the Georgivs Triumpho coppers, and the Auctori Plebis tokens found their way into circulation as small change, despite their unofficial nature.
Collectors of colonial coins also include other pieces that are interesting because of their close association with early America and its first president. These consist of the Kentucky, Myddelton, and Franklin Press tokens, and those pieces bearing the portrait of George Washington. Although most of these pieces are dated from 1783 to 1795, many of them were made in England around the turn of the 19th century. Few of them actually circulated in the United States.
Coinage of the States
The Articles of Confederation, adopted March 1, 1781, provided that Congress should have the sole right to regulate the alloy and value of coin struck by its own authority or by that of the respective states. Each state, therefore, had the right to coin money, with Congress serving as a regulating authority. New Hampshire was the first state to consider coinage, but few if any of its copper coins were placed into circulation. The only specimens known bear the date 1776.
In the period from 1785 to 1788, Vermont, Connecticut, and New Jersey granted coining privileges to companies and individuals. Massachusetts erected its own mint in Boston, where copper coins were produced in 1787 and 1788. A number of interesting types and varieties of these state issues, most of which were struck in fairly large quantities, are still extant and form the basis for many present-day collections and museum exhibits of early American coins.
The Beginnings of United States Coinage
Throughout the years from 1620 to 1776, colonists were forced to rely on numerous European coins and denominations that had to be converted to some common value to facilitate transactions. Further compounding this mathematical obstacle was the variation of values from one colony to another. Merchants became accustomed to using the Spanish dollar and its fractional parts, the real, the medio (half-real), and other, similar denominations. In time, those coins became more familiar to them than the old English coins, which were always scarce. It was only natural, therefore, that when a national coinage was under consideration a dollar-size coin was the first choice.
Contracts, currency statutes, and prices in the colonies were usually quoted in English pounds or Spanish dollars. In 1767 Maryland took the lead and produced paper money that was denominated in dollars. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia soon passed laws making Spanish coins legal tender. The first issue of Continental paper money, May 10, 1775, offers further evidence that the dollar was to be the basic American money unit, for it provided that the notes should be payable in “Spanish Milled Dollars or the value thereof in gold or silver.”
The assistant financier of the Confederation, Gouverneur Morris, proposed a decimal coinage ratio designed to make conversion of various foreign currencies easier to compute in terms of a dollar-size unit. His plan was incorporated into a report presented by Robert Morris, superintendent of finance, to the Congress, January 15, 1782. Plans for a mint were advanced, and a uniform national currency to relieve the confused money conditions was outlined. Morris’s unit, 1/1,440 of a dollar, was calculated to agree without a fraction with all the different valuations of the Spanish milled dollar in the various states. Although a government mint was approved on February 21, 1782, no immediate action was taken. During 1784, Thomas Jefferson, then a member of the House of Representatives, brought in a report concerning the plan and expressed disagreement with Morris’s complicated money unit. He advocated the simple dollar unit because he believed the dollar was already as familiar and convenient a unit of value as the British pound. He favored the decimal system, and remarked, “The most easy ratio of multiplication and division is that of ten. George Washington referred to it as ‘a measure, which in my opinion, has become indispensably necessary.’”
The Grand Committee in May 1785 recommended a gold five-dollar piece; a dollar of silver with fractional coins of the same metal (in denominations of half, quarter, 10th, and 20th parts of a dollar); and copper pieces valued at 1/100 and 1/200 of a dollar.
In 1783 Robert Morris submitted a series of pattern pieces in silver that were designed by Benjamin Dudley to carry out the decimal idea for United States money. These are known as the Nova Constellatio patterns and consist of the “mark,” or 1,000 units; the “quint,” or 500 units; the “bit,” or 100 units; and a copper “five.” The unit was to be a quarter grain of silver. This was not the first attempt at a dollar coin, for the Continental Currency piece of dollar size, dated 1776, had been struck in such metals as brass, pewter, and silver. The reason is unknown for making a very limited number of pieces in silver. The more-common pewter pieces were most likely intended as a substitute for the paper dollar, and saw considerable circulation.
Congress gave formal approval to the basic dollar unit and decimal coinage ratio in its resolution of July 1785 but other, more pressing matters delayed further action. Not until the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had placed the country on firm ground and the new nation had elected George Washington president did the Congress again turn attention to the subjects of currency, a mint, and a coinage system.
The Massachusetts cents and half cents struck in 1787 and 1788 were the first official coins in the United States to bear stated values in terms of decimal parts of the dollar unit. The cent represented a hundredth part of a Spanish dollar.
The first federally authorized coin for which we have extensive documentation was the Fugio copper (sometimes called the Franklin cent, as Benjamin Franklin is believed to have supplied the design and composed the legends). This piece, similar in design to the Continental Currency dollar of 1776, was privately struck in 1787 by contract with the government.
Ephraim Brasher was engaged to regulate foreign gold coins and certain silver issues. This was done by clipping or plugging coins in circulation to bring them up or down to the standards published in 1784 by the Bank of New York. Appropriate hallmarks were then added for verification. Various goldsmiths who participated in this function included Standish Barry, John Burger, Thomas Underhill, and others. Brasher used a counterstamp in the form of the letters EB in an oval. John Burger also used his initials in an oval. Most regulated coins are scarce or rare. See pages 67 and 76–77 for additional information.
Alexander Hamilton, then secretary of the Treasury, reported his views on monetary matters on January 21, 1791. He concurred in all essentials with the decimal subdivisions and multiples of the dollar contained in the earlier resolutions and urged the use of both gold and silver in U.S. standard money.
Congress passed a resolution on March 3, 1791, that a mint be established, and authorized President Washington to engage artists and procure machinery for the making of coins. No immediate steps were taken, but when Washington delivered his third annual address, he recommended immediate establishment of a mint.
On April 2, 1792, a bill was finally passed providing “that the money of account of the United States should be expressed in dollars or units, dismes or tenths, cents or hundredths, and milles or thousandths; a disme being the tenth part of a dollar, a cent the hundredth part of a dollar, a mille the thousandth part of a dollar. . . .”
Denominations specified in the act were as follows:
The word pure meant unalloyed metal; standard meant, in the case of gold, 11/12 fine, or 11 parts pure metal to one part alloy, which was mixed with the pure metal to improve the wearing qualities of the coins. The fineness for silver coins was 1,485/1,664, or approximately
