SEPTEMBER 17
1787•Constitution Gives Congress Power to Coin Money
2003•American Eagle Platinum
2021•George H.W. Bush Coin & Chronicles Set
The Constitution Gives Congress the Power to Coin Money
◆
On September 17, 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the United States Constitution in Philadelphia, creating the framework that would place the nation’s coinage under federal authority. Article I gave Congress the power to coin money, regulate its value and the value of foreign coin, and punish counterfeiting. It also explicitly prohibited individual states from coining money.
Those provisions may occupy only a few lines of the Constitution, but they are foundational to the entire history of United States coinage. Every federal cent, nickel, dime, quarter, half dollar, dollar and gold coin that followed ultimately rests on the monetary authority established in the Constitution.
The Constitution did not itself create the United States Mint. That would come later, with the Coinage Act of April 2, 1792. What September 17, 1787 established was something even more fundamental: who would possess the constitutional authority to create a national coinage system.
America Had Money Before It Had a National Mint
The new United States did not begin with a neat, unified monetary system.
During the colonial era and the years immediately after independence, Americans used a mixture of foreign coins, colonial issues, state coinage, paper money and commodity exchange.
Spanish silver dollars were especially important. Their relatively consistent silver content and broad international acceptance made them familiar throughout the Americas.
Other foreign coins circulated as well, including British, French, Portuguese and other European issues.
This patchwork system worked, but it was far from uniform.
Before the Constitution, the United States operated under the Articles of Confederation.
The monetary arrangement under the Articles allowed both the Confederation Congress and the states significant roles in coinage. States could strike coins, while Congress attempted to establish broader monetary standards.
The United States Mint’s historical overview describes the result as confusing: foreign and domestic coins circulated simultaneously, and values could differ from one place to another.
For a country trying to build interstate commerce and national credit, monetary fragmentation was a serious problem.
The framers of the Constitution would move toward a much stronger federal system.
The United States Was Already Experimenting With National Coinage
The Constitution did not emerge in a vacuum.
American leaders had debated coinage for years.
Robert Morris, Superintendent of Finance, proposed plans for a national mint. Thomas Jefferson wrote influential “Notes on Coinage” and supported a decimal monetary system based on the familiar dollar.
In 1785, the Continental Congress adopted the dollar as the unit of American money and embraced decimal relationships among denominations.
In 1786, Congress authorized the establishment of a mint, though the institutional system that became the United States Mint had not yet been created.
In 1787, Congress authorized the copper coins now known as Fugio cents.
The problem was not a lack of interest in national coinage. The problem was creating a durable government with clear authority to manage it.
Delegates gathered in Philadelphia in May 1787 intending to address the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.
The convention ultimately produced an entirely new constitutional structure.
Money and economic authority were central issues because the weaknesses of the Confederation were not merely political. The young nation faced debt, unstable public credit, competing state policies and barriers to commerce.
A functioning national economy required rules that could operate across state lines.
Coinage was one piece of that larger economic architecture.
Article I, Section 8: The Coinage Power
The Constitution assigns specific legislative powers to Congress in Article I, Section 8.
Among them is the power:
“To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.”
That short clause became the constitutional foundation for federal coinage.
Congress could establish denominations, determine standards and regulate the value of both domestic and foreign coins.
The reference to foreign coin was especially practical in the eighteenth century. Foreign money did not suddenly disappear because the United States created its own monetary system. Spanish and other foreign coins would remain important in American commerce for decades.
The next clause gave Congress another essential monetary power:
“To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States.”
A coinage system depends on trust.
If merchants cannot rely on a coin’s authenticity, weight or fineness, its usefulness as money deteriorates. Counterfeiting therefore threatened not merely individual victims but the credibility of the monetary system itself.
The Constitution made federal authority over counterfeiting explicit.
That power would become increasingly important as the United States developed a national coinage, federal securities and eventually paper currency.
The Constitution did not stop with granting Congress monetary authority.
Article I, Section 10 imposed a direct restriction on the states:
“No State shall ... coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts...”
This represented a major structural change from the Confederation period.
Coinage would no longer be an overlapping state-and-national function. The Constitution centralized the power to coin money at the federal level.
That decision helped create the conditions for a genuinely national monetary system.
Imagine conducting interstate commerce if the value and legitimacy of money changed whenever a merchant crossed a state line.
A farmer in Pennsylvania, a shipper in Massachusetts and a merchant in Virginia needed a monetary language they could share.
Uniform coinage reduced friction.
A federal dollar could be defined by national law rather than by a patchwork of state standards. Federal coins could carry standardized weights, denominations and values.
This did not eliminate monetary complexity overnight, but it gave the new government the authority to work toward consistency.
The Constitution Did Not Yet Establish the Mint
It is important to distinguish constitutional authority from the institution created to exercise it.
September 17, 1787 was not the founding date of the United States Mint.
The Constitution granted Congress the relevant powers. Ratification then brought the new federal government into operation.
Congress used that authority in the Coinage Act of April 2, 1792, which established the Mint and created the statutory framework for the nation’s coinage.
The difference is fundamental: the Constitution supplied the power; the Coinage Act built the machinery.
The signatures placed on the Constitution on September 17 did not instantly make it the governing law of the United States.
The document still had to be ratified by the states.
Article VII required ratification by nine states for the Constitution to take effect among the ratifying states.
New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify in June 1788. The new government began operating under the Constitution in 1789.
Thus September 17 is the signing milestone—the date the Convention completed and signed the document containing the coinage clauses—not the date federal coins suddenly began appearing.
Once the new government was functioning, national leaders could turn constitutional authority into law.
The Coinage Act of 1792 established a national mint at Philadelphia.
It created a decimal system of denominations in gold, silver and copper.
The law provided for gold eagles, half eagles and quarter eagles; silver dollars, half dollars, quarter dollars, dimes and half dimes; and copper cents and half cents.
It also established Mint offices and detailed standards for coin weights and fineness.
The basic idea was revolutionary in its clarity: one hundred cents to the dollar, with decimal relationships among denominations.
Philadelphia: From Constitution to Mint
There is a remarkable geographic connection between the Constitution and the early Mint.
The Constitutional Convention met at the Pennsylvania State House—today Independence Hall—in Philadelphia.
Five years later, the first federal Mint was established in the same city, then the national capital.
President George Washington appointed scientist David Rittenhouse as the first Director of the Mint.
The Mint buildings at Seventh and Arch Streets became the first federal buildings erected under the Constitution.
In a very literal sense, Philadelphia moved from writing federal coinage power into the nation’s governing document to manufacturing the nation’s coins.
George Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention and later became the first president under the new Constitution.
His administration oversaw the creation of the Mint.
Washington took a direct interest in coinage. The first federal issues produced under the new system included 1792 half dismes, followed by regular copper coinage in 1793 and silver and gold denominations thereafter.
The transition was not immediate or easy. The young Mint struggled with equipment, bullion supplies and production capacity.
But the institutional chain was now in place: Constitution, Congress, coinage law, Mint, coins.
The Constitution itself does not specify a complete denomination system.
Congress did that through legislation.
But the federal coinage power allowed earlier American ideas about the dollar and decimal money to become a national system.
The choice of the dollar reflected the enormous influence of Spanish silver dollars in American commerce.
The decimal structure, meanwhile, made calculations far simpler than the pounds-shillings-pence systems inherited from Britain.
The eventual American system of dollars, dimes and cents became one of the young republic’s most durable innovations.
Foreign Coins Remained Important
Federal authority did not instantly produce enough American coins for the entire economy.
The early Mint’s output was limited, and foreign coins continued circulating legally in the United States.
That makes the Constitution’s phrase about regulating “the Value ... of foreign Coin” especially significant.
Congress needed authority not only to create American money but to manage the foreign money Americans were already using.
Spanish dollars remained legal tender in the United States well into the nineteenth century.
The path from a mixed colonial monetary system to a fully national coinage system took decades.
The most important numismatic consequence of September 17 is institutional.
Before the Constitution, American coinage authority was fragmented.
After the Constitution took effect, the fundamental legal structure was clear: Congress possessed the federal power to coin money, while states were forbidden from doing so.
That division remains part of the constitutional order today.
Congress continues to authorize denominations, coin programs, compositions and commemorative issues. The United States Mint, operating within the Department of the Treasury, manufactures the coins authorized under federal law.
Collectors usually study coins through dates, mint marks, varieties, designers and mintages.
But behind all of those details lies a more basic question: why does the federal government have the authority to make this coin at all?
The answer leads back to Article I.
A Morgan dollar, Lincoln cent, Saint-Gaudens double eagle, Washington quarter or American Silver Eagle may look completely different from the first federal coins, but each belongs to a monetary system made possible by the same constitutional allocation of power.
September 17 therefore belongs on a coin-history calendar even though no federal coin was struck that day.
The Constitution Itself Became a Coin Subject
Two centuries later, the document that established federal coinage authority became the subject of federal coinage.
In 1987, the United States issued commemorative coins celebrating the bicentennial of the Constitution.
The $5 gold coin includes the inscription SEPT 17, 1787 on its reverse, along with WE THE PEOPLE, a quill pen and thirteen stars.
The symbolism is almost circular: Congress used its constitutional coinage authority to authorize a gold coin commemorating the document that gave Congress that authority.
September 17 is now observed as Constitution Day and Citizenship Day.
The date commemorates the signing of the Constitution and provides an annual opportunity to examine the structure of American government.
For numismatists, it is also an appropriate day to remember that coins are legal and political objects as well as collectibles.
Their denomination, metal, inscriptions and authority all exist within a system of law.
September 17, 1787 is one of the foundational dates in American coinage history.
When delegates signed the Constitution in Philadelphia, they signed a document that gave Congress the power to coin money, regulate the value of American and foreign coin, and punish counterfeiting. The same document prohibited states from coining money.
The Constitution did not establish the Mint that day, and it did not immediately replace the confusing mixture of foreign and domestic money already circulating.
What it did was establish the authority from which a national coinage system could grow.
Five years later, Congress exercised that power through the Coinage Act of 1792. The Philadelphia Mint followed. Federal cents, dollars, eagles and other denominations began to emerge.
Every United States coin struck since then belongs to a constitutional lineage that runs back to the document signed on September 17, 1787.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
2003 — American Eagle Platinum — 2003 Platinum Proof released; first U.S. coin to depict both bald eagle and U.S. flag together.
2021 — George H.W. Bush Coin & Chronicles Set — The U.S. Mint opened sales for the George H.W. Bush Coin and Chronicles Set.