Required Reading:
Stephen Mihm, "Accept no Imitations: The Campaign against Counterfeits, Past and Present," Common-place 4:4 (July 2004), on-line only. (it's short!)
Michael O'Malley, "Specie and Species: Race and the Money Question in Nineteenth-Century America," American Historical Review 99:2 (April 1994), 369-395.

Further (and Background) Reading:
Milton Friedman and Anna Schwarz, The Monetary History of the United States (1971).
Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, from the Revolution to the Civil War (new edition, 1991).
Edward Nygren, "The Almighty Dollar: Money as a Theme in American Painting," Winterthur Portfolio 23:2/3 (1988), 129-150.
W. Nugent, The Money Question during Reconstruction (1967).
Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance (1964).