This is not the first attempt to use currency to forge a national identity by commemorating a shared heritage. An earlier experiment 125 years ago attempted to do the same. But—spoiler alert—it failed in every sense.

The United States introduced silver certificates in 1878, at a time when the meaning of money was up for grabs. In the late 1890s, the nation was in the early process of transforming from a rural agrarian society into an industrialized, urbanized empire teeming with immigrants. But growing pains brought an identity crisis; new peoples, cultures, technologies, and work habits challenged the status quo, exposing political, social, and class conflicts that came to a head in the 1896 presidential election.

The free silver movement—to allow for unfettered silver coinage alongside the gold standard—reflected these divides. Proponents, many of whom were western farmers and miners, believed free silver would expand the money supply for the poor. But gold supporters—often situated in eastern metropolises—saw free silver as an attack on the country’s financial lifeblood, their own fortunes, and their class standing as sophisticated, urbane elites. The Secretary of the Treasury at the time, John G. Carlisle, supported gold, but recognized silver as “poor man’s money” and, with enthusiastic support from the Chief of the Bureau of Engraving, Claude M. Johnson, authorized a prestigious, artistic, “educational” series of silver certificatees as a form of celebratory nationalism.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing commissioned publicly acclaimed muralists William H. Low, Edwin Blashfield, and Walter Shirlaw, who had decorated government buildings and represented American art in international expos, to design the denominations. “It certainly would, from an artistic standpoint, be commencing at the very root to put a work of art in the hands of every man who buys a loaf of bread,” Low commented in 1893.

Low glorified a collective American past by portraying the Constitution as a civics lesson for the nation’s children. In his $1 certificate, entitled “History Instructing Youth,” Low depicted the Washington, D.C., skyline behind “History,” personified as a goddess, who is pointing at the Constitution to enlighten a boy. The reverse features George and Martha Washington. It’s a reflection of the time’s child savers movement—whereby white, middle-class philanthropists assimilated immigrant and lower-class children into productive workers and good citizens.

Obverse of 1896 $1 silver certificate: “History Instructing Youth.” Design by William Low, with Thomas Morris, engraved by George Smillie and Charles Schlecht, black ink on paper. Courtesy of Glenn Hollenbeck.

The theme of youth and citizenship reflected the free silver position. Coin’s Financial School, a popular booklet starring a young financier named Coin, differentiated democratic silver from aristocratic gold: “One was the money of the people—the other, of the rich.” In its pages, gold bugs like banker Lyman Gage, who detested silver and would succeed Carlisle as Secretary of the Treasury, were won over by Coin’s persuasive messaging and by the youth who delivered it.

While the $1 certificate glorified the past, the $2 and $5 certificates highlighted technological and national progress. Edwin Blashfield’s “Science Presenting Steam and Electricity to Commerce and Manufacture” was a paean to industrialization. “Steam” and “Electricity” are children who join the adults, “Commerce” and “Manufacture.” Their proud fathers, inventors Robert Fulton (the steamboat) and Samuel Morse (the telegraph), preside from the reverse. The $5 certificate, Walter Shirlaw’s “America,” celebrated Americanism’s triumphs abroad. The figure of “America” wields Thomas Edison’s lightbulb to (en)lighten the world, and on the reverse, generals Ulysses Grant and Philip Sheridan watch the emergence of empire.

One newspaper gushed over the “educational value [in] that every man or child who possesses even a dollar will be attracted by the new design and will seek to learn their meanings.” Presumably, the bearers—ignorant immigrants and cynical citizens—would congeal into a cohesive American identity. But these certificates did the opposite.

First came a moral outcry against the art itself. Coin collector Gene Hessler asserts that anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock “demanded the recall of these dirty dollars because of the lewd unclothed females.” The Bureau, in response, proactively modified the designs in accordance with good taste. For the $5 note, engravers extended the togas’ flowing drapery over America’s cleavage and the other bared bodies for the 1897 re-issue. Bureau chief engraver Thomas Morris also fretted over the prep work for the $10 note, bearing Shirlaw’s “Agriculture and Forestry”: “I fear the result of the criticism that will be made upon the figure of a man and woman almost nude in the centre.” Morris ultimately needed not worry; the $10 certificate never saw print.

The “dirty dollars” rhetoric also extended to skin color and the contemporary nativist fears over an exploding immigrant population. Gold bugs argued that silver watered down gold and the U.S. money supply, which extended to immigrants supposedly polluting American citizenship. As historian Michael O’Malley observes, gold bugs saw free silver as a plot sponsored by immigrants and silver miners in India, China, and Mexico to take over the economy. Free silver paralleled the nativist fears that foreign silver—and foreign labor—cheapened native-born Americans, devaluing their work and money. While Carlisle’s theme of education indirectly addressed these fears by using nation-building as the certificates’ main theme, many gold bugs continued to openly associate free silver with foreigners, anarchists, and agitators they viewed as inimical to national values and their livelihood.

For gold bugs, the “outside” threat also came from out West. Eastern moneymen, especially, deemed free silver as a sign of backwardness from the proverbial “sticks.” One naysayer singled out the Coin’s Financial School booklet for having a 12-year-old dare to instruct his elders in finance: “The immaturity of the instructor shines in all he says.” The critic sneered that those “who know something of the subject are amazed at the reports that it [the booklet] has had great influence in the West in rousing silver sentiment.” These uneducated westerners “must be easily misled,” while urban (presumably eastern) sophisticates knew better.

When William McKinley took the Oval Office in the 1896 election, the free silver movement sputtered. The new secretary of the Treasury, Lyman J. Gage, acknowledged silver’s popularity, but therein lay madness: “Silver certificates, which form nearly one-fifth of the circulating medium of the United States, are dangerous. By their use a volume of inferior money has found an abnormal use.” In his 1937 memoir, Gage recalled how he publicly and “uncompromisingly advocated gold as our continued standard of payment.”

Gage believed the certificates specifically spurred counterfeiting. The New York Times openly pitied the bankers: “the whole series of silver certificates has proved unsuccessful from the point of view of those who handle money.” The detailed line-work dirtied, inviting counterfeiters to pass off poor replicas. One bank cashier complained to the New York Times: “The new certificates are an absolute nuisance when they get soiled from use,” leading to “constant and bothersome eye strain when one has to count the worn ones by the thousands daily.” The newspaper noted how Bureau engravers then revised the redesigns, stripping “History Instructing Youth” of shading and detail, thereby “exposing a great deal of white paper now covered by clouds and fancy work,” with the “one” numerals “converted into an unmistakable ‘one’ that could not [be] taken for a ‘five,’ and the expectations of counters of money were to be met as far as possible.”

That redesign never saw the light of day. “When everything was about ready for this new edition of the artist series of silver certificates,” the New York Times later reported, Gage preferred “to return to the old style of notes.” Affirming the status quo, the 1899 silver certificates boasted centered portraits, blank backgrounds, and large numbers. One observer approved “the simplest in design of any ever issued by the Government.” The nation has been following the same model ever since.

Modern anti-counterfeiting technology has made money safe, but the Tubman Twenty’s legitimacy rests in the fickle court of public opinion. The $20 bill will not dissolve tribalism. Cries of political correctness on the right and criticism from the left who reject the note as another commoditization of Black bodies create a chasm no single bill can bridge.

Nevertheless, what the new $20 bill can do is place the Black experience on par with past national leadership. This moment will require structural reforms in civil rights, political equality, and economic opportunities to fulfill the note’s potential. But as a symbol of democratic ideals that the dollar projects, the Tubman Twenty just might be worth its weight in gold.

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This is the story of a forgotten episode in U.S. history, the story of the great debt default of 1933–1935, of the time when the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court agreed to wipe out more than 40 percent of public and private debts.

There are many ways of telling this story. But possibly, the best starting point is April 5, 1933, when President Roosevelt, who had been in office for exactly one month, issued an Executive Order requiring people and businesses to sell, within three weeks, all their gold holdings to the government at the official price of $20.67 per ounce. The Order was published in every newspaper and transmitted over thousands of radio stations. Large signs were placed in post offices around the country. The posters were printed in large block letters and informed the public that everyone had “to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates now owned by them to a Federal Reserve Bank, branch or agency.”

Those who didn’t comply with the Executive Order faced “criminal penalties . . . [a] $10,000 fine or ten years of imprisonment, or both.”

The public was shocked. Throughout the history of the nation, gold had been used as a store of value, and many families owned gold coins as part of their savings. Gold was given as wedding presents and at bar mitzvahs, and newborns often received a gift of one or two coins from their godparents. The fact that all metal had to be turned in to a relatively new institution—the Federal Reserve had been created less than twenty years earlier—made things even worse.

As the May 1 deadline approached, radio announcers reminded families of what they had to do. People could still not believe what was happening. It was true that during the previous months there had been an extraordinarily high demand for the metal and that hoarding had increased sharply, but that was exactly how the system was supposed to work: from time immemorial people resorted to gold when they faced economic uncertainty, including fears of banks’ collapses.

[The default process had begun in] the early hours of March 6, when he had been barely one day in office, [and] President Roosevelt declared a national banking holiday. Its purpose was to stop massive withdrawals of currency and gold, and to put in place an emergency plan to strengthen the nation’s financial system. A week later, on March 13, banks began to reopen their doors, and people redeposited their cash and gold in massive amounts.

So, if things were improving, why was the government forcing the public to part with their gold? Coercing people to sell their hard-earned metal was not an American thing to do. This had never happened before, not even during the Civil War, when the gold standard was suspended and the Treasury issued “greenbacks.”

The weeks that followed changed America forever. Between March and June, 1933, Congress passed legislation that would fundamentally alter the way the economy functioned, and set the basis for the welfare state. Some of this legislation was later challenged in the courts system, and some was eventually declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. There is little doubt, however, that these feverish weeks of continuous debate and lawmaking planted the seeds of a new America, a country where the federal government would take an active role in economic and social affairs, a nation that would create an intricate safety net for the poor, the unemployed, and the disadvantaged.

While the foundations of the American economy were being profoundly changed by one act of Congress after another, the gold saga initiated with the April 5 Executive Order continued to unfold. On April 19, during the thirteenth press conference of his young presidency, President Roosevelt stated unequivocally that the country was now off the gold standard. He explained that the fundamental goal of abandoning the monetary system that had prevailed since Independence was to help the agricultural sector, which had been struggling for over a decade. He declared: “The whole problem before us is to raise commodity prices.”

The next step in this drama came on May 12 when Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). Title III of this legislation included the “Thomas Amendment,” which authorized the president to increase the official price of gold to up to $41.34 an ounce. A devaluation of the dollar, many thought, would rapidly result in “controlled inflation” and would help farmers by raising commodity prices and by lightening their debts when expressed in relation to their incomes. A number of experts noted that Great Britain had devalued the pound in September 1931, and had slowly begun to recover.

Things, however, were not as easy as they seemed. In the United States, most debt contracts—both private and public—included a “gold clause,” stating that the debtor committed himself to paying back in “gold coin.”

These clauses were introduced into contracts during the Civil War, a time when two currencies circulated side by side—a currency backed by bullion and one unbacked, the so-called greenbacks issued by the Union’s Treasury. Debts that included the gold clause were considered to be more secure, since the amount to be received in payment at some future date was anchored to the price of gold and, thus, not affected by possible changes in the purchasing power of paper money. After the end of the Civil War there had been no need to invoke them, but with time gold clauses came to be considered a “normal” component of debt contracts; it became customary to include them in corporate and utilities bonds, and in many mortgage contracts. In 1933, however, it became evident that these clauses were a problem. If the currency was devalued with respect to gold, the dollar value of debts subject to the clauses would automatically increase by the amount of the devaluation. This would result in massive bankruptcies and in a huge increase in the public debt. For all practical purposes, then, when FDR was inaugurated as president the “gold clauses” stood in the way of a devaluation of the dollar.

Three months after Roosevelt had become president, on June 5, Congress passed Joint Resolution No. 10, annulling all gold clauses from future and past contracts. This opened the door for a possible devaluation. Republicans were dismayed and argued that the nation’s reputation was at risk. The government, on the other hand, claimed that the Joint Resolution didn’t imply “a repudiation of contracts.” The secretary of the treasury stated that since gold payments had been suspended in April, all Congress had done was clarify that “the holder of an obligation can- not specify in what type of currency [gold or paper money] the contract is payable.”

On January 31, 1934, the other shoe dropped when President Roosevelt officially devalued the dollar by fixing the new price of gold at $35 an ounce, an increase of 69 percent relative to its century-old price of $20.67 an ounce. Conservatives deplored the decision, and argued that it would inevitably lead to a steep decline in America’s power. Others, including the farm lobby, were disappointed by what they considered an insufficient adjustment in the value of the dollar. In explaining the decision, FDR said that the devaluation was necessary, since the nation had been “adversely affected by virtue of the depreciation in the value of currencies to other Governments in relation to the present standard of value.” Many considered this to be a direct reference to the devaluation of Sterling.

Not surprisingly, those who had purchased securities protected by the gold clause claimed that the Joint Resolution of June 1933 was unconstitutional. Various lawsuits made their way through the courts system. Four of them got to the Supreme Court, and were heard between January 8 and January 10, 1935. Two had to do with private debts, and two with public obligations. The most salient case involved a government bond in the series of the Fourth Liberty Loan issued on October 15, 1918. The obligation for this “4¼ % Gold Bond” expressly stipulated that “the principal and interest hereof are payable in United States gold coin of the present standard of value” (Perry v. United States). The question before the Court was whether Congress had the constitutional power to alter contracts retroactively. Could Congress annul private and public debt promises and, in the process, affect the wealth of debtors and creditors?

On February 18, 1935, the Supreme Court announced its decision. In all cases the Court voted 5 to 4 in favor of the government position. The majority’s opinions were written by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, a distinguished jurist who had been governor of New York, secretary of state, and presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 1916.

There was a single dissent signed by the four conservative members of the Court, known as the “Four Horsemen.” When the time came to deliver the minority opinion, Justice James Clark McReynolds, a southern lawyer who favored bow ties and had served as attorney general during Woodrow Wilson’s first administration, decided to depart from protocol: instead of reading the prepared text he gave a short speech. He opened his remarks in a low tone. Slowly, he raised his voice and his southern tones quivered with anger. A minute into the speech he paused; it was a classical pregnant silence. He then said: “The Constitution as many of us understood it, the instrument that has meant so much to us, is gone.” He then talked about the sanctity of contracts, government obligations, and repudiation under the guise of law. It was clear, he stated, that Congress had the power “to adopt a monetary system. But because Congress may adopt a system, it doesn’t follow that this may be enforced in violation of existing contracts.” He ended his speech with strong words: “Shame and humiliation are upon us now. Moral and financial chaos may be confidently expected.”

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