Walter Breen
(Mint report: 357,830)
This was a wartime year, and the United States was in dire straits. The embargo of 1807 hurt everyone. Banks suspended specie payments in the summer. The last major deposit of silver reached the Mint September 21 and no more would follow for over a year. On November 13, 1813, for reasons unknown, Thomas T. Tucker, treasurer of the United States, notified the Mint via his agent Tench Coxe that he judged it "advisable at present to abstain from any further distribution of copper coins."
According to R. W. Julian. Chief Coiner Adam Eckfeldt delivered 357,830 cents to Mint Treasurer Benjamin Rush on October 27, exhausting the Mint's supply of cent blanks. Julian estimates that cent coinage must have begun, at earliest, late in September just before the final coinage of dimes. He points out that the half dollar press could be adapted to strike cents, so that possibly both pairs of dies were in simultaneous use. The cents were paid out about December 26 to the Bank of Pennsylvania, from which they went to the general public.
Unsurprisingly, gem Uncirculated 1814s are unobtainable, though both varieties of this date are plentiful in all lower grades.