The Liberty Head double eagle is an American twenty-dollar gold piece struck as a pattern coin in 1849, and for commerce from 1850 to 1907. The eagle, or ten-dollar piece, had been the largest denomination authorized by the Mint Act of 1792, but Congress considered new denominations of gold coinage in the 1840s after the discovery of gold in California generated a large amount of bullion. The gold dollar and double eagle were the result. After considerable infighting at the Philadelphia Mint, United States Mint Chief Engraver James B. Longacre designed the double eagle. Only one 1849 double eagle is known to survive; it rests in the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian. The coin was immediately successful; merchants and banks used it in trade, and it was struck until replaced by the Saint-Gaudens double eagle in 1907. Many were melted when President Franklin D. Roosevelt recalled gold coins from the public in 1933.
