In God
We Trust
How a wartime emergency remade American money — and left four words behind.
James P. Rice Jr. · 9 chapters · 19,878 words
BOOKS
Contents
- The Defection of the BranchesPDF · EPUBThe war reached the Mint before the armies reached each other — as three columns of figures that stop, one by one, in the winter and spring of 1861.
- The Flood of GoldPDF · EPUBEurope's coin crossed the ocean, the South's mints went silent, and one office in New York weighed more gold in nine months than it had ever seen in a year.
- A Famine of Small ChangePDF · EPUBSilver went to a premium five weeks after Sumter; within three years the United States was rationing the penny.
- God Our TrustPDF · EPUBA Secretary asked for the fewest and tersest words possible; an engraver counted letters. The national motto was typeset before it was argued about.
- Our Own MetalsPDF · EPUBThe smallest coin in America ran on metal from Birmingham and Bremen, paid for in gold — until ten days of supply forced a new coinage.
- Keeping It RunningPDF · EPUBRosters, wages, undeliverable mails, and a militia question nobody answered: the institution as a workplace inside a war.
- Two Thousand Stewed OystersPDF · EPUBFive days after the Confederacy organized, the Mint sat down to prove its coinage honest — and kept the receipts.
- The Missing LetterPDF · EPUBThe letters that began the motto survive in an official reprint; the twenty days of mail that should hold the originals are a clean hole in the file.
- What the War LeftPDF · EPUBThe emergency receded; the map, the money, and four words did not.
- About the EvidencePDF · EPUB
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Edition record
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