1853: The End of Bimetallism in the United States

David A. Martin

The Journal of Economic History, 1973, vol. 33, issue 4, 825-844

Abstract: The circumstances resulting in the Coinage Act of February 21, 1853 support Harry Johnson's thesis that historically fiduciary money has been substituted “for commodity-money in response to the interaction of scarcity of the latter and ingenuity in devising the former.” The Act of 1853 replaced bimetallism in the U.S. with a Composite Legal Tender System composed of a subsidiary small silver coinage adjunct to a de facto gold standard. After 1853 bimetallism remained only as a legal fiction which was finally terminated twenty years later.

Date: 1973
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