Isn’t It Ironic?

Could there be a greater disconnect in human and numismatic history than the Confederate States of America producing coinage that celebrated the liberation of slaves? And this, after having just seceded from the Union in a tragic and bloody attempt to preserve slavery!

The Backstory

This story begins over 2,000 years ago in ancient Rome. The first recorded mention of a slave being willingly freed by his master (referred to as “manumission”) occurred in approximately 200 B.C. The former master performed a lengthy ceremony, and at the height of the proceedings, the slave was ceremoniously touched by a rod, or rudis (“the rod of touch”), whereupon they were officially released from bondage. 

Once a slave had been granted freedom, their head was shaved, and a pileus (“cap of announcement”) was placed upon it. This part of the ceremony was called capere pileum (“to take the cap”). The pileus was a white, woolen, or felt cap, brimless, and somewhat cylindrical in shape. In accordance with Roman custom, only free persons could wear a pileus; predominately the lower working classes wore them.  

From this early ceremonial use, the pileus and staff became synonymous with freedom. In time, these became the trademark accessories of the goddess Liberty. Artists often rendered the pileus perched atop a rod or staff. However, in the intervening centuries, the staff and cap’s symbolic meaning expanded to represent not only manumission but also freedom from political or religious tyranny.  

The earliest usurping of the pileus cap’s symbolism occurred between 43 and 42 B.C. A Roman denarius was created per the decree of Brutus and Cassius. The coin’s obverse portrayed Brutus. The reverse pictured a pileus cap framed by two drawn daggers. In this instance, the cap represents freedom from Caesar’s tyrannical rule after his assassination in 44 B.C. 

The cap’s political meaning culminated in the late 1790s amid the French Revolution. The liberty cap, or bonnet rouge, became internationally recognized during this time. However, its original meaning of manumission faded from public memory.

Confederate States of America

On January 26, 1861, the State of Louisiana seized the New Orleans branch of the U.S. Mint “under trust.” In the preceding weeks, A.J. Guirot, superintendent of the New Orleans Mint, had ignored a formal request by John A. Dix, Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, to return $300,000 of the $419,312 of bullion held in the mint’s vault. (Another $483,984 resided in the New Orleans subtreasury.) Over the next two months, Louisiana minted 1,240,000 half dollars before turning the facilities over to the Confederacy on April 1, 1861. 

Under the auspices of the newly formed Confederate States of America, the mint returned to work. Based on an exhaustive die-variety study, numismatists Randy Wiley and Bill Bugert calculate that the New Orleans Mint produced over 960,000 half dollars after the Confederacy took possession of the facility. However, all the 1861-O dated half dollars minted by both the State of Louisiana and then the Confederacy were struck using the existing U.S. Seated Liberty dies, with no observable difference to the general public from the half dollars minted before Louisiana’s secession.

So, here was the Confederacy, furiously producing nearly a million half dollars in a single month, with each and every coin picturing the goddess Liberty holding the staff and cap of manumission—the very thing they were fighting and dying to avoid.

A Confederate Coinage

Initially, the Confederacy hoped it might produce its own coinage. In early April 1861, C.G. Memminger, Secretary of the Confederate Treasury, requested design proposals for a Confederate half dollar. Memminger selected a design but retained the U.S. Seated Liberty figure on the obverse. Influenced by a shortage of seasoned coin engravers and die-sinkers in the South, this practical decision would have enabled the New Orleans Mint to continue using the original U.S. obverse dies. At the time, dies were made at the Philadelphia Mint headquarters and shipped to branch mints—Dahlonega, Georgia; Charlotte, North Carolina; and New Orleans. Obviously, under the circumstances of secession, New Orleans wouldn’t be receiving any new dies from the North.

Yet the reverse design Memminger selected only reinforced the symbolism that appeared on the obverse. The coin’s reverse depicts a shield bearing seven stars above a field of seven stripes, representing the seven states that had then seceded. (Eventually, 11 states left the Union.) The shield is encircled by a wreath of cotton and wheat. But prominently featured above the shield is a large Liberty cap held aloft by a rod or staff.

Whether Memminger and engraver A.H.M. Patterson knew the Liberty cap’s manumission roots is unknown. In all likelihood, the two simply viewed it as a symbol of the South breaking free from the Union. However, Memminger’s direct involvement compounded the disconnect. As a lawyer in Charleston, South Carolina, Memminger assisted clients who engaged in the slave trade. And he owned over 20 slaves (including children) when he lived in North Carolina. 

While four specimens of the proposed half dollars were struck, Memminger’s dream of Confederate coinage never came to fruition. He ordered the facility’s closure due to the war’s crushing impact on the South’s international trade. This reduced its need for specie, compounded by the South’s dwindling silver-bullion supply. All operations ceased on April 30, 1861. A few weeks later, on May 14, 1861, Memminger wrote Mint Superintendent William Elmore, stating, “The stern necessities of war compel the government to collect and receive all [the mint’s] resources.” 

Whether Memminger and engraver A.H.M. Patterson knew the Liberty cap’s manumission roots is unknown. The two likely viewed it as a symbol of the South breaking free from the Union.

Of the four patterns, Memminger received one, which he presented to Confederacy President Jefferson Davis. And herein lies the great disconnect. Davis was intimately familiar with the cap’s historical origins, so he couldn’t have been happy with Memminger’s chosen design. 

It’s often overlooked, but prior to the secession of the Southern states, Davis served as the U.S. Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce’s administration between 1853 and 1857. Davis was also in charge of constructing the U.S. Capitol extension during that period. In 1854 sculptor Thomas Crawford was commissioned to create a bronze statue of Freedom that would adorn the top of the soon-to-be-constructed U.S. Capitol dome. Crawford was also tasked with creating marble allegorical figures of History and Justice for the portico above the Capitol’s bronze revolution-themed doors, which Crawford also designed. Crawford’s original designs showed Freedom and History wearing Phrygian-style Liberty caps.

Davis shared with Army officer Montgomery Meigs that he was extremely unhappy with the Liberty caps. Specifically, Meigs told Crawford that Davis “does not like the cap of liberty introduced into the composition; that American liberty is original, and not the liberty of the freed slave.” 

Relenting, Crawford replaced the Liberty cap with a warrior’s helmet on the 20-foot Freedom statue atop the Capitol. Inside the building, he replaced History’s cap with a laurel wreath. (The last piece of the Statue of Freedom was finally placed atop the Capitol dome on December 2, 1863.)

Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union on April 9, 1865. Upon Davis’s capture a month later, the Confederate half dollar that Memminger gave to Davis was one of the few items in Lee’s possession. Later, seized or stolen from Davis while in captivity, the specimen found its way to a succession of Bream family members of Cashtown, Pennsylvania, who quietly held the coin until it publicly resurfaced at a New York City coin show in 1961. After changing hands in several private transactions, the specimen sold at auction in 2015 for $881,250.

Conclusion

A more poignant metaphor for this numismatic episode is worth mentioning. During this period, regular U.S. silver coinage portrayed the goddess Liberty, seated, holding aloft the rod and cap of manumission. In the moment of Jefferson Davis’s capture and shortly after the Confederacy’s defeat, those two ceremonial items once used to free slaves were not only in the pocket of Davis but in the purse or pocket of virtually every citizen in the country. This perhaps served as a quiet testimony to a nation for ridding itself once and for all from the scourge of slavery. 

SOURCES 

Bowers, Q. David. “The 1861-O Confederate Half Dollar.” Mint News Blog (November 7, 2018). https://mintnewsblog.com/bowers-on-collecting-the-1861-confederate-half dollar.

Bugert, Bill (with special edits by Randy Wiley). New Orleans Branch Mint 1853-O to 1861-O, A Register of Liberty Seated Half Dollar Varieties, Volume IV, 2013. http://www.lsccweb.org/BillBugertBooks/Bugert-Vol-IV-NO-Part2.pdf.

Hahn, Carl. “Secession & Seizure: The Story of the 1861-O Seated Half Dollar,” Nustoria, January 31, 2021. https://nustoria.com/blog/secession-seizure-the-story-of-the-1861o-seated-liberty- half dollar.

Heritage Auctions. “1861 50C Original Confederate States of America Half Dollar.” Newman Collection Part IX (November 2017).

Korshak, Yvonne. “The Liberty Cap as a Revolutionary Symbol in America and France.” Smithsonian Studies in American Art. 1, no. 2 (1987): 52-69. jstor.org/stable/3108944.

Milton, John. “A History of the Confederate Half Dollar.” Cointalks. (April 15, 2019).

Morris, Robert. “The Liberty Cap on American Coins.” The American Journal of Numismatics, 13, no. 3 (1879): 52-54. jstor.org/stable/43584050.

National Park Service. “Christopher Memminger at Rock Hill in Flat Rock, NC.” nps.gov/people/christopher-memminger-in-flat-rock.htm.

Sweeney, James O. “The Liberty Cap – Numismatic Symbol Sans Pareil.” The Numismatist (July 1984). https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/43998/spread/18.

Wiley, Randy. “Die Marriages of 1861-O Half Dollars.” Gobrecht Journal, 94 (November 2005): 3-28. https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/514095.

____. “Coining Authority and Rarity for Die Marriages of 1861-O Half Dollars.” Gobrecht Journal, no. 97 (November 2006): 34-49. https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/172.