In early 1792 there was a contentious argument between the Senate and House of Representatives about a plan to put presidential portraits on the gold and silver coins of the United States. The idea had been put forth by a Senate committee when drafting the first coinage law for the new federal government. The Senate passed the legislation containing the portrait provision but the House objected.
It is said, but perhaps on shaky grounds, that President George Washington intervened with the Senate, asking them to drop the provision as smacking of monarchy. Whatever the reason, in due course the Senate reluctantly agreed to omit the disputed section and the first coinage act was signed into law by the President in early April 1792.
For the next several decades, the question of portraits did not arise, even for the use of prominent individuals long dead. In the late 1850s, Mint Director James Ross Snowden suggested a portrait of Christopher Columbus on the coinage but the thought fell on deaf ears at the Treasury. With the beginning of the Civil War in April 1861, however, the old rules were thrown out and portraits of living persons were put on the paper currency, but not the coinage.
President Abraham Lincoln and Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase found themselves portrayed on the new paper money issued by the Union. This Northern decision was perhaps partly in response to the Confederacy
