Woodrow Wilson was never the same, and it might reasonably be said that in 1919—the year before American women got the vote—that the U.S. had its first female President, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.
The United States never ratified the Treaty of Versailles. Nor did it join the League of Nations. Instead, America turned inward. “A Return to Normalcy” seemed to be the dominant mood, and the phrase would be a winning slogan in the next year’s Presidential campaign.
1919. America’s Standing Liberty quarter was—again—a coin out of step with its times. The war to end wars had been won. Lady Liberty’s purpose had been accomplished. And yet here she is, still behind her upraised shield, still wearing her recently acquired chain mail blouse.
The Philadelphia mint struck 11,324,000 of these 1919 quarter-dollars. A lot. But collectors now know what mint officials were then only beginning to suspect...the exposed date on these coins was very fragile and wouldn’t last long in circulation. How many of these 1919 quarters, I wonder, worked into the 1960s dateless and unrecognized?
The illustrated coin isn’t one of those anonymous thousands, of course. It hasn’t circulated much at all. In the hand it’s a truly beautiful thing—to my eyes anyway—and has a distinctive patina reminiscent of a light shining through a glass of old whisky.
It’s a visual effect that has special meaning in a coin struck the year that the 18th Amendment was ratified. Prohibition! Alcoholic drinks outlawed! America would be “dry” from early in 1920 until 1933—surely long after this 1919 quarter departed circulation.
But that isn’t to say this coin never spent one of its few workdays in an “unofficial” establishment...
v.
