Introduction

Until the Civil War, the United States was largely an agricultural country. This had two important consequences: first, the chief investment outlet was land speculation. This meant high indebtedness, meager cash flow, and frequent financial catastrophes. Secondly, the harvest always put unusual strains on the financial system, often leading to collapse: this is why stock market crashes occur in October.

These strains, present throughout the nineteenth century, were even more intense in colonial North America, which produced no precious metals of its own. British North America needed specie. But in the British imperial system, America, in close proximity to the mines of Mexico and Peru, had to serve as a source for silver— not a destination. The destination for silver was the China trade and Britain's growing empire in India, particularly after Robert Clive's conquest of Bengal in 1765 and in response to imperial crises such as Haidar Ali's invasion of the Carnatic in the 1770s. In India silver was so short that the multi-talented Warren Hastings sought to remedy the problem by minting gold mohurs. An answer to the specie shortage in British North America would not be forthcoming from London—neither from Whitehall nor from Plantations House. America must look to herself. And so she did; at first tentatively, in the end violently. The coins and paper money reflect this. The looser reins of the Commonwealth allowed the first steps: the Massachusetts silver is astonishing for its variety, its abundance, and its sophistication. Richard G. Doty shows that the Boston mint was using machinery at a time when the Tower Mint was still striking colas by hand. The New Yorke in America token, I argue, is
another remnant of this looser period; a period when central control of minting collapsed in England as well, as evidenced by the vast token issues of the mid-seventeenth century. Under Queen Anne, the reins were drawn tighter. But if coins were still a regal prerogative, paper was not. Eric P. Newman shows how native American ingenuity, abundantly evidenced for Massachusetts silver, was applied to paper money as well—both its licit and illicit production. Paper money is important evidence of another kind: for the backgrounds of men of property. Joseph R. Lasser examines this aspect, which is part of an extremely important larger question: was the American Revolution really a social revolution? Charles Beard argued many years ago that it was not; Lasser uses the evidence of paper money to argue that it was.

The revolution was successful; but the new nation had many struggles before it. The Articles of Confederation soon proved inadequate. Under Britain, Massachusetts was not permitted to coin its own money; under the Articles of Confederation, it could. And so could New Jersey, Vermont and Connecticut; and so, as it proved, could raffish types like Jarvis, William Duer and Thomas Machin. Dr. Philip L. Mossman unravels some of the mysteries of the Connecticut coinage, probably the most complex of the state copper series. New York never authorized an official state coinage, but produced many of the most fascinating issues in the series. Michael Hodder argues for the authenticity of one highly controversial New York issue, the Lima style doubloons of Ephraim Brasher. Finally, the adoption of the Constitution and the establishment of the Mint did not mean that the struggle was over. Medals are usually a luxury item, but Indian Peace Medals were not a luxury item, they were a necessity of policy. Alan M. Stahl's account of the Indian Peace Medal is the first to examine the very important French medals as well as the English medals since 1918. The history of the Indian peace medals parallels that of the copper halfpenny/cent: first English imports, then American strikings on English planchets, then a crude medal of wholly American manufacture, and finally skillful American strikings on American planchets. The Mint needed to import its planchets to strike Indian peace medals, just as it had to import planchets from Matthew Boulton or overstrike Talbot, Allum and Lee tokens to produce early cents and half cents.

Whitehall starved the North American plantations of specie because of a fundamental economic error: it believed that the wealth of a nation consisted in its holdings of silver and gold. Only at the very end of the colonial period would a great philosopher show that it came from the productive employment of land, labor, and capital. The philosopher was Adam Smith; his book was the Wealth of Nations; the year was 1776.

John M. Kleeberg, Conference Chairman