by Thomas K. DeLorey

By some standards George T. Morgan’s career as an Engraver at the United States Mint was a bitter disappointment. Stuck in the Assistant Engraver’s position for over 40 years, he designed only one regular issue U.S. coin in a 49-year tenure, and succeeded to the Chief Engraver’s position only after his predecessor’s lack of imagination had caused coin design to be jobbed out of the Mint to more illustrious designers such as Augustus St. Gaudens and Victor D. Brenner. However, his one coin, the Morgan Dollar, is perhaps the best known U.S. coin today.

Born in Birmingham, England in 1845, Morgan attended the Birmingham Art School, and won a scholarship to the South Kensington Art School. He worked as an assistant under the Wyons at the British Royal Mint, and had the Wyon family not established a several-generation dynasty of engravers in the Tower Mint might have enjoyed a successful career there.

Morgan was brought to the Philadelphia Mint in 1876 as a “Special Engraver,” reporting directly to Mint Director Henry R. Linderman, whose office had been moved to Washington, DC, in 1873. Considering the Byzantine political system under which the Mint in Philadelphia operated in this era, with nepotism and political cronyism the order of the day, his action naturally makes one wonder what the 69-year-old Chief Engraver William Barber and his son, Assistant Engraver Charles Barber, thought of this arrangement.

The Barbers themselves had come from England and a family of engravers, and they no doubt thought that the precedent established by the Wyons of a son succeeding his father as Chief Engraver was a good one. However, Linderman was unhappy with the condition and appearance of the U.S. coinage in circulation, and he wanted someone new to try his hand at improving it.

During the Civil War, most U.S. gold and silver coins had disappeared from circulation, and either traded at barter rates or were shipped overseas. People tended to hoard their coins and to spend their depreciated “Greenbacks,” as the U.S. paper money issued to pay for the war were called because of their difficult to counterfeit green reverses.

At one point in the war, a U.S. $10 gold piece was worth over $35 in paper money. Fractional currency and new minor coins such as the bronze one and two cent piece and the copper-nickel three and five cent pieces met the needs of everyday commerce, as silver coins could only be had for change by paying a premium for them to money brokers.

By 1876 the U.S. Treasury had succeeded in getting its financial house in order to the point that it was able to pay out silver coins at face value for paper money, the increased mintage figures of 1875-77 reflecting this long-sought goal. However, much to the Treasury’s surprise, a flood of older silver coins soon hit the market. Even fractional silver coins dated before 1853, which had been pulled from circulation long before the war because they were about 7% heavier than the coins struck in 1853 and later, returned to circulation as huge silver discoveries in Nevada caused the price of silver to fall, making the coins worth more as face value than as bullion.

Linderman looked upon this flood of old, worn coinage and decided that it should be recoined, and that a new design should be used for the coinage. Apparently unimpressed with William Barber’s earlier Standard Silver patterns of 1869-70 and his blatant copying of various Seated designs by Gobrecht and Longacre in 1870-71, and perhaps influenced by the failure (though largely for reasons beyond his control) of Barber’s 1873 Trade Dollar and his 1875 Twenty Cents piece, Linderman brought in Morgan to create this new design.

In fairness it should be mentioned here that William Barber had created the stunning “Amazonian” silver pattern series in 1872 with its corresponding gold series that used the same reverse as the silver, and that his “Sailor Head” series used on various silver and gold patterns from 1875 to 1877 includes some of my favorite patterns ever struck, but apparently Linderman had it in for the Barbers. Had Linderman stayed in office until William’s death in 1879 he undoubtedly would have picked Morgan to succeed William, but he did not and Charles got the job.

The result of the 1876-77 competition (or “sweepstakes,” as noted pattern authority David Novoselsky calls it) between Morgan and the two Barbers was the creation of some of the most spectacular U.S. patterns ever struck, mostly in the half dollar size since that was the largest silver denomination being struck at that time (excluding the Trade Dollar, which by then was struck only for export) and it would show off the artists’ works to their best advantage.

The series is too extensive to detail here, but the reader is highly recommended to look them up in “United States Pattern, Experimental and Trial Pieces” by Dr. J. Hewitt Judd, the “Coin World Comprehensive Catalogue and Encyclopedia of United States Coins” by David T. Alexander and myself, or “United States Patterns and Related Issues” by Andrew W. Pollock, III.

Perhaps through bureaucratic inertia none of these designs was picked for a new fractional coinage by the end of 1877, and by then it was realized that the flood of older coins was simply too great to overcome. The Treasury bagged and warehoused tons of the older silver coinage, and paid it out as banks and merchants requested the denominations.

The production of dimes, quarters and halves fell off to a mere few thousand business strike pieces coined per year so that the Mint could justify selling these denominations in its Proof sets at a slight premium over face value, and did not return to normal levels until the surplus of dimes was disbursed in 1882, quarters in 1890 and half dollars in 1891. The design on these denominations was then changed to the familiar Barber head starting in 1892.

However, a blatant political power play begun in 1877 and enacted in 1878 set the stage for Morgan’s shot at immortality. On February 28, 1878, the Bland-Allison Act promoted by Representative Richard P. Bland of Missouri and Senator William B. Allison of Iowa became law over the veto of President Rutherford B. Hayes. In its final form, the Act required the U.S. Treasury to purchase between $2 and $4 million worth of silver per month on the open market and to coin it into silver dollars.

The political motivations behind the Act included the support of Western mining states which were being hurt by falling silver prices (caused in large part by their huge output) and an attempt to help farmers by inflating the money supply with the newly-coined dollars. In reality the dollars did not circulate well because of their weight and were largely supplanted by silver certificates, which in turn replaced other forms of currency and had little effect upon the money supply.

Shrewdly anticipating the bill’s ultimate passage, Linderman directed Morgan and William Barber in October of 1877 to prepare dies for a dollar coinage. Linderman chose one of Morgan’s half dollar designs for him to expand upon, and let Barber as Chief Engraver choose whichever design he wished to submit.

Barber actually created a new Liberty head for the second round of the competition, which contemporary numismatists (perhaps influenced by the Barber faction in Philadelphia) are said to have preferred over Morgan’s design, but with his patron running the Mint it was hard for Morgan to lose. After a few changes suggested by Linderman were made, the first Proofs of Morgan’s new dollar were struck on March 12, less than two weeks after the coin was authorized. The first coin struck was presented to President Hayes, despite the fact that he had vetoed the bill authorizing it.

Unfortunately, the new dollar dies were less than adequate. According to legend some ornithologist complained that the eagle shown on the reverse had eight tail feathers, whereas the eagle in nature always has an odd number of tail feathers. Also, the coins did not strike very well.

New hubs in what was hoped would be a better relief were made showing seven tail feathers, and several unused obverse and reverse dies were re-impressed with the new hubs and used. Although the eight tail feather reverse dies were ground down somewhat before being rehubbed, most (but not all) show remnants of anywhere from one to seven of the original tail feathers under the seven new ones. Common usage is to call these “7/8TF” dollars, although some purists insist that the “8″ part of that description is incorrect. As that was what was on the original design, it is what I personally choose to use.

However, the new hubs were in too low a relief, and a third set of hubs was made in late 1878. The most obvious difference is in the angle of the top feathering (or fletching) of the arrows in the eagle’s claw, and in the boldness of the eagle’s chest which was rather flat on the first two versions. Some of the leftover low relief 7TF reverses were used at the San Francisco Mint in 1879, and at the Carson City Mint in 1880, after which only high relief reverses were used through the suspension of coinage in 1904.

Linderman left the Mint due to failing health in late 1878, and Morgan was demoted to Assistant Engraver under the Barbers. Charles Barber assumed the position of Chief Engraver in 1879, and went on to design the Liberty Head five cents piece of 1883 and the Liberty Head or “Barber” Dime, Quarter and Half Dollar of 1892. Both engravers produced many Mint medals during their careers, and were influential in either the design or the engraving of several early commemoratives.

Barber died in 1917 in his 77th year, having seen his five cents piece replaced by James Earle Fraser’s Indian Head coin in 1913 and his silver designs replaced by Adolph A. Weinman Dime and Half Dollar designs and Herman MacNeil’s Quarter design in 1916. Only then was Morgan able to assume the position of Chief Engraver, in his 72nd year.

Because the U.S. Treasury had melted some 270 million silver dollars, presumably mostly of the Morgan design, in 1918 to loan the silver to Great Britain, the same quantity of dollars was to be recoined starting in 1921. Once a sufficient quantity of these was prepared, they were used to back the Series 1923 Silver Certificates.

Production of the Morgan design had ceased in 1904 due to the expiration of the authorizing acts and the huge stockpile of the coins on hand, and all of the dies and hubs had been destroyed by 1921. Morgan consequently set about recreating his 1878 design, but the relief of the coins was very disappointing. After some 86 million pieces of the Morgan design had been coined in 1921, production was halted to make the 1921 Peace dollar as a circulating commemorative marking the end of the First World War. This proved to be so popular that the design was adopted as the regular issue in 1922, though in a lower relief than the 1921 commemoratives.

Morgan died on January 4, 1925, and with him passed away a colorful era of old-fashioned engravers appointed by old-fashioned politicians. Though his replacements may use modern production techniques to produce coins that in some ways might be technologically superior to his prototype 1878 dollars, and certainly his 1921 dollar coins, the modern portrait series of coins leaves much to be desired. It is unfortunate that the U.S. Mint no longer has the position of Chief Engraver on its staff, or else we might see some new coins that are half as good as the pattern half dollars of the 1870s.

Republished with Permission by Harlan J Berk