The History of the Two-Cent Piece

The two-cent piece was established and made by the Mint of the U.S. States for public circulation from the year 1864 to 1872 and for collectors in the year 1873. It was made at a time when the United States was going through an experimentation phase with its coins. The original design of the coin was done by James B. Longacre and after its release there followed limited production of the coin every year; this is because other minor coins like the nickel ascertained their popularity. It was finally banned by the Mint Act of 1873. The entirety of this paper will give invaluable insights with respect to the coin history of the 2 Cent Piece. Details such as the metal content of the coin, years of circulation, denomination and a multitude of other facts will be highlighted.

            The economic crisis brought forth by the American Civil War made a lot of coins issued by the Federal Reserve such as the silver Indian Head cent, to disappear from circulation. One approach of closing in on this gap was private token issues many a time forged from bronze metal. The cent at that particular instance was made from copper-nickel alloy and was of a similar radius as the Lincoln cent that was produced later. Notably, it was not easy for the Philadelphia Mint to strike, and the annual Assay Commission together with the Mint Officials made a recommendation that the coin is replaced. Irrespective of disagreement from individuals looking to keep the metal nickel within the coinage, under the leadership of Pennsylvania politician Thaddeus Stevens, members of Assembly voted for the Coinage legal provision in the year 1864, making two-cent pieces and bronze cents official.

Even though the 2 cent piece was very well acclaimed the moment it came into circulation, the place of the coin inflow was taken by a multitude of other non-precious metallic pieces that Congress had accredited. They include the nickel and the three-cent coin. A lot of people attested the popularity of the two-cent piece to the absence of Federal Reserve coinage. Upon its abolishment in the year 1873, a lot of two-cent pieces were redeemed by the Federal Government and smelted. All the same, two-cent pieces can still be regarded as cheap by the ideals of the 19th-century coinage in the United States.

Inception

A two-cent coin had been put up as a proposition in the year1806 by the Senator of Connecticut Uriah Tracy, together with a 20-Cent coin known as a double dime. Imitating the then predominant opinion that coins ought to have their worth in metal, Tracy’s prospective bill suggested that the two-cent coin is constructed of debased silver or billon. The bill received opposition from Mint Director Robert Patterson, as it would be complicated to give a definition to the silver from pieces that have already been melted down. Even though the legislation proposed by Tracy was approved in the Senate two times in the year 1807 and the year before that, it was flatly rejected in the House of Representatives. The politician Patterson forwarded a brass coin or button with a dual of billon planchets which would have been utilized for the piece to Tracy, demonstrating how difficult it could be to ward off the possibility of counterfeit production. The Mint put into consideration a two-cent piece in the year 1836, and experimentations were carried out by Second Engraver Christian well known by the name Gobrecht and Melter and Refiner Franklin Peale. The coin was once more made of billon, and the establishment of the piece was factored within primary propositions of the Mint Act presented in the year 1837, but then again the proposal was downplayed the moment Peale was capable of proving that the piece could be counterfeited without difficulty.

Up until the year 1857, the cent currency was a very big coin and was made out of copper, encompassing the entirety its face value in the metallic form. The pieces in question were never popular and in the year 1857, after getting an approval from Congress, the Mint started circulating the Flying Eagle cent, of the identical radius as the later Lincoln cent, but un a way concentrated and made out of a mixture of nickel and copper. The coins in question spread readily, and even though the design never struck properly and was substituted by the Indian Head cent in the year 1859, the pieces were used frequently until all federal denominations disappeared from circulation in a majority of American states in the course of the years 1861 and 1862, in the course of the economic depression which ensued after the American Civil War. This took place because a lot of Northerners were afraid that if the outcome of the war did not align to their interest and expectation, paper money and Federal Reserve bonds would be of no value. The gap was occupied by among a multitude of things, private token issues, in some instances copper-nickel that was almost equal in size with the cent, but many a time thinner coins made out of bronze (Alexandrou 83).

The reality mentioned above was well within the knowledge of government officials, and in the course of the year 1863, they tried to issue coins to the public. Such coins would be made out of Bronze and would not be characterized by superficial values in metal. In his yearly article delivered to Americans on 1st October 1863, Mint Director James Pollock shared with the audiences that it had come to his attention that “even though Americans always looked forward to realizing a full value in their silver and gold coins, they basically had a preference that required the inferior base metal money to be at their disposition so that making exact payments would never be a problem. He made an observation that the private cent tokens had in some instances had within it as little as twenty percent of a single cent in metal, yet has still been issued. For that matter, he made a proposition that copper-nickel cent is switched with a bronze coin of a similar diameter and girth. Pollock also desired to get rid of nickel as a metal used for coinage purposes; its hard alloys ruined minting machinery and die. At some point (on the 8th of December Pollock wrote a letter to the secretary of the Treasury called Salmon P. Chase making a proposition (Snodgrass 55). His proposition was a two-cent piece and a bronze cent, and hem in design pieces of the two-cent coin that time had enabled him to forge. Conferring to the words of the numismatist Neil Carothers, a two-cent coin was at the very least so as users could realize a dollar value in minute alteration into circulation within the shortest way possible, as the Mint had the capability of forging a two-cent coin as straightforwardly as a cent.

The Obverse and Reverse of  a Two-Cent Piece

The Obverse

The  Reverse

More on the Two-Cent Coin

The 2-cent coin was the pioneer of the well acclaimed United States currency inscription ”In God We Trust.” The initial proposal by Pollock was in resonance to engraving the words ”God Our  Trust” but all this was changed in an adamant manner by Chase, probably since Brown College,  from which chase was a graduate, made use of  the saying ”In Deo Speramus”; Latin for ”In God we hope.”

The currency was never a feat and it was simply a means to get by in the middle of the years 1863 and 1873 (designs in the year 1863, issuance and circulation starting in 1864). Prototype designs date back to 1863 and the initial year 1864 Proofs were forged with a lesser notelet font. The principal commercial walkouts of the year1864 were minted by the help of dies constructed by the help of dies sourced from a similar Small Letter hub of variety (Starr 72).

A new-fangled hub characterized by the all too familiar Large Letter range obverse legend had to be put in use to construct the dies for most of the pieces minted in the summer of 1864 and for all pieces of this currency struck in the year 1873. Even though the principal hub never became altered in the course of this time (a brand new hub was brought to the attention of the public) the period inscriptions were put into the coins artistically by hand. As an outcome of this particular course of action, there were a group of date types to be gathered inclusive of the 1865/4and and 1869/8 over dates.

James Barton Longacre who worked as a mint engraver that came up with the design of the 2-cent piece. William Barber took the position Longacre upon his demise in the year 1869. Barber went ahead to come up with the firsthand hub for the coins of the year 1871 and later on. Even though the variety of the legend never changed as it did in the course of the year 1863, handy inspection of pieces of these far along periods is evident that such small alterations as the limited size of the berries and the sharper clarity of the stems. Taking note of the mild transformations mentioned above was and still is relevant because there is evidenced of the 1864 pieces by means of dies sourced by this later master hub. Last but not least, it is worth pointing out that there are two types of the 1871 2-cent piece simply because of the date numbers punched on the workable dies.

Works Cited

Alexandrou, Constantina. ”The politics of currency and the use of images of the past in the formation of the Cypriot national identity.“ Chronika 5 (2015): 56-65.

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Coins and currency: An historical encyclopedia. McFarland, 2015.

Starr, Ethan. ”A Quest for Common Cents: The Future of the Penny in United States Currency.“ Colloquium: The Political Science Journal of Boston College. Vol. 2. No. 2. 2018.