Has anyone ever thought about the possible reason for changing the Chain Cent?
topstuf
Posts: 14,803 ✭✭✭✭✭
What if the early settlers threatened their kids with them?
"You be good or the lady on the penny will get you?"
Huh? Maybe? We don't really know, do we? 
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Comments
Years ago, I read that the chain motif was deemed antithetical to the freedoms upon which the country was freshly founded. (No need to point out the staggering difficulty with this argument.)
Whit
Let the past speak for itself:
The March 18, 1793 edition of Claypoole’s Daily Advertiser stated the opinion, “The chain on the reverse is but a bad omen for liberty.”
I always thought the 15 links represented the unbreakable bond between the 15 states in the Union at the time. I guess there has always been a influential minority with a bent toward political correctness.
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
forward thinking knew more "links" would be added and the chain motif would no longer be feasible on a coin of that size.
Keets idea also makes sense -- and follows the "add a star" problem.
Consider, however, that the chain design had been around for quite a while - but always with identification of individual links and with a central unifying motto such as "We Are One." With those clarifying features removed from the cent, the clear interpretation is of bondage....Not a good omen for "Liberty."
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Symbolism is always a debatable topic.... I would just like to have one....been looking for one with a metal detector on colonial sites for years....no luck yet. Cheers, RickO
Symbolism is always a debatable topic
somewhat, maybe, but overall the "symbols" used on our coins have specific, historical meanings. things like the Phyrigian cap and chains have a very specific symbolic meaning and are tied to early American History in a few different ways. the Colonists certainly saw themselves under the tyranny of Britain but at the same time they held slaves which probably presented more than a little mental conflict for them.
they may not have been too excited about the daily reminder that their physical money brought with the chain reverse, intended to symbolize unity but reminding them of bondage. it took a little longer to internalize the Cap, should it be on a pole, on a head or gone altogether. again, it was symbolic of Freedom but reminiscent of bondage. having the word "Liberty" on coins with symbols of bondage was probably unsettling.
Did people object to the chain on the Fugio cent?
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
The OP was ill considered.
The Fugio Cent had round circular links, easily distinguishable from the oblong links of the Chain cent.
Excerpt – Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606 to 1827.
Thomas Jefferson
::To
Samuel Moore
March 3, 1825
My memory is so entirely in default that I do no remember a single circumstance respecting the devices on our coins except that some one having proposed to put General Washington’s head on them, it was entirely objected to, and the head of Liberty adopted, but whether with or without the pileus I do not remember; but surely it ought to be without it, for we are not emancipated slaves.
....