note of 1882, President McKinley's Inaugural Ball souvenir, and a Senate chamber admission ticket (fig. 14). This is an example of how one engraving can be used multiple times across differ- ent product types, usually to save time and money during the production process. The current (114th Congress) House and Senate Gallery passes take this flexibility one step further, by simply reversing Delnoce's Series 1869 Capitol to give either the House or Senate wing prominence by placing it in the foreground, depending on which legislative chamber the pass grants access to (fig. 15). hiGh-deNomiNatioN Notes The Capitol appears on another United States note, the $5,000 series 1878 (fig. 16). The vignette printed on the back NATIONAL NUMISMATIC COLLECTION, NMAH, SI Fig. 13. $2 United States Note, Series 1880 Fig. 15. Passes for the House and Senate Galleries for the 114th Congress BEP HISTORICAL RESOURCE CENTER Fig. 14. Admission Ticket to the Reserved Gallery for the US Senate, 1900