Q. David Bowers
Business Strikes:
Enabling legislation: Act of January 18, 1837
Designer of obverse: Robert Ball Hughes (after Gobrecht)
Designer of reverse: Robert Ball Hughes (after Reich)
Weight and composition: 412.5 grains; .900 silver, .100 copper
Melt-down (silver value) in year minted: $1.041
Dies prepared: Obverse: 1; Reverse: 2
Business strike mintage: 11; 540; Delivery figures by day: February 4: 700; June 24: 500; July 30: 5,000; August 5: 5,340.
Estimated quantity melted: Unknown Approximate population MS-65 or better: 2 to 4 (URS-2)
Approximate population MS-64: 5 to 10 (URS-4)
Approximate population MS-63: 10 to 15 (URS-5)
Approximate population MS-60 to 62: 25 to 40 (URS-6)
Approximate population VF-20 to AU-58: 350 to 450 (URS-10)
Characteristics of striking: Most are well struck. Known hoards of Mint State coins: None
Proofs:
Dies prepared: Obverse: At least 1; Reverse: At least 1.
Proof mintage: 550 or fewer minted; all delivered January 27th; some were not sold until the 1870s.
Approximate population Proof-65 or better: 16+/- (URS-5)
Approximate population Proof-64: 42+/- (URS-7)
Approximate population Proof-63: 70-+/- (URS-8)
Approximate population Proof-60 to 62: 180+/- (URS-9)
Commentary
This date is remarkable for its low business strike mintage of just 11,540 pieces.
U.S. Silver Coins Go to Canada
In July 1862, private holders of silver coins, including banks and bullion brokers, sent these pieces (not including Liberty Seated dollars) in huge quantities to New York City, where they were sold at premiums. From that point, untold numbers went to Canada, where for the next decade they constituted what one writer called the "American silver nuisance." It was estimated that in Montreal alone, during the next several years, not less than $80,000 worth of American silver coins changed hands per day, and at least 30 money brokers derived the majority of their income by participating in such transactions.
(Weir, Sixty Years in Canada, pp. 137, 138, 159, 167.)
The Canadian government passed legislation which provided that after April 15, 1870, the legal rate of United States silver coins in Canada would be 80 cents on the dollar, an action intended to encourage exportation before that date. However, on the market the price did not dip below 95 cents on the dollar, due to demand for the coins from money brokers. Eventually, over $5 million worth of U.S. quarters and half dollars and about $500,000 worth of lower-denomination silver coins were shipped back to the United States in 1870. Apparently, no silver dollars were included-a testimony (as if one were needed) that no Liberty Seated dollars were in American circulation when the flight of coins from New York began in 1862.
The Year 1862 in History
During the year notable victories in the continuing Civil War were scored by both the Union and the Confederacy, with the Union's first significant success being the capture by General U.S. Grant's forces of Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. On March 8th, the ironclad ships, Merrimack and Monitor, engaged each other off the coast of Virginia. Neither scored a victory, but the days of wooden ships were numbered. In November, Lincoln relieved McClellan of his command and appointed General Ambrose Everett Burnside in charge of the Army of the Potomac. In January 1863, Burnside was given his walking papers, following the general's defeat at the hands of Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862.
Both the Union and the Confederacy did business with England, but in 1862 that country decided not to recognize the Confederate States of America government.
In a letter to Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune dated August 22, 1862 Lincoln said: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." On September 22, 1862 the provisional Emancipation Proclamation was issued; it stated "all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part o(the State, the people of which shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free," thus freeing some but not others. Eventually, all were freed.
In its infinite wisdom, Congress offered 100 million acres of federal land to the Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and other railroads seeking to construct routes to the West Coast. The railroads would repay the favor by forming trusts and charging the public erratic and often exorbitant rates.
In the theatre the play East Lynne, based on an English novel, was first staged and would go on to become the most popular melodrama in the history of the American stage.
The United States issued the first Legal Tender paper currency notes in April 1862, at a time when the public's confidence in the government was uncertain, and when coins were beginning to be hoarded on a widespread scale. Such notes were largely unwanted outside of the North, and, for example, in the financial district of London they were not accepted. Gold coins, the payment of which had been suspended by the Treasury in December 1861, rose in value sharply and were exported in large numbers. Inflation was rampant, due both to the currency and the general effects of the Civil War. The situation worsened as the year went on, hoarding increased, and by the second week of July 1862, virtually all coins from cents upward were no longer seen in circulation in the East. However, the West Coast was largely immune from this and other effects of the Civil War, and silver coins were aplenty in circulation. Legal Tender notes were not used there, nor were minor coins (Indian cents).
Beginning in the summer of 1862, newly-minted subsidiary silver coins from three-cent pieces to half dollars would not go into circulation in the East but would be stored or exported. Such coins did not reappear in quantity until autumn 1876.
The William A. Lilliendahl Collection, auctioned by W.H. Strobridge in May 1862, featured a number of rare silver dollars including Proofs of 1851 and 1852. The coin auction business was just beginning to take hold in America, and over the coming decades many outstanding collections would be dispersed by auction. The typical sale was apt to be held in Philadelphia (considered to be the center of the coin trade at the time) or New York City. In attendance would be two or three dozen bidders, including dealers buying for their clients.