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Political Pocket Change: When Campaigns Get Dirty · Worth Its Weight

0:03
Speaker: In 1896, Americans were preparing to elect a new president.
0:08
Speaker: And somewhere along the way, someone decided that the best way to express their political opinion was to manufacture a tiny coffin.
0:18
Speaker: Not a metaphorical coffin, an actual miniature coffin made of brass with a lid that opened to reveal a little metallic corpse.
0:26
Speaker: The dearly departed was William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic nominee for president.
0:32
Speaker: Except, Bryan wasn't dead.
0:35
Speaker: He was very much alive, traveling across the country, giving speeches, and asking Americans for their votes.
0:41
Speaker: His political opponents, however, had already arranged his funeral.
0:47
Speaker: As the coffin explicitly stated, free silver knocked him out.
0:53
Speaker: It was cruel, it was ridiculous, it was a tad funny.
0:57
Speaker: And it was only one of the ways Americans turned political disagreement into physical objects.
1:03
Speaker: Decades earlier, Andrew Jackson was depicted as a jackass on copper tokens.
1:09
Speaker: His successor, Martin Van Buren, received much the same treatment.
1:13
Speaker: And more than a century after Brian's miniature funeral, Americans are still minting political insults.
1:21
Speaker: But these objects tell us something beyond the fact that political campaigns have always been ugly.
1:27
Speaker: They reveal how Americans used money and objects that looked like money to participate in political life.
1:35
Speaker: Sometimes the insult could be spent, sometimes it became a souvenir, and more frequently than not, it was the money itself that caused the argument.
1:47
Speaker: Today, on election day, we are exploring the long-held American tradition of dirty politics in pocket change.
2:17
Speaker: Today is Election Day in the United States, and before we get into today's story, I have one simple request.
2:26
Speaker: Please vote.
2:28
Speaker: Generations of Americans have fought, sacrificed, and died to defend the freedoms we enjoy, including our ability to participate in our own government.
2:38
Speaker: Throughout our history, Americans have fought again and again to extend the right to vote to those of us who were at first denied it.
2:47
Speaker: In a democracy, we each have a voice, and voting is one of the most important ways we can use it.
2:54
Speaker: It's easy to be frustrated by today's political climate, the personal attacks, name-calling, and endless mudslinging.
3:02
Speaker: I have heard many a reporter over the last few weeks sadly sigh and ask, what happened to American civility?
3:10
Speaker: And I hate to burst their bubble, but I can assure you, political insults are not a 21st-century invention.
3:19
Speaker: For much of our history, almost all of it, actually, candidates accused their opponents of dishonesty, corruption, incompetence, and assorted moral failings.
3:30
Speaker: Newspapers printed caricatures, supporters invented insulting nicknames, political organizations distributed paraphernalia to provoke argument.
3:39
Speaker: Indeed, one of the side effects of free speech is the creative and sometimes downright outrageous ways Americans have insulted the political opposition.
3:49
Speaker: And wonderfully enough, some of them were actually struck in metal.
3:54
Speaker: American politics can be vicious.
3:56
Speaker: But here's a friendly reminder: Americans can openly criticize the people governing them without fear of imprisonment or worse.
4:05
Speaker: That freedom is not universal.
4:07
Speaker: In places where criticism of political leaders is criminalized, an insult like the ones we'll explore today can carry consequences far more serious than argument.
4:18
Speaker: So today, let's celebrate that freedom by taking a look at some of the most infamous political debates through money, metals, and other metallic mementos.
4:28
Speaker: For our first example, we need to travel back nearly two centuries to an election that became deeply personal to more than just the nominees.
4:39
Speaker: In 1828, Andrew Jackson ran for president against the incumbent John Quincy Adams.
4:48
Speaker: Four years earlier, Jackson received more popular votes than any other candidate.
4:53
Speaker: But, as we have seen time and again, it's the Electoral College that matters.
4:58
Speaker: Failing to secure that majority, the election went to the House of Representatives, which selected Adams' son of Adams.
5:06
Speaker: Jackson's supporters cried foul, accusing Adams and Henry Clay of arranging a corrupt bargain.
5:13
Speaker: So, when Jackson returned for another attempt at the presidency in 1828, there was already palpable hostility between the two camps, which provoked a highly personal campaign.
5:28
Speaker: Jackson's opponents questioned his temper, military record, and fitness for office, all of which were fair game.
5:36
Speaker: But they also went after his wife.
5:39
Speaker: Mrs.
5:40
Speaker: Jackson, Rachel, was previously married to a man named Lewis Roberts.
5:45
Speaker: The troubled marriage ended in separation by 1790, and when she and Jackson married in 1791, they believed the divorce had been settled.
5:57
Speaker: Unfortunately, it had not.
6:00
Speaker: Turns out, the legal divorce wasn't actually finished until 1793.
6:05
Speaker: That's an awkward overlap.
6:08
Speaker: Rachel and Andrew married again in 1794, resolving the legal whoopsie daisy.
6:14
Speaker: But decades later, Jackson's opponents resurrected the scandalous story and publicly accused Rachel of bigamy and adultery.
6:23
Speaker: Today, we feel almost entitled to know the ins and outs of our president's bedmates.
6:29
Speaker: But in 1828, such things were hardly discussed.
6:34
Speaker: This was huge.
6:36
Speaker: The accusations were repeated in partisan newspapers and used to further question Jackson's character.
6:43
Speaker: Jackson won the election, but he entered the White House without Rachel, who died in December of that year just before her husband's inauguration.
6:54
Speaker: The embittered Jackson blamed the political attacks for her death, and he carried that resentment into his presidency.
7:02
Speaker: This scandal reveals the heated atmosphere in which Jackson's political career unfolded.
7:10
Speaker: Indeed, that same election introduced another insult that would become one of the most recognizable symbols in American political history.
7:19
Speaker: Jackson, the jackass.
7:22
Speaker: The insult is obvious.
7:24
Speaker: A jackass, as we all know, is stubborn, foolish, and unlikely to listen to reason.
7:30
Speaker: But unlike the bigamy accusations, Jackson managed to turn this insult into a virtue.
7:37
Speaker: He embraced the donkey as a symbol of determination and unwillingness to back down.
7:43
Speaker: For a time, he even incorporated it into his campaign imagery.
7:48
Speaker: And it's an image you might recognize today as the enduring symbol of the Democratic Party.
7:55
Speaker: Undeterred, Jackson's opponents doubled down on the donkey, specifically using its association with stubborn foolishness to criticize what Jackson was doing with America's money.
8:08
Speaker: When Jackson entered the White House in 1829, sadly alone, he brought both resentment and a deep suspicion of concentrated financial power.
8:19
Speaker: Specifically, he detested the second bank of the United States.
8:23
Speaker: Now, despite the name, it wasn't quite a central bank in the modern sense.
8:28
Speaker: It was a federally chartered institution that held government deposits, issued banknotes, and exercised considerable influence over the nation's credit and banking systems.
8:38
Speaker: Supporters argued that the bank was essential to financial stability, but Jackson regarded it as an institution that concentrated too much economic power in the hands of a very privileged few.
8:51
Speaker: And he vowed to destroy it at any cost.
8:55
Speaker: It's a debate as old as, well, America.
8:59
Speaker: In 1832, National Republicans in Congress passed a bill to renew the bank's charter ahead of its 1836 expiration.
9:08
Speaker: Because they believed if Jackson vetoed it, which he certainly did, he would lose his upcoming re-election campaign.
9:18
Speaker: They were wrong.
9:20
Speaker: Jackson's popularity earned him a second term, which he then attributed as public support for his banking opposition.
9:28
Speaker: He wasted no time in dismantling the hated institution.
9:32
Speaker: In 1833, his administration removed federal deposits from the bank, placing them instead in selected state banks with democratic ties, which National Republicans then dubbed pet banks.
9:45
Speaker: But removing federal deposits from the bank had consequences far beyond Washington.
9:51
Speaker: The second bank was essential in the regulation of the nation's credit supply, and it kept state banks in check.
9:59
Speaker: Without its influence, that system became increasingly unstable.
10:04
Speaker: Jackson's decision set off a bitter financial struggle with painful consequences.
10:10
Speaker: Nicholas Biddle, the second bank's president, retaliated.
10:15
Speaker: He restricted credit and demanded repayment of outstanding loans, hoping the economic pressure would force Jackson to reverse course.
10:24
Speaker: But Jackson, oh the stubborn jackass, he did not.
10:29
Speaker: Instead, businesses struggled, borrowers suffered.
10:33
Speaker: The bank war had begun.
10:36
Speaker: Jackson blamed Biddle for deliberately creating the crisis.
10:41
Speaker: Biddle and National Republicans blamed Jackson for provoking it.
10:46
Speaker: And while the two sides argued over who was responsible, ordinary Americans suffered the consequences.
10:53
Speaker: Complicating matters was another monetary problem that had plagued the country since its founding.
11:00
Speaker: There weren't enough coins to go around, especially small change, which sounds absolutely ridiculous to a country that today has produced more than 1.1 trillion pennies.
11:12
Speaker: But in those early years, the US Mint struggled to keep pace with a growing nation.
11:17
Speaker: Its operations depended heavily on private individuals depositing their gold and silver for coinage.
11:24
Speaker: And those private individuals generally requested larger denominations over small change.
11:30
Speaker: Compounding the issue, copper scents were expensive to manufacture and offered very little financial incentive for the mint, which also then struggled to distribute them across an ever-expanding country.
11:43
Speaker: Basically, money begets money, not small change.
11:49
Speaker: Private manufacturers saw an opportunity, and they began producing copper tokens that could serve as substitutes for small change.
11:57
Speaker: And most of these tokens were multitaskers.
12:01
Speaker: Some advertised businesses, while others carried forceful political messages.
12:06
Speaker: And with the president locked in a bitter battle over the nation's money, those little copper tokens were an irresistible canvas for political commentary.
12:16
Speaker: After all, if Jackson was making a jackass of himself over the economy, why not put that jackass on money?
12:23
Speaker: Which, in 1834, someone did.
12:26
Speaker: On one side, Andrew Jackson emerges from an open money chest, dressed in military uniform, a sword in one hand, and a bag of money in the other.
12:36
Speaker: Around him are the words, I take responsibility.
12:41
Speaker: Now, at first glance, that might sound admirable.
12:44
Speaker: A president actually willing to accept responsibility for his actions.
12:49
Speaker: But no, this was no compliment.
12:52
Speaker: The sword and uniform insinuated military power.
12:56
Speaker: The money bag referenced control over the public treasury.
13:00
Speaker: Jackson, rising from the strongbox, was being publicly accused of placing both under his personal and ever-expanding authority.
13:10
Speaker: Flipped the token over, and the political cartoon of the obverse is distilled into a far less subtle insult, the Jackass.
13:18
Speaker: Which, funnily enough, comes with an honorary degree.
13:23
Speaker: Across its body are the letters LLD, the abbreviation for a Doctor of Laws.
13:29
Speaker: Now I'm sure we've all met a lawyer or five who fit the caricature.
13:34
Speaker: However, Jackson's law degree was honorary, awarded by Harvard in 1833.
13:40
Speaker: Continuously mocked by his opponents as poorly educated, unqualified for the presidency, and economically illiterate.
13:48
Speaker: The joke was blunt and easily legible at the time.
13:52
Speaker: The accompanying phrases, the Constitution as I understand it, Roman firmness, and veto, outright mock Jackson's interpretation of his own authority.
14:04
Speaker: It's a lot of information for a small piece of copper, which had been transformed into a circulating political campaign.
14:12
Speaker: After all, these copper tokens passed from hand to hand in ordinary transactions and did not necessarily reflect the politics of the person who gave or received the token.
14:23
Speaker: Now, consider what we are discussing: a privately manufactured piece of metal openly ridiculing a sitting president of the United States.
14:33
Speaker: It's not a brilliantly worded pamphlet debating the facts, a la Benjamin Franklin's silence do good letters.
14:40
Speaker: No, no, it's a caricature like the ones you have made at fairs or the zoo, which exaggerate your worst features.
14:48
Speaker: In this case, equating Jackson's inflated sense of authority to that of a stubborn farm animal.
14:54
Speaker: It's not especially respectful.
14:57
Speaker: But that's partly the point.
14:59
Speaker: In the United States, holding public office does not place a person above public criticism.
15:05
Speaker: And, as we are seeing in this current election, it often invites it.
15:11
Speaker: Whoever commissioned or purchased this token was exercising that principle in a particularly evocative way.
15:18
Speaker: And while they might have been the first, they were certainly not the last.
15:23
Speaker: Because over the next few years, the economic situation begun by Jackson became more and more dire, leading to the Panic of 1837, which Jackson's successor inherited along with his stubborn political persona.
15:39
Speaker: Martin Van Buren became president in March of 1837.
15:44
Speaker: He was Jackson's chosen successor, former Secretary of State, and most recent vice president.
15:50
Speaker: He was also a skilled political organizer who had built the Democratic coalition that brought Jackson to power.
15:57
Speaker: In his inaugural address, Van Buren declared his intention to follow in the footsteps of his quote-unquote illustrious predecessor.
16:06
Speaker: Which is a perfectly respectable statement from an incoming president.
16:10
Speaker: Unless, of course, your predecessor had spent the past four years being compared to a mule.
16:16
Speaker: It really just invites satire, doesn't it?
16:19
Speaker: And circumstances soon made matters worse.
16:23
Speaker: Just weeks into Van Buren's presidency, the American economy descended into financial crisis.
16:29
Speaker: Known as the Panic of 1837, because economists are really not known for inventive epithets, it brought bank failures, business closures, unemployment, and widespread hardship.
16:42
Speaker: Its causes were complex, but they certainly included monetary policies pursued during Jackson's administration.
16:51
Speaker: However, the public really didn't care to trace the origins of this depression.
16:56
Speaker: They just wanted someone to blame.
16:59
Speaker: Someone now sitting in the White House, which Jackson had conveniently vacated only months before.
17:07
Speaker: As banks suspended payments in gold and silver, Americans found it increasingly difficult to obtain dependable money.
17:14
Speaker: Shortages of circulating coinage, again, made privately produced copper tokens even more useful, which meant the political ridicule initiated under Jackson swelled significantly.
17:27
Speaker: While many are rather funny.
17:30
Speaker: One of my favorites is the 1837 Illustrious Predecessor Token, the name of which is rather self-explanatory.
17:39
Speaker: On one side we find a running jackass.
17:42
Speaker: Gee, I wonder who that could be.
17:45
Speaker: Above and around him are the words, I follow in the footsteps of my illustrious predecessor.
17:51
Speaker: It's a remarkably economical piece of political satire.
17:55
Speaker: While the obverse attacks Van Buren's political judgment, the reverse goes after his economic policies.
18:02
Speaker: A tortoise is slowly moving forward, burdened by a large chest labeled sub-treasury, strapped to its back, and flanked by the words executive experiment and fiscal agent.
18:16
Speaker: Once again, this was highly legible satire at the time.
18:21
Speaker: It criticized Van Buren's approach to managing federal funds.
18:25
Speaker: In summation, following the breakdown of confidence in banks, Van Buren advocated separating government finances from private banking institutions through an independent treasury system.
18:37
Speaker: His opponents, clearly, regarded the idea as impractical and economically dangerous.
18:43
Speaker: So they put the treasury on the back of a tortoise.
18:46
Speaker: Slow and cumbersome, it's hardly an inspiring image of financial recovery.
18:52
Speaker: Together, the jackass and the tortoise relay a complete partisan story.
18:57
Speaker: The new president is blindly following his predecessor while dragging the American economy along a painfully slow and potentially perilous pace.
19:08
Speaker: It wasn't meant to be a balanced examination of the panic.
19:12
Speaker: It was trying to persuade people, or at least make them laugh at the president's expense.
19:18
Speaker: Pun intended.
19:20
Speaker: These tokens, and many others like them, came at a time when participation in American politics was becoming more visible, more organized, and more accessible to a growing portion of the population.
19:33
Speaker: The appetite for political messaging was substantial, and tokens offered a convenient and efficient means of distributing them.
19:42
Speaker: Political mockery was no longer confined to the speeches of politicians or the columns of newspapers.
19:49
Speaker: It was everywhere, which feels awfully familiar, doesn't it?
19:54
Speaker: After all, history is cyclical.
19:57
Speaker: And 56 years after the panic of 1837 came the panic of 1893.
20:05
Speaker: Another prolonged economic depression.
20:08
Speaker: Banks failed, businesses closed.
20:11
Speaker: All Americans had was their vote.
20:14
Speaker: So, three years later, when the country prepared for another presidential election, the nation's monetary system was on the ballot.
20:22
Speaker: Specifically, Americans were debating a fundamental question: what should their money be worth?
20:29
Speaker: Referring to the controversy of the gold standard.
20:32
Speaker: By the 1890s, gold, not silver, provided the foundation of the American and most other nations' monetary system.
20:41
Speaker: Supporters of the gold standard believed it helped stabilize and maintain confidence in the currency.
20:48
Speaker: Critics argued that limiting the monetary supply made existing debts more burdensome and contributed to economic hardship.
20:56
Speaker: Many farmers and debtors supported the free coinage of silver, hoping that by increasing the money supply it would ease credit conditions and raise prices.
21:07
Speaker: But there's a catch.
21:09
Speaker: Free silver advocates wanted the government to mint unlimited quantities of silver at a fixed ratio of 16 ounces of silver to one ounce of gold.
21:19
Speaker: The problem?
21:20
Speaker: On the open market, gold was worth nearly double that amount.
21:24
Speaker: In other words, the government would be dictating the value of silver as opposed to the market.
21:31
Speaker: Opponents warned it would drive gold out of circulation, undermine confidence in the dollar, and create dangerous inflation.
21:38
Speaker: But supporters argued that expanding the money supply was exactly what the struggling economy needed.
21:45
Speaker: And one of the loudest voices advocating that position belonged to a young politician from Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan.
21:53
Speaker: Just 36 years old in 1896, he had an established reputation as a persuasive.
21:59
Speaker: Public speaker.
22:00
Speaker: In Chicago, at the Democratic National Convention, he delivered an address that catapulted him to national fame.
22:08
Speaker: Bryan electrified the convention when he dramatically rejected the gold standard and declared that Americans should not be crucified upon a cross of gold.
22:19
Speaker: The next day, Brian became the Democratic nominee for president, which consequently made America's monetary debate central to the election.
22:29
Speaker: And left the voters to ponder some fairly complicated economic questions.
22:36
Speaker: Would expanding the money supply help struggling farmers?
22:40
Speaker: Would it undermine confidence in America's currency?
22:43
Speaker: What would happen to prices, wages, savings, and the nation's international financial relationships?
22:50
Speaker: These were serious and convoluted debates with enormous consequences and over the head of the average American voter.
22:59
Speaker: So, the Republican Party condensed their argument into an enormous silver-colored coin known to collectors as Brian Money.
23:09
Speaker: These pieces of campaign propaganda were privately manufactured medals and tokens that criticized Bryan's free silver proposals.
23:18
Speaker: Some provided comparison, others merely ridiculed.
23:22
Speaker: Comparative pieces were struck in coin silver of high quality.
23:26
Speaker: Large and text heavy, they demonstrate the size of a dollar under the Silverites' 16 to 1 proposal, and often illustrated the smaller size of contemporary Morgan dollars on the oversized coin to just add to the absurdity of Brian's ideas.
23:43
Speaker: More akin to metals, they were an effective and simple visual argument.
23:49
Speaker: You didn't need to understand every economic consequence of Brian's bimetalism.
23:54
Speaker: Just by holding the unwieldy coin, you can conclude that something was wrong with his idea.
24:00
Speaker: It was a caricature of money itself, and the makers of Brian Money were just getting started.
24:07
Speaker: If the comparative pieces were intended to make people question Brian's economic judgment, the satirical coins were even less restrained.
24:17
Speaker: Some mocked familiar American coin designs, others used deliberately crude imagery or incorporated jokes about Brian's political supporters.
24:26
Speaker: One memorable variety carried a slogan that borrowed its structure from one of the most recognizable inscriptions on American Money, with a twist.
24:36
Speaker: In God We Trust became In Brian, we bust.
24:41
Speaker: Another design features a peculiar creature with a donkey's head and a bird-like body and the letters POP across it, referring to the Populist Party, which also nominated Brian.
24:58
Speaker: Around the Jackass meets goose thing is the inscription United Snakes of America.
25:06
Speaker: The makers used animals, distorted figures, and familiar national language in the same way their predecessors ridiculed Jackson and Van Buren.
25:15
Speaker: But while the jackass had returned, these objects weren't intended to pass as ordinary change.
25:22
Speaker: They were available to purchase, display, and keep.
25:26
Speaker: Indeed, one of the most infamous examples didn't even resemble a coin.
25:31
Speaker: It looked far more like Dracula's home.
25:35
Speaker: Which brings us back to the inscription: Free Silver knocked him out.
25:40
Speaker: What truly amazes me is that someone actually expected there would be enough customers willing to pay for the pleasure of opening a tiny coffin to see a political candidate's symbolic corpse.
25:52
Speaker: It's a lot of effort and confidence to put into a political insult.
25:56
Speaker: The coffin is really a piece of exanumia rather than a coin or token, but it belongs to the same tradition.
26:04
Speaker: A tradition that remains alive and well, or at least alive and tolerated, today.
26:10
Speaker: 120 years later, Americans geared up for another presidential election.
26:16
Speaker: Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump.
26:19
Speaker: The campaign landscape is nearly unrecognizable compared to 19th century methods.
26:25
Speaker: Candidates now communicate through television, digital advertising, social media, and a news cycle that never sleeps.
26:32
Speaker: And personal opinions can be tweeted out to the entire world in an instant.
26:37
Speaker: And yet, political insults were still being minted in metal.
26:42
Speaker: One privately produced token features a portrait of Donald Trump with the inscription, Heads you win.
26:48
Speaker: Flip it over, and you find a highly unflattering portrait of Hillary Clinton, and the joke, Tails We Lose.
26:56
Speaker: It's not a particularly sophisticated piece of political commentary, but neither was the jackass or the coffin.
27:04
Speaker: Political messages rarely are.
27:07
Speaker: By 2016, a similar joke could easily be spread through memes and across social media without the need to manufacture a physical object.
27:17
Speaker: And yet, there it is.
27:18
Speaker: While the medium of political numismatics has become less economically necessary, it remains symbolically appealing.
27:26
Speaker: Perhaps because money is one of the most familiar forms of government imagery we encounter.
27:32
Speaker: We recognize its portraits, mottos, and symbols.
27:37
Speaker: We are accustomed to authority of and on coins.
27:41
Speaker: And when someone manipulates those familiar elements to deliver an insult, we recognize the departure immediately.
27:49
Speaker: A jackass, where the president ought to be.
27:51
Speaker: An enormous dollar that ridicules monetary policy.
27:55
Speaker: A coin flip in which one candidate is always on the losing side.
28:00
Speaker: Today, Americans are once again participating in an election.
28:04
Speaker: And whatever the outcome, it's worth remembering that the freedom to disagree, to mock, to caricature, to insult is a precious thing.
28:14
Speaker: Throughout human history, criticizing those in power has almost always proved extraordinarily dangerous.
28:21
Speaker: In many parts of the world today, it still is.
28:24
Speaker: But here in the United States, political expression enjoys constitutional protection no matter how irreverent.
28:32
Speaker: It's a remarkable freedom and one worth defending.
28:36
Speaker: It doesn't mean every criticism is fair.
28:39
Speaker: It doesn't mean every joke is funny, and it certainly doesn't mean that insults are the most productive way to settle our differences.
28:48
Speaker: But it does mean that in America, we are allowed to disagree.
28:53
Speaker: We can print those disagreements, parade them through the streets, create signs, shout from podiums, and even mint them in metal.
29:01
Speaker: And I think there's something wonderfully American about that.
29:05
Speaker: So please exercise your voice.
29:08
Speaker: Cherish the freedoms that make it possible, and remember that our democracy is shaped not only by the leaders we elect, but by the people who take part in that election.
29:19
Speaker: I'm Caroline Turko, and this is Worth Its Wait.
29:24
Speaker: Be sure to tune back in this Thursday, November 5th, for the premiere of Numismatic Innovators with Dr.
29:32
Speaker: Donald Kagan, an exclusive series hosted right here on Worth Its Wait, which explores the visionaries, trailblazers, and industry pioneers who transformed the world of coin collecting.
29:44
Speaker: Don's first guest is David Hall, co-founder of Professional Coin Grading Service, or PCGS, whose innovations forever changed the collectibles market.
29:53
Speaker: And with that, we are all cashed out.