The battle in 1896 was between McKinley’s Gold standard and a bimetallic standard (Gold and Silver).
The elites won. The constitutionally equivalent use of both Gold and Silver as money ended, as gold was formally established as the only US standard for redeeming paper money.
In case this sounds like an archaic issue: the last US President to propose that silver should be usable for redeeming paper money was shot dead in Dallas.
And so we fast forward to today. Worldwide: money is now completely divorced from reality, from either real gold or real silver.
The federal reserve note (aka ‘the dollar’) is backed by nothing except full faith and credit. Nations around the world are rejecting it as their reserve currency, and are forming multiple bilateral agreements to avoid using it.
All that ‘money’ will come home. The ESF won’t be able to soak it up: they can’t buy dollars with printed dollars. This means that some time this year or next year - who knows? - we can expect a sharp devaluation of the dollar. I’m thinking of the order of 50%.
The US has never had a bi-metalic currency. Prior to the Rebellion, the country was on a silver standard. Gold was used in trade mostly by the very wealthy and they set the value, not the government in terms of silver/gold. During the war the government adopted a fiat currency which sparked severe inflation (and rampant counterfeiting). This ended in 1873 when the country followed most of the rest of the world and adopted the Gold Standard.
The Free Silver movement claimed they were in favor of bi-metalism but it was a patent lie. They wanted a de-facto silver standard and a 50% devaluation of the currency by forcing creditors to accept silver in payment of gold debt at 16:1 oz. ratio. Essentially they were demanding that creditors accept 50 cents and call it a dollar. They also wanted to abolish gold clauses in contracts and bonds in order to guarantee the success of their debt repudiation scheme.
Bi-metalism is not really feasible because governments can’t regulate the long term value of one metal vs another. Only the free market can do that.