SEPTEMBER 18
1793•Liberty Cap Cent
1877•Sam Bass Big Springs Gold-Coin Train Robbery
The First Liberty Cap Cents Are Delivered
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On September 18, 1793, Chief Coiner Henry Voigt delivered 11,056 newly made Liberty Cap cents to the treasurer of the United States Mint in Philadelphia. The delivery represented the entire mintage of the 1793 Liberty Cap cent, one of the rarest and most historically important early American copper coins.
The event came during a disastrous moment for Philadelphia. Yellow fever was ravaging the national capital, killing thousands and scattering residents into the countryside. Joseph Wright, the artist generally credited with the Liberty Cap cent design, had died only days earlier. Within hours of the September 18 delivery, the Mint closed during the epidemic and would not resume normal operations until later in the fall.
Although later research indicates that the coins themselves had been struck earlier, the September 18 delivery is the firm documentary milestone preserved in the Mint’s records. That distinction makes the date a particularly useful anchor in the history of America’s first federal cents.
America’s First Year of Regular Federal Coinage
In 1793, the United States Mint was still an experiment.
Congress had created the institution through the Coinage Act of April 2, 1792. Philadelphia was then the nation’s capital, and the Mint established its first permanent facilities near Seventh and Arch Streets.
The new government faced a basic problem: Americans needed coins, but the federal government had never operated a mint.
Everything had to be built from the ground up. Machinery had to be acquired or constructed. Copper and precious metals had to be obtained. Dies had to be engraved. Skilled workers had to be hired. Coinage standards established by Congress had to be translated into objects that could survive everyday commerce.
The cent became the first denomination produced in substantial quantities for circulation.
The Cent Was a Much Larger Coin in 1793
The word “cent” can be misleading to modern readers.
A 1793 cent was nothing like today’s small one-cent coin.
Under the original federal system, the cent was a large copper piece whose intrinsic metal content was intended to correspond reasonably closely to its monetary value. The 1793 Liberty Cap cent weighed approximately 13.48 grams and measured roughly 28 to 29 millimeters across.
It was closer in diameter to a modern half dollar than to a modern cent.
Collectors now call these pieces “large cents,” a convenient term covering the federal copper cents issued from 1793 through 1857.
The first year of federal cent production produced an extraordinary sequence of designs.
The Mint began with the Chain cent in March 1793. Its reverse showed a chain of linked rings representing the states.
The design drew criticism, and the Mint quickly replaced it with the Wreath cent.
Later in the year came a third major type: the Liberty Cap cent.
For collectors, that means the single date 1793 encompasses three dramatically different cent designs—Chain, Wreath and Liberty Cap.
Few other years in American coinage offer such a concentrated record of artistic and institutional experimentation.
The 1793 Liberty Cap cent is generally attributed to Joseph Wright.
Wright was an American artist born in Bordentown, New Jersey, in 1756. He studied art and developed skills in portraiture, sculpture and medallic work.
His mother, Patience Lovell Wright, was a celebrated wax sculptor who worked in Britain and America.
Joseph Wright eventually became associated with the young United States Mint and was appointed as a Mint engraver in 1793.
His career there was tragically brief.
The Liberty Cap Symbol
The coin’s defining symbol is the liberty cap mounted on a pole behind Liberty’s head.
The cap had ancient associations with freedom and had become an important political symbol during the revolutionary age.
In the eighteenth century, liberty caps and poles appeared in political imagery on both sides of the Atlantic. Americans used the motif during their struggle with Britain, and the symbol also became closely associated with revolutionary France.
On the cent, Liberty faces right with flowing hair. Behind her is the cap and pole. LIBERTY appears above, with the date 1793 below.
The image is both classical and unmistakably revolutionary.
The reverse places ONE CENT and the fraction 1/100 inside a wreath.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA surrounds the design.
The fraction was important. The new American monetary system was decimal: one cent represented one-hundredth of a dollar.
At a time when many people were accustomed to complicated systems of pounds, shillings and pence, putting 1/100 directly on the coin helped communicate the structure of the new national currency.
The wreath design also continued a visual theme introduced on the earlier 1793 Wreath cents, but in a more restrained composition.
The 1793 Liberty Cap cent had a lettered edge.
It reads ONE HUNDRED FOR A DOLLAR, followed by an ornamental leaf.
This edge inscription reinforced the decimal relationship stated on the reverse.
It also reminds modern collectors how substantial these early copper coins were. Their thick edges provided enough space for lettering that would be impossible on today’s thin cent.
The 11,056-Coin Delivery
On September 18, Chief Coiner Henry Voigt delivered 11,056 Liberty Cap cents to the Mint treasurer.
That number is the accepted total mintage for the 1793 Liberty Cap cent.
For generations, numismatic writers often treated Mint delivery dates as though they were necessarily the exact dates coins were struck. Modern research has shown why that can be dangerous.
Coins could be struck earlier and held until they were counted, inspected and formally transferred.
Research published by early-copper specialist Bill Eckberg indicates that the 1793 Liberty Cap cents were actually struck on July 18 and July 22. Stack’s Bowers and other modern numismatic references now cite that reconstruction.
September 18 remains the documented delivery date for the entire 11,056-piece mintage.
Early Mint records are incomplete and sometimes difficult to interpret.
Researchers reconstruct production from account books, delivery records, surviving correspondence, die evidence and other fragments.
That can produce revisions to long-accepted chronologies.
The September 18 delivery is therefore especially valuable. Rather than assigning the calendar date to a reconstructed striking session, the historical record securely associates September 18 with the formal transfer of 11,056 Liberty Cap cents.
This is precisely the kind of distinction that matters in a day-by-day coin history.
The delivery cannot be separated from the yellow fever epidemic of 1793.
Philadelphia was then the largest city in the United States and the temporary national capital. During the summer, yellow fever spread rapidly through the city.
Thousands fled.
Those who remained faced terrifying mortality. More than 4,000 people died during the epidemic, a staggering toll for a city with a population of only about 50,000.
Government operations, commerce and ordinary life were disrupted.
The Mint was not spared.
Joseph Wright Dies Before His Coin’s Delivery
Joseph Wright died during the epidemic in mid-September, only days before the Liberty Cap cents were delivered.
Walter Breen’s early-cent research places his death around September 12 or 13. Modern numismatic accounts emphasize the tragic possibility that Wright may not have lived to see the completed production of the coin most closely associated with his Mint career.
His death cut short what might have become a major role in shaping the visual language of early United States coinage.
Robert Scot would soon become the Mint’s chief engraver and dominate federal coin design for decades.
The September 18 delivery came at essentially the last possible moment.
With yellow fever raging, the Mint closed for the epidemic.
Breen’s chronology states that the Mint shut only hours after Voigt delivered the 11,056 cents.
Production would not resume normally until the danger had passed.
No more cents were struck for the remainder of 1793.
The tiny Liberty Cap mintage was therefore frozen at 11,056 pieces.
By modern standards, every early federal mintage is tiny.
But even within the context of early cents, 11,056 is remarkably low.
The Mint had already produced far more Chain and Wreath cents earlier in 1793.
The Liberty Cap type arrived amid machinery problems, difficulties preparing copper planchets, personnel disruptions and the worsening epidemic.
Its low mintage was not a marketing strategy designed to create a rarity. It was the product of an institution struggling to operate under primitive industrial conditions while its city was being devastated by disease.
Early Mint officials repeatedly struggled with copper supplies.
The metal had to be melted, rolled into sheets, cut into planchets and prepared for striking.
Recycled and repeatedly worked copper could become troublesome during processing.
Contemporary Mint production depended on machinery far less reliable than later industrial equipment. Rolling mills broke. Gears failed. Planchets varied. Dies cracked.
Each coin represented a chain of manual and mechanical operations that could fail at multiple points.
The survival of any substantial number of early cents is remarkable in its own right.
A Coin Made to Circulate, Not to Be Saved
In 1793, virtually nobody was assembling date-and-mintmark sets of United States cents.
The coins were money.
A Liberty Cap cent might buy food, pay a small debt or pass through countless hands. Heavy copper pieces accumulated wear, scratches, corrosion and damage.
There were no protective plastic holders, certified grades or climate-controlled collections.
The combination of an 11,056-piece original mintage and more than two centuries of attrition explains why surviving 1793 Liberty Cap cents are major rarities today.
Specialists study early large cents by die variety.
Because individual dies were made by hand, small differences in letter placement, dates, portrait details and reverse elements can identify specific die pairings.
The 1793 Liberty Cap cents are classified through Sheldon numbers, named for Dr. William H. Sheldon’s influential system of early-cent attribution.
Several die marriages are known within the 11,056-coin total.
For advanced collectors, these varieties transform an already rare one-year issue into an intricate field of study.
Although the 1793 mintage was tiny, the design concept survived.
Liberty Cap cents continued in 1794, 1795 and into 1796.
The type evolved, but its central imagery—Liberty with flowing hair, pole and cap—became one of the defining designs of the earliest federal coinage.
It also appeared on half cents.
The motif linked the new republic’s money to the political language of liberty that had helped create the nation itself.
The First Mint Was Still Learning
It is easy to judge early federal coins against later standards of symmetry and technical perfection.
That misses what makes them important.
The Philadelphia Mint of 1793 was inventing an American coinage industry while operating with limited equipment, uncertain supplies and a small workforce.
The three cent designs of that year document the learning process in metal.
Chain cents show one experiment. Wreath cents show another. Liberty Cap cents reveal a third—and arguably more artistically mature—approach.
The Mint was discovering what American money should look like while simultaneously learning how to manufacture it.
Eleven thousand fifty-six coins would be insignificant in modern Mint production.
Today, presses can strike enormous quantities of circulating coins in a short period.
In 1793, those 11,056 cents represented a fragile federal institution operating during a national-capital epidemic.
Their importance is therefore much larger than their face value or mintage.
They preserve the work of Joseph Wright, the struggles of Henry Voigt and the early Mint, the new republic’s decimal monetary system, and one of the darkest episodes in Philadelphia history.
September 18, 1793 is the documented delivery date of all 11,056 Liberty Cap cents dated 1793.
The coins themselves appear to have been struck earlier, according to modern archival research, but the delivery provides a firm historical milestone.
The timing could hardly have been more dramatic. Joseph Wright had just died from yellow fever. Philadelphia was in crisis. The Mint was about to close as the epidemic intensified.
No additional cents would be produced that year.
What survived from that moment is one of the great rarities of early American copper coinage: a large, heavy cent showing Liberty with a cap and pole, its edge declaring ONE HUNDRED FOR A DOLLAR.
Only 11,056 were delivered, but more than two centuries later, those cents still tell the story of a young Mint, a young monetary system and a young nation struggling to establish itself.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1877 — Sam Bass Big Springs Gold-Coin Train Robbery — Sam Bass and his gang robbed a Union Pacific train at Big Springs, Nebraska, taking $60,000 in freshly minted $20 gold pieces headed from the San Francisco Mint to an eastern bank.