❦ THE CENTENNIAL OBSERVER ❦

Silver was money.
Then, quietly, it wasn't.

Just Filed Congress Tidies Up the Mint and, in the Doing, Quietly Demonetizes Silver A dense 1873 housekeeping bill dropped the silver dollar with hardly a word of debate. Nobody much noticed until the price of silver fell out from under the West, which then noticed for twenty years. Read the case →

See the Cases Report One ★

❦ A Record of Compromises

The Congress · The Money Question

Congress Tidies Up the Mint and, in the Doing, Quietly Demonetizes Silver

The fix: On February 12, 1873 President Grant signed a Coinage Act of sixty-seven sections, mostly dry Mint housekeeping. Buried within, with little debate, it struck the standard silver dollar from the coins the Mint would make and ended the citizen's right to have silver bullion coined into legal tender.

★★★★★ SevereRead the case →

The Republic · Elections, Settled

Disputed Election Resolved by Awarding Presidency to the Man Who Lost It

The fix: The election of 1876 deadlocked: Tilden led the popular vote by a quarter-million and sat one electoral vote shy, with Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and a stray Oregon elector in dispute. Rather than count again, Congress conjured an Electoral Commission of fifteen — five congressmen, five senators, five justices — to decide it.

★★★★★ CatastrophicRead the case → The Frontier · Treaties, Amended

Army Sent to Force Sioux Onto Reservation Locates Sioux, Regrets It Immediately

The fix: In 1874 an Army expedition under George Armstrong Custer confirmed gold in the Black Hills. Prospectors flooded in, the government decided the treaty had been a clerical inconvenience, and in late 1875 ordered every Lakota and Cheyenne band onto the reservations by January 31, 1876 — those who declined to be deemed 'hostile' and handled accordingly.

★★★★★ SevereRead the case → The Economy · Sound Money, Painful

Government Cures Cheap Money by Making Money Scarce; Farmers Decline to Send Thanks

The fix: The Specie Resumption Act of January 14, 1875 set the dollar marching back to gold, pledging that on January 1, 1879, paper would again be redeemable in coin — and instructing the Treasury to shrink the greenback supply from over $430 million toward $300 million to make the promise good.

★★★★★ NotableRead the case →

What Wasn’t Broken

We start with the thing that was working fine — boring, dependable, doing its job.

The "Fix"

Then the improvement: bold, expensive, announced with confidence. Usually unrequested.

The Result

And the receipts — what it cost, what broke, and the citations to prove it.

Silver was money.Then, quietly, it wasn't.