2347

Letter from US Mint Director to Sen. Benton re: Change of Currency [145286]

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Letter from US Mint Director to Sen. Benton re: Change of Currency  [145286]
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Letter from H. M. Patterson/Director, U.S. Mint to Senator Thomas H. Benton regarding a Dr. Lewis Feuchtwanger's suggestion of substituting his US trial coin invention he called "German silver" in place of the copper coinage in use in the US at that time. Letter dated January 22, 1838, originally included in Senate minutes document, pp 1-3 of Section [122}, 25th Congress, 2d Session. Director Patterson was very much against the idea for many reasons, most notably that German silver had no silver. As noted in his letter, "The German silver, argentan, or packfong ("a compound long since employed in China"), is a complicated and very variable compound, as is shown in the following table of analysis. . . It appears, then, that the German silver is at least a quintuple compound, of very variable and uncertain properties; a serious objection, unquestionably, to its employment in coinage." Note: 1838 was a time of severe financial upheaval in the US. The panic of 1837 led to a severe recession which lasted until the mid-1840s. Banks collapsed, businesses failed, prices declined, and thousands of workers lost their jobs. Throughout all this we saw the opening of (short lived) branch mints in Charlotte/NC and Dahlonega/Georgia which produced no silver coinage. (Note text from Wikipedia.)

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Provenance: Bill McKivor Collection