"Father of the Greenback"

I decided to find out more about this horrible new dollar coin I so bemoaned in the last post, so I went to the Department of the Treasury's website. It's really telling, I think, that they would be so tacky as to call themselves "MoneyFactory.gov." Okay, well, that's actually just for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, but still... Apparently they really did used to print $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 notes, some of which looked pretty neat. In case you're wondering, that really is Salmon P. Chase on the front of the $10k.

WELL. Salmon Portland Chase was a pretty fascinating character, as it turns out. He's the name behind Chase Manhattan Bank, even though he had no connection with it whatsoever. More importantly, he is responsible for how the dollar looks. He was an abolitionist, a leader of the Free Soil movement, a prominent Whig, a leader in the Liberty party, and then a prominent Republican (he ran against Lincoln in the 1860 primary). He ran for Senate that year and won, but only served one day before he resigned to take the post of Secretary of the Treasury, a post he held until 1864, when Lincoln finally allowed him to resign. He was the guy who created the federal currency:

The first U.S. federal currency was printed in 1862, during
Chase's tenure as Secretary of the Treasury. Thus, it was his
responsibility to design the notes. In an effort to further his
political career, his own face appeared on a variety of U.S. paper currency.¹

So the design of the dollar is attributable to this guy. After he designed the currency, he became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court until he died in 1873.



Back to the coin thing: I finally used a few of them. I had come up with all sorts of scenarios in which I would be yelled at for trying to pass fake currency, or they would simply be rejected, and I was fully prepared to summon my reserves of righteous indignation, but the cashier at Community Bakery reacted with little or no surprise when presented with them. I mentioned that I didn't like them, and she countered that she thought that they were really cool, and I felt like I had to add that I did like the Sacajawea dollar just fine, because I didn't want to seem unreasonable or anything.

But aren't they ugly? Surely it's not just me. They're going to make four a year, with all presidents, in chronological order. They have a good supply of dead presidents until 2016, but if Jimmy Carter still hasn't died by then, they will either have to put him on a coin anyway or skip him and go to Reagan. I think they're assuming he'll probably kick by then.

There will be a Nixon coin, of course. This would be an interesting project, if they weren't so relentlessly tawdry looking. Besides, they just need to kill the dollar bill if they want anyone to use the coin. I'd be behind that.