20 November 2020
One of the earliest productions of the U.S.Mint, the “Chain Cent” would set you back several pretty pennies if you wanted to score one for yourself. It enjoyed a relatively brief tenure among US coinage, less than a year, particularly as compared to our present Lincoln Cent’s century of endurance.
Legend has it that many objected to the chain because it evokes chattel slavery. That’s a plausible argument, but I doubt it was the prime cause. While slavery was thought to be immoral and repugnant by many in the Eighteenth Century, such folk were in fact a minority, and often considered to be unfit for polite society. Slavery was still the living heritage of history, sanctioned by faith and tradition and the natural human desire to not want to be seen as rocking the boat.
Another obvious evocation of chains is political bondage, and many found that antithetical to still recent revolutionary and secessionist sentiments. Whatever the whole truth may be, now obscured by centuries, the design never saw another year.
And that was fitting.
The chain, intended to represent “indivisibility,” was never supported by the literal confederate language of the Constitution, and is, in fact, undermined by the Tenth Amendment (and by ratification language from various State legislatures). It certainly is a cool specimen, but as a matter of policy for the official mint of what Mr Lincoln USED TO call The Grand Confederacy, the chain had to go.