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It is perhaps unsurprising that the Cardinal Collection begins where the dollar
denomination in America itself began, with the ubiquitous Spanish milled or
"pillar" dollar, in this case from the Casa de Moneda in Mexico City. The
selection of the dollar as the basic monetary unit of our young nation was not an
historical accident, instead, this Spanish colonial coin was the standard against which
all forms of exchange in early America was measured against. It was illustrated on
Maryland paper money as early as 1767 (the first American money denominated in
"dollars") and when the Continental Congress met in 1776, a committee decided
that a table be published assessing the value of all circulating foreign gold and silver
coins in fractions of a Spanish milled dollar. When committee member Thomas Jefferson
named three conditions that a unit of money should meet, he noted that "the Spanish
dollar seems to fulfill all these conditions." Further, writing in 1784, Jefferson
took up the cause of the Spanish milled dollar: |
