Today we think of the quarter dollar, especially with the new ongoing series honoring American women, as the most important coin of the United States. Few would disagree with this sweeping statement but in the early days of the Republic, not all that many quarter dollars were made for the public at the Philadelphia Mint. The story began in the 1780s.
With the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, many citizens began asking for a monetary system of our own so that we would not have to depend upon coins from foreign nations. Perhaps the clearest thinking on this subject was provided by Thomas Jefferson, who supplied Congress in 1784 with a well-thought-out plan for a mint and coinage.
Jefferson, however, did not like the idea of a quarter dollar and instead suggested a twenty-cent piece. He realized that the new nation would have to use the Spanish dollar (eight reales) as the basis for its silver coinage and the two reales struck in Spanish-American mints was equal to twenty-five cents but there was also the so-called pistareen, a debased two reales struck in Spain and worth only about twenty cents in Jefferson’s time.
Whatever the rationale for a twenty-cent piece, Jefferson carried the day and the Confederation Congress ignored the quarter dollar when it enacted a mint law in 1786. It is, however, one thing to pass a law and quite another to provide the necessary start-up money. The
