Coinage Act of 1792

Coinage Act of 1792
Great Seal of the United States
Long titleAn Act establishing a Mint, and regulating the Coins of the United States.
Enacted bythe 2nd United States Congress
Citations
Statutes at LargeStat. 246
Legislative history

The Coinage Act of 1792 (also known as the Mint Act; officially: An act establishing a mint, and regulating the Coins of the United States), passed by the United States Congress on April 2, 1792, created the United States dollar as the country's standard unit of money, established the United States Mint, and regulated the coinage of the United States.[1] This act established the silver dollar as the unit of money in the United States, declared it to be lawful tender, and created a decimal system for U.S. currency.[2]

By the Act, the Mint was to be situated at the seat of government of the United States. The five original officers of the U.S. Mint were a Director, an Assayer, a Chief Coiner, an Engraver, and a Treasurer (not the same as the Secretary of the Treasury). The Act allowed that one person could perform the functions of Chief Coiner and Engraver. The Assayer, Chief Coiner and Treasurer were required to post a $10,000 bond with the Secretary of the Treasury.

The Act pegged the newly created United States dollar to the value of the widely used Spanish silver dollar, saying it was to have "the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current".[3]

  1. ^ Nussbaum, Arthur (November 1937). "The Law of the Dollar". Columbia Law Review. 37 (7): 1059. doi:10.2307/1116782. JSTOR 1116782.
  2. ^ "Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia: Money in Colonial Times". Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Archived from the original on November 21, 2011. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  3. ^ "Section 9 of the Coinage Act of 1792". Memory.loc.gov. Retrieved August 24, 2010.

© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search