How close was Charlotte to minting silver coinage?

What an amazing find!

Did the mines produce any appreciable quantity of silver that could be used? Most native gold deposits did contain some silver, the the Mints in 1839 could not part it from the gold cost effectively, and so they just left it in the coinage.

@BillJones said:

@CaptHenway said:
Did the mines produce any appreciable quantity of silver that could be used? Most native gold deposits did contain some silver, the the Mints in 1839 could not part it from the gold cost effectively, and so they just left it in the coinage.

I’ve read that the Charlotte and Dahlonega Mints did produce some silver in their refining process. The resulting silver bars were shipped to the Philadelphia Mint.

I don’t imagine that it was enough silver to make much of a dent in the coin shortage. Foreign coins were still legal tender in the United States in 1839. The first Philadelphia Mint had been woefully inadequate to serve the nation’s needs, and the second Philadelphia Mint was just getting up to the technology of the time with steam driven presses. England had been using them for almost 40 years.

I don’t imagine that this proposal got very far in Congress. It would have involved shipping silver to Charlotte to supply a small mint which didn’t have that much capacity. Furthermore the Charlotte mint personnel would have needed to step up their game. The Charlotte coins, especially the dollars and $2.50 coins were not that well made. They seemed to have had a hard time calibrating their presses.

A whole slew of things were involved then, 🤔

If the request went through, would Charlotte have been able to strike quarters? If I recall, they were limited in gold coins to the half eagle.

@savoyspecial said:
@The_Dinosaur_Man Charlotte also struck $2.50 gold coins and [ten years later] gold dollars

They are were also sent dies for $3 gold, at least in 1854 (and maybe in 57 and 61). I was referring to the size of the press accepting a larger diameter coin

@Testoon said:
I had wondered if Charlotte and Dahlonega were restricted to gold coinage by law or by Mint policy. I have to admit I never looked up the authorizing act, though. Thanks for posting this!

The two mints were limited to gold coins only, and their presses were intentionally made smaller so that they could strike nothing larger than a $5 gold piece. The idea was that $10 pieces encouraged the export of gold from the U.S.

It was also consistent with Andrew Jackson’s belief that getting small denomination gold coins into circulation would bring economic stability and prosperity to farmers and wage earners.

There's also the bonus tidbit that the General Assembly of North Carolina launched a petition to reopen the Mint in 1873. We know how that went down.