Modern US money is covered with presidents. With a single exception, all the banknotes feature ex-presidents—and even that exception is an old white dude. And to my knowledge none of the circulating coins feature anyone other than ex-presidents. For a time the dollar coin featured an alternative, but that quickly shifted to all the ex-presidents, and has no become more of a private thing for collectors so its not for the public anyway.
When we grow up in the US, all this seems pretty normal, but those of us who fall into coin collecting quickly learn that not so long ago, all coins eschewed presidents and most of them featured a lady we call Liberty, whom you might see referred to as the personification of America or the Spirit of America, a similar role to that of Uncle Sam or, across the ocean, Britannia.
This was the tradition for the longest time. When the US started minting her own coins, the Founding Fathers were strongly opposed to the idea of putting living leaders, particularly presidents, on the coins because it was reminiscent of monarchies and the old-world traditions they had fought against.
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were both notably against putting their own images on currency. Washington, for example, rejected a proposal to have his portrait on U.S. coins, saying it was too similar to how kings were honored in Europe.
That may have been par for the course for the American Cincinnatus who just wanted to retire to his farm and get away from all the chaos of public life, but all the Founding Fathers completely agreed with him. So much so that the United States Mint used personifications of Liberty on its coins, starting with the first federal coinage in 1793. Liberty appeared in various artistic forms on nearly all U.S. coins for over a century. The idea was that Liberty represented the ideals of the new republic, rather than glorifying individual leaders.
I know many of my fellow coin and history lovers (
This tradition continued until 1909 when Teddy Roosevelt decided to honor Lincoln's 100th birthday by putting him on the penny. This was very controversial at the time. The public was against breaking tradition, but at the same time, they supported featuring Lincoln if tradition were to be broken.
T.R.’s efforts to beautify American coinage led to some of the most beloved designs in U.S. history, including the Mercury dime, the Walking Liberty half dollar, and the iconic Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle. However, his push to put Lincoln on the penny shows that not all of his choices were universally praised.
With the floodgates broken, the other coins eventually fell victim to the same idea. The quarter changed from Liberty to Washington in 1932 for the 200th anniversary of his birth. The nickel moved to feature Jefferson in 1938 to honor his 200th birthday. The dime booted Liberty in 1946 in favor of FDR to honor him (he had died the previous year). The half-dollar changed to Franklin in 1948. While not an ex-president, he has long been one of the most popular of the Founding Fathers, at times second only to Washington. He was then replaced by JFK in 1963 after his assassination. Finally, when they decided to start minting the dollar coin again in 1971, Eisenhower was picked (he had died in 1969), maybe in part due to his well-known love of silver dollars (the story goes that he would buy silver dollars from his birth year in bulk and would give them away to people he met).
You might imagine the second coin to adopt an ex-president, the quarter, would have been even more controversial than the penny, given that it directly went against Washington's stated wishes to not be featured on a coin. In part due to this, Washington's appearance was originally only going to be for one year, and on the half-dollar. However as it started to be spun more and more as a patriotic thing and that the Father of America had to be on a coin, Congress decided to permanently change the quarter to the design. Patriotic propaganda always has a way of pushing aside any opposition—after all, no one wants to appear to be against their country—so the controversy quickly died away even among those who knew Washington would have hated the idea and would have been completely against it.
And there we go. In not so much time, the US switched from avoiding putting presidents on coins on principle, to only featuring presidents on the coins.
The dollar coin did change to Susan B. Anthony in 1979 to honor her for her women's suffrage activism. Some hoped this might set off a trend of changing the other coins to non-presidents, but it never happened. In modern times while the dollar coin is technically in circulation, it has become more or less a collectable coin. The public will never embrace a dollar coin until the dollar banknote is withdrawn, but since that will never happen, no one uses the coin. That status as a de facto collectable coin gives the mint some leeway to experiment and do things there that they wouldn't do with the other coins.
In 2000 the design was changed to feature Sacagawea, a Native American woman who helped Lewis and Clark during their famous expedition. Unfortunately, from 2007-2020, the mint shifted away from honoring diverse figures and instead issued a series featuring all former presidents, with the exception of any still alive. By this point even the Treasury Secretary has admitted that dollar coins are no longer for the public and are solely for collectors. Shame.
Where do we go from here? Will we ever see US coins return to using Liberty? Will we ever see them switch from ex-presidents to honoring regular people? Doubtful. It is political at this point. Do you think Virginia would stand for removing Jefferson from the nickel? They'd make a huge fuss, probably making it a partisan thing (and, again, sadly forgetting or overlooking the fact that he was against himself appearing on coins). Same goes for the others.
There is some hope. In 2016 it was agreed that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 banknote. Jackson being on the $20 is a cruel joke anyway, as he was fiercely opposed to the creation of a central bank (the lore is that they added him to the $20 to mock him, knowing he would have hated it). There is a little something called the Trail of Tears too that many think make him ill-suited to be honored on a banknote (or at all). Anyway, as you might imagine Trump was completely against the change, citing Jackson as one of his favorite presidents, and so he delayed it. Biden did revive the plan but didn't make any great push to speed up the progress, so it stayed on the back-burner. The Treasury has now promised it will happen by 2030, but with another Trump term, further delays seem likely.
Being that the $20 is probably the most-used banknote, having a non-president (not to mention, a woman) on it might, just might, open the doors to similar changes on the coins. Don't hold your breath, but... maybe!
(Presidents didn't appear on banknotes until 1861, by the way, and only then on privately issued notes. But that's another long story that I won't get into here.)
What do you think? Will America ever return to honoring anyone on the coins besides ex-presidents? With fewer and fewer people using physical money, and debit cards becoming the default, does it matter? What do you think?
| David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Mastodon. |
