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Popular Seated Liberty Dollars
 | By R.W. Julian, Coins Magazine
October 29, 2008 |
Once virtually ignored by collectors, today the Seated Liberty silver dollar is one of the more popular series of American coins and continues to grow in stature as time passes. Prices have kept pace with this interest and high-grade specimens, especially those meant for type sets, bring good results at public auctions.
The obverse design on this coinage, that of a Seated Liberty, was first conceived by Mint Director Robert Maskell Patterson in the summer of 1835. Loosely based on the figure of Britannia on contemporary English coinage, the motif actually is an ancient one, variations having appeared on ancient Greek and Roman coinage.
Patterson became director in early July 1835 and lost no time in asking chief engraver William Kneass to execute sketches of a seated figure. The director furnished Kneass some specimens of British copper coins with Britannia on the reverse but Kneass had barely started when he suffered a stroke and was unable to do even limited artistic or engraving work for several months.
Patterson's predecessor, Dr. Samuel Moore, had made arrangements for Christian Gobrecht to begin work in the engraving department of the Mint at the beginning of 1836 but now the situation required that he start immediately. However, Gobrecht balked at being an assistant engraver and asked that he be made the "second" engraver, a point which was accepted by Patterson and the Treasury.
By late September 1835 Gobrecht was well settled into his new position but the urgency of die work meant that he could not spare the time to prepare designs for the new Seated Liberty coinage Patterson had in mind. The director then approached famed portrait painter Thomas Sully and asked him to prepare a water color of the Seated Liberty motif.
A few days later, on Oct. 1, Sully began the sketch that the director wished done. Patterson took the time to visit Sully at his studio in order to point out the precise way the ensemble was to be executed. Sully completed the work on Oct. 5 and was in due course paid $50 for his services.
At the same time Patterson had also asked Titian Peale, an acclaimed painter of animals and fauna, to prepare sketches of an eagle rising in flight, a motif meant for the reverse of the new silver dollar. Unlike Sully, however, who finished his assignment in short order, Peale was unable to satisfy Patterson until the spring of 1836.
By late 1836 Gobrecht had managed to prepare working hubs and dies for the famed Gobrecht dollar; the design executed by Sully had undergone several subtle modifications but the original artwork was easily recognized on the finished product. In November 1836 a few samples were struck with Gobrecht's name just above the date but criticism forced its removal from such a prominent place. Instead the engraver's name was placed on the base of the Seated Liberty figure.
In December 1836 1,000 Gobrecht dollars were struck plus another 600 in March 1837 using dies of 1836. One last coinage of 300 pieces was made in December 1839 but in this case the stars were moved from the reverse to the obverse.
Restrikes of the Gobrecht dollars were made in the late 1850s at the Philadelphia Mint but these may be easily distinguished from the originals by noting that, when the coin is properly rotated, the eagle is flying upwards on an original and flat on a restrike. No originals are currently known for the 1839 issue.
The whole point of the new dollar was to provide coinage for banks to replace half dollars in their reserves. Until 1840 banks normally kept half dollars on hand to pay off their paper money but Patterson felt that a dollar coin would be more convenient. It would mean less work for the Mint and banks would have fewer coins to count when checking their inventory.
As far as Patterson was concerned the Gobrecht dollars were a success in that they were accepted by the public as well as the banking community. The main problem, so far as the director was concerned, was that the new dollars did not strike up as well as hoped because the eagle on the reverse was in too high a relief. To this end Patterson reluctantly scrapped the flying eagle and substituted the old eagle prepared by engraver John Reich in 1807. This new combination of designs proved much easier to strike with the existing coinage presses.
In order to maximize the quality of the new coinage, however, Patterson hired sculptor Robert Ball Hughes to lower the relief of the Seated Liberty on the obverse of the dollar and other silver coins, except for the half dollar. Hughes was paid for his work but the Treasury objected to the payment and Patterson was forced to justify the work to the inquisitive auditors in Washington.
Once the final decision had been made on the design elements of the silver dollar, Patterson notified banks and importers that the new coinage would begin as soon as sufficient silver had been deposited for that purpose. It was not long before this happened, and in July 1840 the chief coiner delivered 12,500 pieces for distribution to the depositors.
There was then a breathing spell as banks evaluated the new coinage and considered their options. In due course an increasing number of bankers saw the utility of the new coins for their reserves and deposits of silver slowly increased. In November dollar coinage resumed and by year's end a total of just over 60,000 pieces had been made and paid out to the banking community; a certain amount then went into daily use in the marketplace as paper money was redeemed for coins.
That Patterson had properly gauged public demand is seen in the fact that more than 500,000 of the new dollars were coined in the following three years, from 1841-1843. There was an abrupt decline in 1844, to only 20,000 pieces, but Patterson had made his point and many banks had begun using the dollar in place of the half dollar for their reserves. Once the rush of 1841-1843 was over, deposits continued to be made but at a slower pace.
Coinage recovered to 110,000 pieces in 1846 and in 1847 topped out at 141,000, the best year after 1843 until 1859. In the meantime New Orleans discovered that bankers in that part of the country were also interested in using dollars for reserves against paper money and 59,000 of the 1846-O dollars were struck and issued to depositors. (It is possible that some of these coins were exported to Central America in payment for their exports but this is uncertain.)
Although silver dollars had been very popular in the 1840s with bankers and the public all of this was soon to change. Because banks had used the dollars as backing for paper currency an increasing number of these coins found their way to the marketplace where they were used to buy the necessities of life. However, the majority were still kept in bank reserves.
Change came to the silver dollar in 1848-1849 and its public use would never be the same again. This great event was the famous California Gold Rush, which began in the summer of 1848 and continued at fever pitch for several years as thousands of would be miners traveled to California to make their fortunes. Most did not but the majority stayed in that state, creating a viable community where none had existed before.
The massive quantities of gold torn from the mines and streams of the far West, accompanied by an equally heavy outpouring from Australia, upset the delicate international balance between the values of gold and silver coins. In 1792 the United States had opted for a bimetallic system of coinage, in which gold and silver coins circulated freely and could be exchanged for one another. Because of a flaw in the 1792 law, however, the system really did not work and it was not until the law was revised in 1834 that the United States had a circulating gold and silver coinage.
Throughout the rest of the 1830s and most of the 1840s the bimetallic system worked very well and the public was well supplied with coins of precious metal. All of this came crashing down at the end of the 1840s when too much gold drove up the price of silver. By early 1849 bullion dealers had begun to buy up silver coins with gold and this trend accelerated over the next four years.
Large number of silver dollars from the 1840s were purchased and melted into ingots for shipment abroad. New Orleans seems not to have been affected quite as much as the East coast because in 1850 that mint struck 40,000 pieces. That same year, however, Philadelphia produced only 7,500. In 1851-1852 a mere 2,400 silver dollars were struck, all at the Philadelphia Mint.
In early 1853 Congress finally acted by reducing the weight of the minor silver coins and making them legal tender for limited amounts. The dollar, oddly enough, was left untouched but since that coin no longer circulated it really did not matter. In practical terms the United States had now gone on the gold standard despite the right of depositors to get silver dollars for their bullion.
Silver dollar coinage in the 1850s was sporadic with the bottom being reached in 1858, when the sole coinage was a few hundred proof coins for collectors. In 1859, however, there was a sudden revival of silver dollar mintages at Philadelphia and New Orleans but this appears to have been due to an influx of foreign silver that had nowhere to go except to the mints. There was also a minor striking of 20,000 pieces at San Francisco, which has long been thought to have been made for export to the Orient, primarily China.
It has, in fact, long been believed that the bulk of the silver dollars coined in the 1850s, and 1860s for that matter, were made for export. Some of these may have gone to Central and South America but it is now known for certain that Seated Liberty dollars were not sent to China. Normal procedure was to send ingots of silver, though Spanish or Mexican dollars were sometimes shipped in payment for goods from that part of the world.
There were massive strikes of silver in what is now Nevada at the end of the 1850s and it is likely that some of this silver was turned into dollars at either Philadelphia or New Orleans. But just as dollar coinage was reviving it received another blow, this time perhaps even worse than that of the late 1840s.
This new attack came from the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861. Silver dollars had not circulated in this country since the late 1840s (and even then not all that much) but there was a sudden desperate need for small silver because of the war. Tens of thousands of silver dollars were turned into dimes and other silver coins in a vain effort to keep such coins in daily use. In June 1862, however, the endless bad news from the military fronts finally spooked the public into hoarding silver coins. Gold had gone from daily use the preceding December.
How many dollars were melted early in the war is not quite clear, but it is known that more than 350,000 Seated Liberty dollars were melted by the Philadelphia Mint alone through the early 1880s. When this is added to the massive private meltings that were commonplace in the early 1850s, it is clear that a very large number of Seated Liberty dollars were melted over the years.
During the American Civil War and afterward (through 1867) dollar coinages were nominal and primarily the result of merchants and importers putting their bullion to use as coins of full legal tender. It was a useful hedge against the unstable paper currency that was the basis of virtually every marketplace transaction at that time.
Beginning in 1868 the number of dollars made at Philadelphia began to rise but this was again due to economic factors and the coins were not meant for export except perhaps a small number to Latin America. The United States had accumulated massive debts during the war and much of this was owed to European banks. Until 1868 remittances had been made in gold coins and silver ingots but the Europeans began demanding only gold as that continent was becoming awash in silver.
Once the European banks declined to take silver in large quantities, it had nowhere to go except to the mints, especially Philadelphia. Mintages went past the 1 million mark in 1871 and remained at a high rate through the end of the Seated Liberty dollar coinage in March 1873.
In the meantime the motto "IN GOD WE TRUST" had been added to the reverse of the dollar at the beginning of 1866 and was to remain there for the life of this series. Two fantasy pieces dated 1866 exist without the motto but these were probably made for a collector inside the Mint and only later passed into general numismatic channels.
The rise in dollar coinage beginning in 1868 did not pass unnoticed in official circles. Coupled with the slow but steady fall in the value of silver, due to increasingly heavy production at Western mines, it was clear that something had to be done about the growing surplus of silver. In February 1873 Congress took the plunge by abolishing the standard silver dollar and replacing it with a heavier Trade dollar meant specifically for export to the Orient.
San Francisco and the new mint at Carson City struck a few thousand Seated Liberty silver dollars from 1870 to 1873 and these are in strong demand by collectors. The 1870-S pieces were coined to the extent of only a few dozen pieces in honor the cornerstone being laid for a new mint in San Francisco. There were 700 dollars struck at San Francisco in 1873 but researchers recently discovered that these were melted when the new law took effect.
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