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Continental currency, the meaning behind the design and latin motto

ChessmanChessman Posts: 1,602 ✭✭✭
in U.S. & World Currency Forum

I found this, thought I would share it for educational purposes: https://coins.nd.edu/ColCurrency/CurrencyText/CC.html

This is the larger section for state issued currency: https://coins.nd.edu/ColCurrency/index.html

Comments

  • HemisphericalHemispherical Posts: 9,370 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Good info, thanks @Chessman.

  • logger7logger7 Posts: 9,072 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I liked this comment from Ben Franklin on the hand and Hawthorn bush:

    Benjamin Franklin explained the Continental Currency emblems in a letter published under the pseudonym of Clericus in the Pennsylvania Gazette of September 20, 1775. For the five dollar emblem he explained:
    ...we have a thorny bush, which a hand seems attempting to eradicate. The hand appears to bleed, as pricked by spines. The motto is, SUSTINE VEL ABSTINE; which may be rendered, Bear with me, or let me alone; or thus, Either support or leave me. The bush I suppose to mean America, the bleeding hand Britain. Would to God that bleeding were stopt, the wounds of that hand healed, and its future operations directed by wisdom and equity; so shall the hawthorn flourish, and form an hedge around it, annoying with her thorns only its invading enemies. [B. Franklin, Writings, ed. by J.A. Leo Lemay, 1987, pp. 734-738 on p. 735.]

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