6/1/2023 0 Comments Chequebook 18th centuryMoney accounts in the colonies were almost always kept in pounds, shillings, and pence: twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings (240 pence) to a pound. The first dollar coins were issued by the United States in 1794, modeled on the Spanish dollar. However, by the time he had the plan in place in August 1783, the end of the war, the scarcity of silver bullion, and the need to economize on congressional expenses combined to scuttle the project. Shortly after the Articles of Confederation took effect on 1 March 1781, Robert Morris, the superintendent of finance, began to make plans to establish a mint, an authority given to Congress by Article 9. The only coins minted during the war were the Continental dollars of 1776 (six thousand in pewter, many fewer in brass and silver) and a handful of Massachusetts and New Hampshire patterns the new nation relied almost entirely on various forms of paper money as its circulating currency until 1780, when specie became more plentiful. It has been estimated that the money supply in 1775 amounted to over twelve million dollars, about four million in paper currency and the rest, perhaps as much as ten million dollars, in specie.Īfter 1775 the high demand for all metals and the flood of new paper currency combined to drive specie out of circulation. Britain monitored the paper bills of credit issued thereafter by the colonies, most closely in New England, an effort that generally kept the depreciation of the currency under reasonable control. Paper money was produced in the colonies for the first time in 1690, when Massachusetts printed twenty-shilling bills of credit to pay for the expedition against Canada. Spanish coins, most of them minted in the New World, eventually predominated, especially the Spanish milled dollar or piece of eight, a silver coin about the size of a modern silver dollar. The value of these coins was based on intrinsic value, fineness, and weight, the latter being affected by wear and sometimes by clipping or other forms of mutilation. In the absence of locally minted coins, many different coins minted by the imperial powers circulated in the British colonies. Britain also discouraged colonial efforts to coin money, like the crude silver pieces minted in Massachusetts between 16, the best-known of which was the Pine Tree shilling, about the size of a modern quarter. Efforts to create a circulating currency were closely regulated by Britain, so the colonists were compelled to use readily available commodities like tobacco as substitutes and to maintain complicated accounts of book debts. The colonies mined no precious metals and, because the cost of imports always exceeded the value of exports, most of the specie that flowed into the colonies flowed back out to Britain to pay for imported goods. A chronic shortage of specie existed in the British colonies before 1775.
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