MARCH 3
1791•Congress Authorizes a Mint
1835•New Orleans, Charlotte & Dahlonega Branch Mints Established
1851•Three-Cent Silver Type I
Congress Authorizes the Establishment of a United States Mint
On March 3, 1791, Congress passed a joint resolution declaring that a mint should be established under authority of the United States and directing President George Washington to prepare the necessary personnel and equipment. The famous Coinage Act would not become law until April 2, 1792, but the March 1791 resolution was a crucial intermediate step: Congress had moved beyond debating whether the new nation needed a mint and formally committed the federal government to creating one.
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America did not suddenly acquire a Mint on April 2, 1792.
The institution emerged through years of argument, planning and experimentation.
Thomas Jefferson had studied monetary systems.
Robert Morris had proposed a national mint.
Alexander Hamilton had delivered an extensive report to Congress.
Then, on March 3, 1791, Congress took a decisive step.
It resolved that a mint should be established.
A Country Without Its Own Reliable Coinage
The United States won political independence before it achieved monetary uniformity.
After the Revolution, Americans conducted business with an extraordinary mixture of coins and accounting systems.
Spanish dollars circulated widely.
British denominations remained familiar in bookkeeping.
Coins from Portugal, France and other countries appeared in commerce.
States and private issuers had produced copper pieces.
The monetary system reflected the colonial past more than a unified federal future.
The Spanish silver dollar was particularly important.
Sometimes called the piece of eight, it circulated throughout the Americas and was familiar to merchants and ordinary users.
Its widespread acceptance made the dollar a logical foundation for a new American monetary system.
The United States would ultimately define its own dollar while borrowing heavily from a unit Americans already understood.
The Articles of Confederation Problem
Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government was weak.
Congress lacked many of the powers later granted by the Constitution.
States retained substantial authority over monetary matters.
Creating a truly uniform national coinage was therefore difficult.
Reforming money became part of the larger movement toward a stronger federal government.
Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris was among the first national leaders to propose a systematic American coinage.
In 1782, Morris submitted a plan involving a national mint and a new unit of account.
His proposed system was mathematically ambitious but too complicated for everyday use.
Nevertheless, it helped move the debate toward a national decimal coinage.
Thomas Jefferson strongly favored decimal money.
He argued for a system based on the familiar dollar and divided by powers of ten.
That approach was far easier for ordinary arithmetic than the pounds-shillings-pence systems inherited from Britain.
Jefferson's ideas helped establish the conceptual foundation of the eventual U.S. dollar, dime and cent relationship.
Today the decimal structure seems inevitable.
It was not.
Many established monetary systems used non-decimal relationships.
The American decision to divide the dollar into tenths and hundredths represented a major simplification.
Federal coins would eventually teach the system physically through their denominations.
The Constitution transformed the legal landscape.
Article I gave Congress power “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin.”
States were prohibited from coining money.
The new federal government now possessed clear constitutional authority to create a national coinage system.
The question became how to exercise it.
President George Washington repeatedly emphasized the importance of uniform money.
In his 1790 annual message to Congress, he described establishing uniformity in currency, weights and measures as an important national objective.
A functioning mint would make that goal tangible.
The United States needed its own coins bearing its own authority.
Alexander Hamilton Studies the Problem
Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton prepared the most detailed early federal analysis of coinage.
His Report on the Establishment of a Mint, submitted in January 1791, addressed denominations, metallic standards, bimetallism, coin weights and the organization of a mint.
Hamilton was not simply designing coins.
He was designing part of the nation's financial architecture.
Hamilton recommended a bimetallic system using both gold and silver as monetary standards.
The dollar would be the basic unit.
Coins would be produced in gold, silver and copper.
Small copper denominations would serve ordinary transactions.
Silver would cover much everyday and commercial use.
Gold would serve larger values.
A national mint served several purposes at once.
It could create uniform coins.
It could reduce dependence on foreign money.
It could regulate metallic standards.
It could strengthen federal authority.
And it could place republican symbols into the hands of ordinary Americans.
Coinage was both financial infrastructure and national identity.
On March 3, 1791, Congress approved a joint resolution concerning establishment of a mint.
The resolution declared that a mint should be established under authority of the United States.
It also authorized the president to take preparatory steps.
Washington could engage artists and procure apparatus necessary for beginning operations.
This distinction is critical.
The March 3 resolution did not contain the complete statutory framework eventually created in 1792.
It did not itself establish every denomination, weight, fineness, office and procedure of the finished Mint system.
Instead, it represented congressional commitment and authorization to prepare.
The detailed founding law came later.
Congress Had Crossed an Important Line
Before March 3, policymakers could still debate the concept.
After the resolution, the federal government had formally committed itself to creating a mint.
Washington was empowered to begin assembling the human and mechanical resources required.
The institution was moving from policy paper toward physical reality.
A mint required far more than a building.
Officials needed presses.
Rolling equipment.
Furnaces.
Scales.
Assaying tools.
Dies.
Skilled engravers.
Coiners.
Metalworkers.
Clerks.
Security procedures.
Accounting systems.
March 1791 gave the president authority to start preparing this machinery of coinage.
Coins had to communicate national identity while meeting demanding technical requirements.
Designs needed to survive reduction into dies and repeated striking under pressure.
The new republic also had to decide what imagery belonged on its money.
Should American coins imitate European monarchies?
Or should they announce something distinctly republican?
Congress ultimately chose emblematic Liberty rather than a portrait of the sitting president.
That decision mattered politically.
European coins routinely displayed monarchs.
The United States instead made Liberty its recurring human symbol.
The new coinage would represent principles rather than a ruler.
The bald eagle became another defining image.
It appeared on early silver and gold coins and eventually became inseparable from American monetary imagery.
The word EAGLE also became the official name of the ten-dollar gold denomination.
The coinage system developed a visual vocabulary of Liberty, eagles, stars and wreaths.
Preparations and debate continued after the 1791 resolution.
Congress considered detailed legislation establishing the Mint and defining the coinage system.
The result was the Coinage Act of April 2, 1792.
That statute is rightly remembered as the formal foundation of the United States Mint.
But it did not emerge from nowhere.
The Coinage Act of 1792
The Act established a Mint at the seat of government.
It created offices including Director, Assayer, Chief Coiner, Engraver and Treasurer.
It defined gold, silver and copper denominations.
It established standards of weight and fineness.
It placed the dollar at the center of the system.
It turned years of monetary theory into federal law.
Washington appointed scientist David Rittenhouse as the first Director of the Mint.
Rittenhouse was one of the most respected American scientific figures of his generation.
His appointment gave the new institution considerable prestige.
He now faced the difficult task of creating a working mint from the ground up.
The Mint was established in Philadelphia, then the nation's capital.
Property was obtained on Seventh Street.
Buildings were erected and adapted for coin production.
The First U.S. Mint became the first federal building constructed under authority of the Constitution.
The national coinage system now had a physical home.
The Mint produced a small number of silver half dismes in 1792.
These famous pieces occupy an unusual place between pattern, experimental and circulating coinage history.
They demonstrated that the new federal operation could manufacture silver pieces.
Regular large-scale coinage was still ahead.
The first regular federal cents appeared in 1793.
The Flowing Hair Chain cent was followed quickly by Wreath and Liberty Cap designs.
Half cents also entered production.
The Mint was finally producing everyday federal money.
The congressional decision of March 1791 had become metal in American pockets.
In 1794, the Mint began producing federal silver denominations including the half dime, half dollar and silver dollar.
The famous 1794 Flowing Hair dollar became the first silver dollar issued by the federal government.
Silver coinage helped translate the decimal system into actual commerce.
Gold Coinage Arrives in 1795
Federal gold coinage began in 1795 with half eagles and eagles.
Quarter eagles followed.
Within a few years of the March 1791 resolution, the United States had a functioning trimetallic coinage system in copper, silver and gold.
What had been a monetary aspiration became an operating national institution.
Establishing a Mint did not immediately eliminate foreign money.
Spanish and other foreign coins continued circulating legally in the United States for decades.
The young Mint could not instantly produce enough domestic coinage to replace the enormous stock already in commerce.
Monetary transition was gradual.
National coinage has symbolic power.
A sovereign state controls its monetary standards and places its authority on money.
For the United States, establishing a Mint demonstrated that the new constitutional government intended to perform the functions of an independent nation.
Every federal coin became a tiny declaration of sovereignty.
April 2, 1792 is easier to remember.
It has a famous statute attached to it: the Coinage Act.
March 3, 1791 is subtler.
It represents the moment Congress formally resolved that the Mint should exist and authorized preparatory action.
Founding institutions usually involves more than one date.
The Mint's creation can be understood as a sequence:
Revolutionary-era proposals established the idea.
The Constitution supplied federal authority.
Washington called for monetary uniformity.
Hamilton delivered his detailed Mint report.
Congress authorized establishment and preparation on March 3, 1791.
The Coinage Act formally created the Mint on April 2, 1792.
Philadelphia built the facility.
Regular federal coinage followed.
That Sequence Matters
Reducing the story to a single founding date hides how much planning was required.
The Mint was a technological institution as well as a legal one.
Congress could authorize it in a sentence.
Making it work required buildings, machinery, metallurgy, engraving and skilled labor.
The March 1791 resolution recognized that preparation had to begin before the finished coinage system could operate.
The institution Congress envisioned in 1791 would eventually grow far beyond Philadelphia.
Branch mints opened across the country.
Steam power replaced early machinery.
Modern high-speed presses replaced screw presses.
Gold and silver circulation gave way to clad coinage.
Yet the basic federal responsibility remains recognizable: manufacture the nation's coins under congressional authority.
The United States Mint survived wars, financial panics, gold rushes, changing monetary standards and repeated technological revolutions.
Its coins have documented American expansion, politics, art and economics.
Collectors often focus on individual rarities.
March 3 asks us to look at the institution that made all of them possible.
Without a federal Mint, there is no Chain cent.
No 1794 dollar.
No Capped Bust half dollar.
No Morgan dollar.
No Saint-Gaudens double eagle.
No Lincoln cent.
No modern commemorative program.
The history of United States coin collecting rests on the institution Congress committed itself to establishing in 1791.
The resolution did not strike a coin.
It did something more fundamental.
It turned the idea of a national mint into an authorized federal project.
Washington could begin preparing the people and machinery.
Congress would return the following year to create the detailed legal structure.
On March 3, 1791, Congress resolved that a mint should be established under authority of the United States and authorized President George Washington to begin preparing the artists and apparatus needed to make it real—a crucial founding milestone one year before the Coinage Act of 1792.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1835 — New Orleans, Charlotte & Dahlonega Branch Mints Established — Congress established branch mints at New Orleans, Charlotte and Dahlonega, creating the O, C and D branch-mint system.
1851 — Three-Cent Silver Type I — Congress authorized the three-cent silver denomination