By Tom LaMarre, Coins Magazine March 16, 2010

Newspapers, magazines, and government documents of the 1800s and early 1900s tell the story of Morgan silver dollars, the coins named for their designer, George T. Morgan, and struck from 1878 to 1904, and then again in 1921. Collectively, these articles constitute what might be called a “diary” of possibly the most popular and widely collected U.S. coins.

The first entries in the Morgan dollar diary were recorded in 1878 with the passage of the Bland-Allison Act, a piece of legislation that revived the standard silver dollar after an absence of several years. Its main purpose was to help the silver mining interests. Although Morgan dollars would be widely used in the West, relatively few would circulate in other parts of the country.

But that fact wouldn’t slow down the Mint’s silver dollar presses.

Morgan used Anna Williams, a Philadelphia schoolteacher, as the model for Liberty on the obverse of the new silver dollar. The portrait had earlier appeared on a pattern half dollar that never made it into regular production. Williams’ role remained anonymous, but not for very long. Newspapers broke the story in August 1879.

In 1896, when Williams’ upcoming wedding was announced, the New York Mail and Express said: “It is 20 years [sic] since the pretty blonde girl became world-famous. It was then stated that Miss Williams’ profile was the original of the Goddess of Liberty on that much abused, much admired and equally much disliked Bland silver dollar. The friends of the young woman placed every obstacle in the way of possible identification, but failed in their object.”

According to the writer, Williams’ features as portrayed on the silver dollar were “reproduced as faithfully as in a good photograph.”

The other side of the silver dollar depicted an eagle with raised wings. Above it, in Old English lettering, was the motto “IN GOD WE TRUST.” No other U.S. coin—before or since the Morgan dollar—has used this style of lettering. But the British-born Morgan probably did not give it a second thought.

In late February 1878, newspapers reported that Mint Director Henry R. Linderman expected to receive a sample of the new silver dollar within days, in anticipation of the silver bill becoming law.

President Rutherford Hayes vetoed the legislation. But the veto was overridden, and Hayes was presented with the first Morgan silver dollar anyway. Lucy Scott West, whose father was a cousin of First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes, wrote in her diary:

“The ‘Silver Bill’ has passed, and yesterday cousin Rutherford received the first dollar coined under the new act. It is a very handsome piece of money.”

The presentation coin was a proof, and it survives to this day, but with its finish dulled by mishandling or improper storage over the years.

The first Morgan dollar intended for circulation was struck Tuesday, March 12, 1878. Some 40,000 Morgan dollars were minted that day. On Wednesday the 13th, an additional 70,000 were struck. But only 5,000 were released from the Mint. They went to shopkeepers who wanted to display them, and to prominent citizens across the country.

Not everyone shared Lucy Hayes’ opinion of the new dollar. “The long line of monstrosities issued from the United States Mint certainly received its crown in the new dollar,” the April 1878 issue of the American Journal of Numismatics said. “The ugliness of the piece adds another wrong to the original one of dishonesty. To ask the European bond-holder to take this explanation why does not ‘the dollar of our daddies’ appear in the exact design of the 1794-95? Before the question was half written, instinctively came the answer, the chain naturally prevented the authorities from reproducing an honest dollar.”

The reference to the “honest dollar” was based on the declining market value of silver and the fact that the silver dollar contained less than a dollar’s worth of silver.

The Philadelphia Record also ridiculed the Morgan or “Bland” dollar. “The eagle looks as if it was just recovering from a severe spell of sickness, or that it had been disturbed in its meditations by some unruly schoolboys,” the newspaper claimed. “Mr. Morgan has a good idea of America’s proud bird of freedom, and his original design showed an eagle with wings that nearly enveloped the whole coin. Its wings were so large that Dr. Linderman, no doubt, feared that it might get loose and fly off, so he ordered its wings clipped. In this position it will appear to the public.

“In its talons is a dart containing only one feather at the tip of the bar. The Director ordered more feathers so the barb would present a ship-shape appearance and liable not to fly off lopsided.”

The Philadelphia Sunday Republic, however, held an opposing viewpoint. “The head of Liberty is chaste and beautiful,” it said, “And in an artistic sense is considered the best executed head that ever appeared upon a United States coin. It is so well distributed as to be susceptible of easy work under the die, and altogether will certainly reflect credit upon both the designer and the government.

“Like its predecessor of 1808 [sic], it was taken from life, and is a fair type of the beauty of one of our Philadelphia ladies, the model having been a young lady who was a teacher in one of the public schools in the 15th section, and who naturally objects to having her name published.”

On March 28, 1878, the Mint director said the Mint was striking silver dollars at the rate of 33,000 a day. Although they were distributed by express at government expense, there was little call for the coins in circulation except in the West. The exception was the first few days, when brisk demand was reported. But it was more a matter of curiosity than commercial necessity, a newspaper article said.

In April, there was little demand for the new silver dollar, according to the New York Times. In June, the Chicago Daily Tribune said all the Treasury Department’s plans to put silver dollars into wider circulation had failed, and that the government’s vaults were nearly filled to capacity.

A yellow fever epidemic delayed the start of production of Morgan dollars at the New Orleans Mint. It began striking the coin in 1879—the first silver dollars with an “O” mintmark since 1860.

“The purchases of silver bullion for the New Orleans Mint have, with the exception of some 400,000 ounces, been in lots of less than 10,000 ounces,” the Mint director reported, “and consisted primarily of Mexican dollars and old plate.

“When this Mint was reopened for coinage, it was expected that a considerable amount of silver bullion would be supplied from Mexico, but these expectations have not thus far been realized.

“Notwithstanding the fact that the department has offered to pay the bankers and bullion dealers in New Orleans the highest market price for silver, deliverable at the Mint in that city, only two or three offers for the sale of silver have been made to the department by them, and in each case at a price above the market rate.

“In some instances, offers have been received from New York to deliver silver to New Orleans, but at prices above the market rate, and the offers, with few exceptions, were declined.”

Meanwhile, government vaults were at the bursting point. The Morgan dollar had not been around two years when Hayes called for its elimination. “I would strongly urge upon Congress the importance of authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to suspend the coinage of silver dollars. The market value of the silver dollar being uniformly and largely less than the market value of the gold dollar, it is obviously impracticable to maintain them at par with each other if both are coined without limit. If the cheaper coin is forced into circulation, it will, if coined without limit, soon become the sole standard of value.”

Despite Hayes’ warning, the April 1880 issue of The Coin Collector’s Journal reported the coinage of silver dollars in January amounted to nearly 2.5 million. “From this,” it added, “we would be quite safe in stating that the dollars of this date will not be scarce for many years hence.”

To most Americans in the 1880s, the number of silver dollars being struck was staggering. Missouri Showdown gave a good picture of the situation. “When you have a million one-dollar bills and pile then one on top of the other, and you want to take off the top one, you would have to reach 276 feet,” it said. “If you had that amount in silver dollars, the pile would be one and a half miles high. We know, because we tried it the other night and the bed broke down.”

Today, collectors know 1880 as a year of many silver dollar varieties, most of them from the Carson City Mint. These include the 1880-CC reverse of 1878, 1880-CC 80/79 reverse of 1878, 1880-CC 8/7 reverse of 1878, 1880-CC reverse of 1879, 1880-CC 8/7 high 7 reverse of 1879, and 1880-CC 8/7 low 7 reverse of 1879.

On March 10, 1881, the Treasury Department received the largest single order for silver dollars. It was submitted by a Philadelphia bank, which requested 100,000. The coins were shipped in 60 bags weighing 100 pounds each. According to a newspaper article, the silver dollars represented more than the amount coined at all the U.S. mints in a single day.

As of Oct. 30, 1886, more than $20 million in silver dollars were stored in the Post Office Building in Philadelphia, because of a shortage of space in Treasury Department vaults.

The Morgan dollar was at the center of the silver-versus-gold political controversy that lasted throughout the 1890s and was a central issue in presidential election campaigns. It was a complicated issue, but pamphlets and newspaper articles tried to reduce it to simple terms, often using the silver dollar or caricatures of it to make a point.

Politics and the silver dollar were inseparable. First there was the Bland-Allison Act. Then there was the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890. It directed the Treasury secretary to buy 4.5 million ounces of silver each month. Lawmakers repealed the Sherman Act in 1893, but it took a while longer for the Mint to use up the stockpile of Sherman silver and convert it into silver dollars.

Silver dollar production fell sharply in 1893 because of a downturn in the economy. Mint Director Robert Preston said the output of silver dollars was “limited” because few were needed for the redemption of Silver Certificates.

But when the mayor of Urbana, Ill., placed some items in a metal box for the cornerstone of a new city hall, an 1893-S dollar was among them. Only 100,000 1893-S dollars were struck. Exactly how one of the freshly minted coins wound up in Illinois is a mystery. It was found in 1965 when the building was demolished.

From July to November 1895, the Philadelphia Mint struck only 90 silver dollars from silver purchased under the Sherman Act, “giving a profit of $27,” according to the Mint Director. Silver from other sources boosted the Philadelphia Mint’s total production of 1895 dollars to 12,880—all proofs.

The scarcity of the 1895 Philadelphia dollar was recognized almost from the beginning, but its value was extremely modest by today’s standard. At S.H. & H. Chapman’s sale of the E.G. Chandlee and J.A. Glassmann collection in July 1899, a complete 1895 proof set—including a silver dollar—realized only $6.

Even so, newspaper reporters were impressed by the value of 1895 Philadelphia dollars. “Levi Augusburger, near Linn Grove, has a silver dollar of the year 1895,” the Berne (Ind.) Witness reported in 1901. “These dollars are very scarce. One man in Decatur was given a free trip to Buffalo this summer for one of them.”

C.H. Shinkle’s U.S. Coin Values and Lists, a booklet published by a Pittsburgh coin dealer around 1910, listed the 1895 Philadelphia dollar at $4.20. It was also featured in the booklet’s “List of Rare U.S. Coins.”

Some of the proof 1895 dollars were later spent during hard times. Today, Coin Prices lists a Very Good-8 example at $21,500.

In 1894, the Treasury secretary ordered Mint Superintendent John Daggett to coin an “unlimited” number of silver dollars. By 1896, they were being turned out at the rate of 1.5 million a month. Beginning in 1898, most San Francisco silver dollars were struck from bullion provided by J. & W. Seligman & Co., which controlled the Anglo-California Bank of San Francisco. The bank received consignments of silver from Mexico, Central and South America and British Columbia, averaging 10 million ounces a year. In 1898, arrangements were made for the bullion to be turned over to the San Francisco Mint in exchange for a certificate of deposit. The bullion was used to strike silver dollars, including more than 4 million produced at the San Francisco Mint in 1898.

In 1903, the New Orleans Mint struck more than 4 million silver dollars, yet for many years the 1903-O was considered a rarity. Prominent collector Howard Newcomb wrote in the 1920s, “I have failed to locate, in the last half dozen years, any specimens either in the hands of dealers or collectors, save one in my own collection and one in a prominent collection in Washington, D.C.” Newcomb had the head cashiers at three Detroit department stores on the lookout for 1903-O dollars. “It is customary in these stores, when silver dollars are received, not to give them out again in making change, but to deposit all of them,” Newcomb wrote. “These men, for several years, have looked over thousands of silver dollars, and not one has come to light.”

Newcomb assumed most of the coins had been put into storage and then melted during World War I. In the early 1960s, mint state 1903-O dollars—possibly two dozen bags, each containing 1,000 coins —were released at face value.

No Morgan dollars were struck from 1905-1920, but there were still plenty of the coins to go around. On June 4, 1912, baseball star Nap Lajoie was presented with a floral horseshoe decorated with more than 1,000 silver dollars, in recognition of his 10th season with the Cleveland Indians.

In 1916, millions of Morgan dollars were transferred from the defunct New Orleans Mint to the Philadelphia Mint for storage. The shipment was made by revenue cutter. The Treasury secretary said he was not afraid of any modern-day pirates or submarine attack. Still, the exact date of the shipment was not announced.

The Pittman Act of 1918 authorized the government to melt as many as 350 million silver dollars. The silver was converted into bullion that could be sold or used to strike smaller silver coins. A provision of the law required the government to strike new silver dollars to replace those that were melted.

In June 1920, the Mint took in nearly $5 million worth of silver. “The silver is to be used for the coinage of silver dollars,” the July 9, 1920, issue of the Philadelphia Public Ledger reported. “Much of the silver will not be coined for the present, but will be stored away until time and machines can be spared to coin it.”

New Morgan dollar dies were prepared, and production of the coins began at the Philadelphia Mint. San Francisco was next. “Silver Dollars Are Again to Be Coined,” said the headline in the April 21, 1921, issue of the Oakland Tribune. “Orders have been received here to start coinage of silver dollars immediately.”

The new silver dollars were popular Christmas gifts. The Dec. 9, 1921, issue of the Kingsport Times published a letter from a young boy, asking for “a little candy and nuts and a big silver dollar in my stocking.” According to the Dec. 11, 1921, issue of the Fort Wayne Journal, there were plenty of silver dollars to go around.

In late 1921, the Morgan dollar gave way to the Peace dollar. But the Morgan dollar “diary” was not closed. Years later, collectors rediscovered the coins in a big way. With the surge in popularity came a new appreciation for the design and history of the coins that had only a regional appeal in their own time and were more political than practical.



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