The Liberty Head double eagle or Coronet double eagle is an American twenty-dollar gold piece struck as a pattern coin in 1849, and for commerce from 1850 to 1907. It was designed by Mint of the United States Chief Engraver James B. Longacre.
The largest denomination of United States coin authorized by the Mint Act of 1792 was the eagle, or ten-dollar piece. The large amount of bullion being brought east after the discovery of gold in California in the 1840s caused Congress to consider new denominations of gold coinage. The gold dollar and double eagle were the result. After considerable infighting at the Philadelphia Mint, Chief Engraver James B. Longacre designed the double eagle, and it began to be issued for commerce in 1850. Only one 1849 double eagle is known to survive and it rests in the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian.
The coin was immediately successful; merchants and banks used it in trade. It was struck until replaced by the Saint-Gaudens double eagle in 1907, and many were melted when President Franklin D. Roosevelt recalled gold coins from the public in 1933. Millions of double eagles were sent overseas in international transactions throughout its run to be melted or placed in bank vaults. Many of the latter have now been repatriated to feed the demand from collectors and those who desire to hold gold.
Inception Under the Mint Act of 1792, the largest-denomination coin was the gold eagle, or ten-dollar piece. Also struck were a half eagle ($5) and quarter eagle ($2.50). Bullion flowed out of the United States for economic reasons for much of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The eagle's size made it convenient for use in international transactions, and, faced with the likelihood that most being struck were exported, the Director of the Mint Elias Boudinot ended its production in 1804. In 1838, coinage resumed after Congress revised the weight and fineness of American gold coins. The new eagle was struck to a design by Christian Gobrecht, who was one of the Mint's engravers.
In 1836, the Public Ledger, a Philadelphia newspaper, proposed the issuance of both a gold dollar and a twenty-dollar piece; they wrote of the latter, "Twenty [silver dollars] are an encumbrance in a pocket ... if we are to have larger coins, let them be of gold. Along with the eagle, which has the size of the half dollar, we would recommend the double eagle, which [would be] of the size of our silver dollar, [and] would contain the value of twenty." Others perceived a need for a large U.S. gold coin to be used in international transactions—American merchants sometimes used high-denomination Latin American gold coins for that purpose.
No proposal for a gold twenty-dollar piece was considered until after the California Gold Rush, beginning in 1848, greatly increased the amount of the metal available in the United States. The increase in the supply of gold caused silver coins to be worth more than their face value, and they were heavily exported, generating new support for a gold dollar to take their place in commerce. The quantity of gold made a larger denomination desirable as well, to more efficiently convert gold to coins. In January 1849, North Carolina Congressman James Iver McKay amended his previously introduced legislation for a gold dollar to provide for a double eagle as well. He wrote to Mint Director Robert M. Patterson, who responded, "there can be no other objection to the Double eagle except that it is not needed. It will be a handsome coin, between the half dollar and dollar in size."
Concerned about likely Whig opposition to the coinage bill, McKay got his fellow Democrat, New Hampshire Senator Charles Atherton, to introduce the bill in the Senate on February 1, 1849—Atherton was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. McKay introduced a version of the bill into the House on February 20; debate began the same day. The dollar was attacked on the ground it would be too small; the double eagle on the claim that it would be heavily abraded in circulation, and would become lightweight. McKay did not respond substantively, but stated that if no one wanted these denominations, they would be unasked-for at the Mint, and would not be coined. Pennsylvania Representative Joseph Ingersoll, a Whig, spoke against the bill, noting that Patterson opposed the new denominations. Ingersoll stated that a twenty-dollar piece would be "doubled into a ponderous and unparalleled size". Nevertheless, the bill providing for the issuance of the gold dollar and double eagle passed both houses by large margins, and was signed into law by President James K. Polk on March 3, 1849. According to numismatist David Lange, "the double eagle was a banker's coin intended to simplify transfers of large sums between financial institutions and between nations".
Preparation The act authorizing the gold dollar and double eagle precipitated conflict at the Philadelphia Mint. There the officers, including Chief Coiner Franklin Peale, were mostly the friends and relations of Director Patterson. The outsider in their midst was Chief Engraver James B. Longacre, successor to Gobrecht (who had died in 1844). A former copper-plate engraver, Longacre had been appointed through the political influence of South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun. Patterson despised Calhoun, and Longacre became a loner at the mint. Most of Peale's formal duties were performed by his predecessor, Adam Eckfeldt, who continued to do the work of chief coiner despite his retirement. Peale spent the resulting free time running a private medal business taking commissions from the public and using the government's facilities, including its Contamin portrait lathe. This machine, used in Peale's medal work, was needed to reduce models of new designs to coin-sized reductions from which working dies could be made. So long as no new coin designs were needed, dies could be reproduced mechanically, without using the Contamin device. Although it belonged to his department, Longacre did not use the Contamin lathe much until Congress ordered that the two new coins be struck.
When Longacre began work on the two new coins in early 1849, he had no assistants. He completed work on the gold dollar first, anxious to show that he could create a coin design. In May, he requested that Patterson hire another engraver to assist him. The director declined, willing only to have engraving work contracted out. This was unsatisfactory to Longacre, who was responsible under the law for the proper execution of coinage dies, and who could not supervise outside work.
As Longacre worked on the double eagle design, according to numismatist Walter Breen, "Peale, with Patterson's tacit approval, began harassment." Longacre prepared a large model of the new coin in wax and was instructed to give it to Peale for use in preparing a metal galvano, which could be used in the lathe. The operation failed, and Longacre's model was destroyed. Longacre had, however, made a cast of his model in plaster, and was able to use it in the machine. The resulting steel die had to be hardened in Peale's department; as Longacre put it, "it unluckily split in the process". According to numismatic historian Don Taxay, "Peale's adoption of a process not normally used at the Mint, together with its catastrophic failures, seems more than coincidental".
Longacre set forth on a third attempt to create a die. He was hampered not only by the continued opposition of Peale but by poor lighting and the noxious fumes that penetrated his office at the Philadelphia Mint. A friend, New York engraver Charles Cushing Wright, arranged for Peter F. Cross to assist Longacre with making hubs and dies. Cross made the first obverse die in November and December 1849 at Longacre's direction, and the chief engraver made the reverse. On December 22, 1849, Patterson wrote to Treasury Secretary William M. Meredith that the dies were completed. He enclosed a double eagle, asking Meredith, if he approved of the piece, to send word as quickly as possible to allow the coinage of 1849 double eagles in quantity. Before any reply could be received, Peale objected on December 24, complaining that the relief of the head of Liberty was so high that pieces struck using the Philadelphia Mint's steam-powered machinery could not fully bring out the design—the coin sent to Meredith had been coined on a medal press, by hand. In addition, Peale alleged that the head was in such high relief that the coins would not stack. Patterson sent Peale's letter to Meredith on December 25, noting that this meant there would be a lengthy delay.
Longacre completed the lower-relief dies about January 12, 1850. Peale did not test them for two weeks; when he did, he rejected them, stating that Liberty's head opposed the eagle on the reverse, making it difficult for the full design to be brought forth. He stated that Longacre would have to move the position of the head. Longacre, outraged, appealed to Director Patterson, who took no action, but early the next month came to see Longacre in his office. He told the engraver that the Taylor administration (which had taken office in March 1849) had decided on Longacre's removal, and urged him to send in his resignation as quickly as possible. Longacre did not resign but went to Washington to see Secretary Meredith. He found that Patterson had lied to Meredith about a number of matters. For example, when Longacre took a new double eagle from his pocket, Meredith expressed surprise, believing that the dies from which it had been made had been broken. Longacre kept his job.
According to numismatic author Q. David Bowers, Longacre's last set of dies were completed in February 1850, and were accepted. Breen, however, stated that the first production coins appeared about January 26, 1850. Only one 1849 double eagle is known to be extant; it forms part of the Smithsonian Institution's National Numismatic Collection. The specimen sent to Meredith is unlocated, and is said to have been owned in the 1950s by coin dealer William K. Nagy, whose former business partner John W. Haseltine supposedly acquired it from the Meredith estate. Nagy allegedly stated that he had sold the coin to a private collector. One 1849 piece, in gilt brass, was later struck for Philadelphia druggist and numismatist Robert Coulton Davis, who had close ties to the Mint. Its location is also unknown.
Design
The obverse depicts a head of Liberty in the Greco-Roman style, facing left, with her hair pulled back—according to numismatists Jeff Garrett and Ron Guth, "attractively"—in a bun. Some of her hair descends the back of her neck. She wears a coronet, inscribed "Liberty", and is surrounded by thirteen stars, representative of the original states, and the year of issue. The reverse features a heraldic eagle, holding a double ribbon, on which "E Pluribus Unum" is inscribed. The double ribbon is an allusion by Longacre to the denomination of the piece he was designing. The design is a variant on the Great Seal of the United States; the eagle protects a shield, which represents the nation, and holds an olive branch and arrows. Above the bird, Longacre again placed thirteen stars, arranged as a halo, together with an arc of rays.
Longacre's initials, JBL, appear on the truncation of the head. The gold dollar and twenty-dollar piece were the first American federal coins on which the designer's initials appear—on the gold dollar, only the "L" is used. Longacre's designs for the double eagle and the Type I gold dollar (1849–1854) are similar.