Choosing Liberty
The Statue of Liberty, completed in 1884
Paul Revere’s Famous Sons of Liberty Bowl, 1774, featuring a Liberty Cap in a wreath.
Paul Revere designed the image of Britannia—representing Britain—holding a liberty cap, and setting a bird (the Colonies) free.
What keeps a country safe? For the United States after the Revolution and after the Articles of Confederation, one answer was a consistent, regulated and therefore legitimate currency that would protect the people and government of the nation. Theft by shrinking the amount of metal in coins or by clipping pieces of the coins or confusion aided by the use of multiple currencies eroded faith in the country as well as the wealth of individuals. To regulate the currency, the 2nd Congress of the young United States passed the Coinage Act of April 2, 1792. The act details what amount of a particular metal should be in a particular coin, while other sections detail how to enforce the honesty and legitimacy of the coins, including requiring people holding the position of assayer, chief coiner, and treasurer to pay a bond of $10,000 dollars, which would be over $3,192,000 today (see section 5).
But in addition to these practical discussions of preserving honesty and creating currency, the act also spoke to the representation of the new country.
In Britain in the 18th century there was a general lack of small coins, so much so that counterfeits and tokens were fully in use—a practice that continued in the colonies’ embrace of money from all over the world, including Spain. But when legitimate British coins were used, the iconography was unmistakable. Here’s a 1797 penny:
By Петров Эдуард - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=132261634
The king wears the trappings of a Roman emperor—note the drapery around his chest as well as the wreath upon his head. On the reverse, Brittania sits above the waves, a trident—symbol of ruling the sea—in one hand, and a branch in the other. In the distance behind her, a ship passes by, overseen by her. The symbolism is clear—George III is presented as an emperor and the country itself as a goddess protecting—and having powerful dominion over—the seas. As we can see here, in the images and phrases placed on them, coins can act as both announcement and propaganda.
How or why, then, did the United States choose Liberty and a woman to be the face of their cents?
Most people in 18th century society would be able to recognize depicitions of gods and goddesses (interested in learning more? See this Context post.). During the Revolution, groups framed themselves as the “children” of key concepts. For instance, some of the most important groups were the Daughters of Liberty, who organized boycotts of British goods, and the Sons of Liberty, who organized the Boston Tea Party (see the bowl by Paul Revere, above, engraved with the names of the Sons of Liberty, with text surmounted by a liberty cap). Instead of being “born” from Britain, the United States is “born” from liberty. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” captures this idea—the absolute minimum for pursuing happiness is life and liberty.
Different objects became associated with liberty. There were liberty trees, which some scholars suggest are American versions of the tree of life, as well as Liberty caps, which are a very old symbol, harkening back to the Roman goddess Libertas—or liberty (If you want to know more about how the face of Liberty changed from coin to coin, take a look at this blog post).
Let’s turn back to the Coinage Act of 1792. After the weighing and the measuring and the announcing of the paying of bonds, the Coinage Act of 1792 arrives at the answer to the question, “Why choose Liberty for the coins?”
SEC. 10. And be it further enacted, That, upon the said coins respectively, there shall be the following devices and legends, namely: Upon one side of each of the said coins there shall be an impression emblematic of liberty, with an inscription of the word Liberty, and the year of the coinage; and upon the reverse of each of the gold and silver coins there shall be the figure or representation of an eagle, with this inscription, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” and upon the reverse of each of the copper coins, there shall be an inscription which shall express the denomination of the piece, namely, cent or half-cent, as the ease may require.
Clearly, Congress decided upon using liberty and wanted two ways of showing Liberty, one that was unmistakable—the word itself—and one that is “emblematic of liberty.” In a world suffused with the language of liberty in which people would recognize liberty easily, depicting liberty as a woman makes sense. But let’s push the question some more and let’s keep asking why Liberty?
As we see from the British penny, the head of a monarch and a representation of power and might decorated their coins. Why not follow that? Actually, the Senate suggested exactly that—that George Washington, as first President, should be on the coin. It is Washington himself who resists this call and who most probably turns to the House of Representatives, suggesting Liberty should be on the coin, rather than elevating himself as president to the traditional position of monarch.
Houdon’s bust of George Washington—note the Roman trappings.
Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18118977
But Washington’s influence, though interesting, does not get at the larger question of why is it that of all the rights that could be chosen, Liberty is the one to be placed on coins. Most of us know the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, arguing for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It reappears in the Constitution’s Preamble, which explains that one of the goals of the Constitution is to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
And it’s here that we see the British influence of what liberty means, because if we think about that phrase from the Constitution, liberty is described almost as an inheritance. For the British, liberty was a key principle, dating back to the Magna Cara (1215) and the British Bill of Rights (1689) (By the way, take a look at the British Bill of Rights and compare it to the US Bill of Rights). Amanda Porterfield asserts that the colonists invert the older understandings of liberty, one that connected liberty with nature, by placing liberty within reason, separating her from nature, and therefore rendering Americans into victims of tendencies and powers, such as violence or emotion, that could not be subsumed under reason. Porterfield asks us to see the ironies in the images the colonists use to try to create a new world, given their treatment of many Americans whose liberty at best would be crimped, unpropertied men, almost all women, and at worst wholly denied, enslaved people (stay tuned for a blog on this topic!).
Returning to Liberty, let’s take out a contemporary cent—literally or virtually—and look at it.
Notice we no longer have a woman, a goddess representative of Liberty—we now have Lincoln, a President who is iconic of fighting for liberty, even if the facts do not quite match the story.
George Washington’s warnings were ignored. In part the change in image on coins comes from President Theodore Roosevelt’s belief that American imagery needs to be used more in coinage, which explains why, since 1909, Lincoln has inhabited the obverse of US cents. In part the change comes from an 1857 Act of Congress telling the US Mint to make the pennies smaller. The last year Liberty graces a coin is 1856.
Here she is
Liberty still exists on the coin, though the emblem has changed from an American goddess who might bless us all to a President whose actions saved the Union. One image suggests a right that is available to everyone precisely because she is an idea. One image places us in a past where difficult decisions were made to protect what the goddess gave birth to in the first place. Given the changes in images on the coins, given the pressures we feel now in the 21st century, what fissures pull liberty towards and away from us? What ruptures in logic (dis)connect her from us? How has she been used—in all ways—to support positions she perhaps was never meant to uphold?
Lady Liberty reimagined now graces coins worth much more than a humble cent, and some of the designs are forward-looking and hopeful, yet it’s worth wondering about the effect of Liberty as representative goddess of the Republic moving from the penny to denominations worth much more. And as inspiring as Lincoln was—and as much of a warning as the Civil War was and is—what happens when we remove Lady Liberty from the pockets of ordinary people and place her in the hands of those with sufficient disposable income to buy an ounce of gold?
