"That's great news, Detective McLane!"
Posted on 08/21/2010 7:17:45 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Today, the U.S. Treasury released a $1 coin commemorating former President James Buchanan. And people aren't happy about it.
To understand why, some background is helpful. In 2007, thanks to a bill promoted by then-Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire, the Treasury began minting $1 coins with the likenesses of former Presidents, starting with George Washington.
The coins -- which have been appearing ever since, featuring a new President every three months -- are meant to improve use and circulation of America's dollar coins, which are often seen as an awkward misfit among currency, neither fish nor fowl.
Sununu's initiative drew inspiration from the 50 State Quarters Program, which launched in 1999. The runaway success of that effort, according to his legislation, "shows that a design on a U.S. circulating coin that is regularly changed... radically increases demand for the coin, rapidly pulling it through the economy."
The bill also suggested that a program wherein Presidents are featured on a succession of $1 coins, and First Spouses commemorated on gold $10 coins, could help correct a state of affairs where "many people cannot name all of the Presidents, and fewer can name the spouses, nor can many people accurately place each President in the proper time period of American history."
So the bill passed, and the Washington dollar coin appeared not long after. It was followed by Adams, Jefferson, et al., with the First Spouse coins minted alongside.
Now we're up to Buchanan, the fifteenth President, who took office in 1857 and turned things over to Abraham Lincoln in 1861, and whose coin (produced at the Philadelphia and Denver Mints and purchasable through the U.S. Mint website) has occasioned the aforementioned grousing. Here's where some feel the coin program is falling short:
1. The coins aren't circulating.
Many Americans have never gotten into the habit of using $1 coins, and as a result, over a billion commemorative Presidential coins are sitting around in a stockpile at the Federal Reserve. As BBC News reports, if these coins were stacked up and laid on their side, they'd stretch for 1,367 miles, or the distance from Chicago to New Mexico.
2. They don't seem to be educating people, either.
In February 2008, a year after the first presidential coins were minted, The New York Times reported that a survey had found large numbers of American teens to be woefully ignorant of their country's history. It was far from the first time Americans had gotten a dismal grade in history, suggesting that Sununu's commemorative-coin campaign isn't having much of an effect in that arena, either.
3. James Buchanan was kind of a crappy president.
In fairness, this is a grievance with a specific president, not the presidential coins program as a whole. Still, it seems to come up in all the coverage of the new coin: Buchanan wasn't very good at his job.
That's the consensus of historians, anyway, who have traditionally censured Buchanan for his failure to prevent the Civil War. Last year, a C-SPAN survey of historians granted Buchanan the dubious distinction of worst president ever.
Still, all of this isn't reason enough to declare the commemorative-coins program a total failure. If more coin collectors start avidly pursuing the presidential coins, it could have the effect of pushing down the national debt, thanks to the way the value of the coins fluctuates with their availability. And if the dollar coins were to catch on and replace paper $1 bills entirely, it could save the country between $500 and $700 million each year in printing costs.
Plus, if things stay on track, 2012 will see the release of the Chester A. Arthur dollar coin -- marking the first time that long non-commemorated president's face has ever appeared on any nation's currency. And who are we to deprive him of that?
You're a complete idiot if you believe that. Are you saying that RE Lee had very little in common with his father? Are you that blinded by your hatred of the South?
I can answer that for you: Yes.
No Carter, no Reagan.
So will Grover Cleveland appear twice?
I wonder who Obama will make possible. I'm afraid I see no Reagans on the horizon.
You make the common mistake of confusing the Confederacy with everything Southern. Not everything about the South is Confederate-only the bad things.
I ony use the term "mudsill" in reference to the way the plantation types usually thought of them. Three of those mudsills were my ancestors. Two of them didn't even desert to the Yankees. I'm a real life honest Son of a Confederate Veteran. I've even got an ancestor whose name is on the SCV monument of honor in Walker County, Georgia. HAHA. I'm going to start my own camp-the William T. Sherman Camp of the SCV.
I think you underestimate those pockets you mention and totally omit one huge "pocket" in East Tennessee.
You should read a book entitled “Bitterly Divided” by David Williams. It will make a true son of Dixie’s blood boil.
It all depends on whether you are bothered by poor Southern soldiers and civilians being treated badly by the Confederate elite.
Speaking of "pockets": From what I can tell from history, all of Ohio was copperhead-ville.
A lot of it was. Even more of a reason why the Civil War should not be thought of as a simple North versus South affair. There's many great things about the South but the political Confederacy was not one of them.
"That's great news, Detective McLane!"
Where and when did this bad treatment happen, and how often?
Was a reason given for the "bad treatment" or did they choose at random poor southern soldiers and civilians to abuse?
The book I mentioned has the answers to your questions.
Perhaps they needed some extra slaves to beat for their weekend pleasure. /s
Nothing like that was mentioned in the book.
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