Liberty’s Hat on Silver ‘In Good Taste’
■ Silver composition coinage was introduced in 1807 on which Liberty wears a hat for the first time. Was this meant to be a Liberty Cap design as on the earlier coppers?
In early 1825, Mint Director Samuel Moore wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “When Mr. [Robert M.] Patterson procured a more pleasing head of Liberty and ornamented it with a dress not intended, as I learned from officers of the mint, to represent the cap of Liberty [the reference here is to the Liberty cap given to freed slaves as a badge of
