FEBRUARY 21
1857•Braided Hair Half Cent & Large Cent
1853•Subsidiary Silver Weight Reduction
1997•U.S. Botanic Garden Silver Dollar
Congress Kills the Half Cent and the Old Large Cent
On February 21, 1857, Congress approved a sweeping coinage law that ended the half cent, replaced America's cumbersome old copper large cent with a much smaller copper-nickel cent, and withdrew the legal-tender status long granted to foreign gold and silver coins. The law closed the book on two denominations that had existed since the earliest years of the U.S. Mint and cleared the way for the Flying Eagle cent—the direct ancestor of the small one-cent coin Americans still use today.
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For more than sixty years, an American cent was a substantial piece of copper.
It was large.
It was heavy.
And by the 1850s, it was becoming economically obsolete.
The half cent was in even worse shape.
Once intended for everyday small purchases, it had become a denomination with almost nothing left to do.
On February 21, 1857, Congress changed both.
The half cent was abolished.
The old copper-cent standard disappeared.
A new small copper-nickel cent became federal law.
The Act of February 21, 1857
The statute was formally titled An Act relating to Foreign Coins and to the Coinage of Cents at the Mint of the United States.
Its scope was broader than its title might initially suggest.
It dealt with Spanish and Mexican silver coins still circulating in the United States.
It repealed earlier laws granting legal-tender status to foreign gold and silver coins.
And in Section 4, it fundamentally changed American minor coinage.
The new cent would weigh 72 grains and consist of 88 percent copper and 12 percent nickel.
The statute then stated plainly that the coinage of the half cent shall cease.
The half cent was one of the original denominations authorized by the Coinage Act of 1792.
Its value was exactly what its name suggests:
one-half of one cent.
That was one two-hundredth of a dollar.
In the purchasing-power world of the late eighteenth century, such a denomination made more sense than it would today.
The first federal half cents were struck in 1793.
Early Half Cents Were Large Copper Coins
Despite their tiny value, half cents were physically substantial by modern standards.
They were made of copper.
Over the decades, their weight changed as the price of copper and Mint economics changed.
The denomination went through several major design types, including Liberty Cap, Draped Bust, Classic Head and Braided Hair.
All regular federal half cents were produced at Philadelphia.
The final half-cent design was the Braided Hair type associated with Chief Engraver Christian Gobrecht.
Liberty faces left on the obverse with her hair drawn back and tied.
A coronet bears the word LIBERTY.
The reverse carries HALF CENT inside a wreath.
The design belongs to the broader family of Braided Hair copper coinage that defined the final years of America's old large-copper era.
By the 1840s and 1850s, demand for half cents was weak.
Production was intermittent.
Some years saw no regular circulation coinage at all.
NGC research notes that the denomination played only a minor role in commerce even when production temporarily increased during periods of small-change shortages.
The economy had effectively outgrown the need for a half-cent piece.
The cent had also been struck since 1793.
For generations, the American one-cent coin was roughly the size of what collectors now call a large cent.
Its designs evolved through Flowing Hair, Liberty Cap, Draped Bust, Classic Head, Coronet and Braided Hair types.
Millions circulated through the expanding nation.
But the coin had a basic economic problem.
It contained a lot of copper.
Minor coinage works best when the metal and manufacturing cost remain comfortably below face value.
By the 1850s, rising copper prices made the large cent increasingly troublesome.
Mint Director James Ross Snowden reported that producing large cents and half cents barely covered coinage expenses.
A one-cent coin could not remain practical if the copper inside it approached or exceeded what the government gained by issuing it.
The Mint needed a smaller coin.
The Mint Experiments with Small Cents
The idea did not appear overnight in 1857.
The Mint experimented with reduced-size cents and different alloys during the 1850s.
Officials needed a metal that was inexpensive enough to make the coin economical while still giving it sufficient size and durability.
Pure copper was no longer the preferred answer.
A copper-nickel alloy offered a solution.
In 1856, the Mint produced Flying Eagle cents before Congress had formally authorized the new standard.
These 1856 pieces occupy an unusual position between pattern and regular coinage.
They were struck in significant numbers for testing, demonstration and distribution to officials and others.
They showed what the future cent could look like.
But the small cent still needed statutory authority.
Chief Engraver James B. Longacre created the Flying Eagle cent design.
The obverse shows an eagle in flight.
The reverse places ONE CENT inside a wreath composed of agricultural elements.
The eagle motif drew from earlier work associated with Christian Gobrecht's silver-dollar designs.
The result was dramatically different from the large copper cents Americans had known for generations.
The February 21 law established the new cent's standard.
It would weigh 72 grains—about 4.67 grams.
It would be 88 percent copper and 12 percent nickel.
That was far lighter than the old 168-grain copper cent.
The reduction made the coin cheaper and much more convenient to handle.
PCGS describes the law as the measure that made the small cent a legal reality.
The statute did not use the modern collector phrase “large cent.”
Instead, it changed the statutory standard of the cent itself.
Once the new 72-grain copper-nickel standard became law, production under the old heavy-copper standard ended.
Mint records later listed the old copper cent as discontinued by the Act of February 21, 1857.
The Braided Hair large cent became the final chapter of a series stretching back to 1793.
The Last Large Cents
Large cents bearing the 1857 date were struck before the old format disappeared.
PCGS gives the 1857 large-cent mintage as 333,546.
Compared with many earlier large-cent mintages, that was modest.
The coin was not simply another annual issue.
It was the end of an American denomination format.
The cent survived by becoming smaller.
The half cent did not survive at all.
Congress abolished it.
No replacement half-cent format was created.
No copper-nickel half cent followed.
No later federal law revived the denomination.
The 1857 Braided Hair half cent therefore remains the final United States half cent.
Economic growth and rising prices had eroded the denomination's usefulness.
A half cent represented very little purchasing power by the mid-nineteenth century.
Merchants and consumers did not need enough of them to justify continued production.
The denomination's long gaps in production already demonstrated weak demand.
Congress merely made permanent what commerce had largely decided.
The copper-nickel alloy looked noticeably paler than the old red-brown copper coins.
Contemporary users sometimes called the new pieces white cents.
They were not actually white, but the nickel content gave them a much lighter appearance.
The change in size and color made the transition unmistakable.
The new cent looked like a different kind of money.
After the February law, the Mint prepared the new cents for broad distribution.
On May 25, 1857, the Philadelphia Mint began exchanging Flying Eagle cents with the public.
Contemporary and numismatic accounts describe enormous public interest.
A temporary exchange arrangement was established at the Mint.
People could bring old copper cents and certain worn Spanish silver coins and receive the new small cents.
The new coins were distributed in cloth bags containing 500 cents.
Each bag therefore represented five dollars in face value.
Demand was intense.
The public wanted the novel small coins.
For a denomination usually treated as humble change, the Flying Eagle cent debuted with remarkable excitement.
17,450,000 Flying Eagle Cents
The Mint struck approximately 17.45 million Flying Eagle cents dated 1857.
That huge output compared with only 333,546 large cents of the same date demonstrates how decisively production shifted.
The future had arrived quickly.
The large cent moved from everyday money toward collector curiosity.
The February 21 law did something equally important beyond cents.
It repealed earlier laws that had allowed foreign gold and silver coins to circulate as legal tender in the United States.
For much of the nation's early history, foreign coins—especially Spanish and Mexican silver—had been indispensable.
The U.S. Mint simply could not produce enough domestic coinage to satisfy commerce.
By 1857, Congress was ready to move toward a more fully national coinage system.
The Spanish milled dollar had helped inspire the American dollar itself.
Its fractional pieces circulated so widely that their terminology survived in American speech.
A Spanish two-real piece was worth roughly a quarter dollar in common usage.
The old expression “two bits” for twenty-five cents grew from that monetary world.
The 1857 law helped bring that era toward a close.
Congress did not simply declare every small Spanish and Mexican silver piece worthless overnight.
The statute provided specific Treasury acceptance values for certain fractional coins.
Once received, however, those coins were not to be paid out again.
They were to be sent to the Mint for recoining.
The government was deliberately pulling foreign silver out of circulation.
The new small cent became part of that cleanup process.
Section 5 of the law allowed the Mint to pay out the new cents in exchange for gold and silver bullion and provided mechanisms involving the old copper coins.
In practice, the Mint's exchange operations encouraged Americans to surrender obsolete large cents, half cents and foreign silver.
The Flying Eagle cent was therefore both a new coin and a tool for modernizing the circulating currency.
Large Cents Did Not Vanish Overnight
Even after production stopped, old large cents remained in people's hands.
Redemption continued for years.
PCGS historical research notes that large quantities were still being turned in well into the 1870s.
Money does not disappear the moment Congress changes a standard.
Old and new systems overlap.
The 1857 law started a transition rather than creating an instantaneous replacement.
The Flying Eagle cent was historically important but short-lived.
Regular issues appeared in 1857 and 1858.
The design proved difficult to strike fully because of opposing high points in the dies.
The Mint soon sought a replacement.
In 1859, Longacre's Indian Head cent took over.
The small-cent format, however, remained.
Early Indian Head cents continued using the copper-nickel alloy established by the 1857 law.
They remained thick and pale compared with later bronze cents.
In 1864, Congress changed the cent again, reducing its weight and adopting a bronze composition of 95 percent copper with the balance tin and zinc.
The coin became thinner and lighter.
But it did not return to large-cent dimensions.
Today's Lincoln cent is not made to the same 1857 composition or weight.
Its design, metal and manufacturing methods have changed repeatedly.
But the fundamental idea of the small cent begins with the transition made legal on February 21, 1857.
Every modern American cent descends from that decision to abandon the old heavy copper format.
For collectors, 1857 is remarkable because both final old-style copper denominations ended together.
The Braided Hair half cent disappeared permanently.
The Braided Hair large cent ended the old cent format.
The Flying Eagle cent replaced only one of them.
It was a dramatic simplification of American minor coinage.
A collector can tell the entire story with only a few coins.
An 1857 Braided Hair half cent represents the abolished denomination.
An 1857 Braided Hair large cent represents the abandoned old cent standard.
An 1857 Flying Eagle cent represents the new copper-nickel small cent.
Placed side by side, the legal transformation is immediately visible.
The 1856 Flying Eagle Adds a Fourth Chapter
For a more advanced collection, the famous 1856 Flying Eagle cent adds the experimental pre-law stage.
Its existence demonstrates that the Mint had already prepared for the transition before Congress acted.
Then the February 1857 law supplied formal authority.
The 1857 circulation issue shows full implementation.
Few coinage transitions can be illustrated so neatly.
Once abolished, half cents gradually became numismatic objects rather than money.
Collectors today pursue them by date, variety and die marriage.
Because production was irregular and some issues were struck in very small quantities, the series includes major rarities.
Even common half cents feel unusual to modern hands because Americans have not used the denomination for more than a century and a half.
Large cents developed one of the deepest specialist traditions in American numismatics.
Collectors study die varieties, planchet quality, color, surfaces and provenance.
Early cents in particular can be traced through detailed attribution systems.
Ironically, coins abandoned partly because they were inconvenient and uneconomical became some of the most intensely studied objects in American collecting.
February 21, 1857 marks one of the clearest dividing lines in United States minor coinage.
Before the law, Americans had a large copper cent, an increasingly useless half cent and a circulation still containing legally recognized foreign gold and silver.
After the law, the half cent was finished, the cent was transformed and foreign legal-tender coinage was being withdrawn.
The nation was standardizing its everyday money.
The change was practical.
Large copper cents cost too much to produce and were inconvenient to carry.
Half cents had lost their economic purpose.
Foreign coins were no longer as necessary to keep American commerce moving.
Congress responded with a law that modernized all three problems at once.
On February 21, 1857, Congress ended the half cent, abandoned the old large-copper cent standard, authorized the 72-grain copper-nickel small cent and began pushing foreign legal-tender coins out of American circulation—creating the direct foundation of the small-cent era that continues today.
Own a Piece of the History
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ALSO ON THIS DAY
1853 — Subsidiary Silver Weight Reduction — Congress reduced the statutory weight of the half dime, dime, quarter and half dollar, leading to arrows/rays identifying the change
1997 — U.S. Botanic Garden Silver Dollar — U.S. Botanic Garden commemorative silver dollar released.