Early Americans cut Spanish-American silver coins into pieces to make small change.
England consistently ignored the plight of its American colonists and made no effort to provide gold or silver coins, or small change in any form, for their convenience. The English mercantile system relied on exports from the colonies, and sought to control trade by limiting the amount of “hard” money paid to them. Under these constraints, the colonists were able to trade for most necessities only with England, and were left with very little coinage for trade with other countries. The foreign coins that were sometimes available were a valuable commodity for purchases outside the normal English trade.
As a remedy for the dearth of circulating coinage, a wide assortment of foreign coins and tokens was pressed into use. Only a very few were made in America prior to 1783. Copper coins known as Hogge Money (from their design; see page 38) were privately made for the Sommer Islands, now known as Bermuda, about the year 1616. The first coins minted for the colonies in America were made by John Hull in Boston for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The General Court of the colony granted him authority to begin coinage, despite the possibility of objection and recrimination by the king of England. Starting in 1652 the Massachusetts minter began producing the famous NE, Willow, Oak, and Pine Tree shillings, with their fractional parts, for the convenience of the colonists. This venture, which defied English law and lasted from 1652 to 1682, was in a sense the first declaration of independence for the colonies.
As time passed, coins and tokens of many types were introduced and employed by the colonists to supplement their use of barter. Lord Baltimore was responsible for a small issue of silver pieces struck in England in 1659 and sent to Maryland for use there. Mark Newby imported from Ireland coins known as St. Patrick’s halfpence, for use in the province of New Jersey in 1682. Coins dated 1722 to 1724, known as Rosa Americana issues, were produced by William Wood in England and were widely circulated in America. In addition, many British and other European coppers circulated there.
Enterprising Americans were responsible for some of the other copper and brass pieces that circulated during the 18th century. The Gloucester token, about which little is known, was one of these. Samuel and John Higley of Granby, Connecticut, made an interesting series of threepence pieces during the period from 1737 to 1739. John Chalmers, a silversmith in Annapolis, Maryland, issued silver shillings, sixpence, and threepence pieces in 1783. In 1786 and 1787 Ephraim Brasher, a New York goldsmith, struck gold coins of the value of a doubloon (about $15 in New York currency). Standish Barry of Baltimore, Maryland, made a curious silver threepence token in 1790.
Still other tokens, struck in Britain, reached our shores in early times and were for the most part speculative ventures. These much-needed, small-denomination coppers were readily circulated because of the great scarcity of fractional coins. Included in this category were the Nova Constellatio coppers and various English merchants’ tokens.
During the period of turmoil following America’s War of Independence, from about 1781 to 1795, still more English- and American-made copper pieces were added to the great variety of coins and tokens employed in the new nation. It was a time when Americans were suffering from postwar economic depression, a shortage of currency, high taxes, and foreclosures from bankruptcies. In the 1780s the Nova Eborac pieces (known as New York coppers), 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