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Message:: [QUOTE="johnmilton, post: 3587920, member: 101855"][ATTACH=full]958230[/ATTACH] An 1840 William Henry Harrison Presidential Campaign Medalet. After Whig Party candidate, William Henry Harrison, won the 1840 presidential election, Charlotte Mint superintendent, John H. Wheeler, knew that he would soon be out of a job. Democratic president, Martin Van Buren, had appointed him, and as was the custom in those days, "To the victor goes the spoils." Wheeler got a short reprieve when Harrison died after only a month in office, but Harrison's vice presidential running mate and successor, John Tyler, replaced him with Burgess S. Gaither in July 1841. John Tyler proved to be more of a Thomas Jefferson Democrat than a Henry Clay Whig. After Tyler twice vetoed the bill that would have granted another charter to The Bank of the United States, which was the major plank in the Whig Party platform, all but one of the members of his cabinet resigned in protest. Tyler further antagonized the northern wing of the Whig Party when he advocated the admission of Texas as a state. That move virtually insured a war with Mexico, and opened another testy debate over the numerical balance between free and slave states. During this period many Whigs below the cabinet level either resigned their posts or were asked to leave. Charlotte Mint superintendent, Burgess Gaither, was one of them although it is not known if Gaither resigned or was fired. His replacement was Green Washington Caldwell who took office on January 13, 1844. One person who was upset by the loss of Gaither's position at the mint was his African-American slave, Calvin. It was alleged that Calvin had said, "The mint would soon be in ashes," after Gaither left office. In the early morning hours of July 27, 1844, a fire broke out at the Charlotte Mint. For reasons unknown water from the tank on the roof of the building that fed the boiler in the basement was not used to douse the flames immediately. Ultimately the fire destroyed the mint building and almost all of the machinery. An early group of suspects was a group of students who had been seen smoking "segars" in the vicinity of the mint. Mint workers who had been in the area after students had left testified that they had not seen any suspicious smoking materials. Next suspicions turned to Calvin who did not have a good alibi for where he had been during the time of the blaze. It was noted that a trapdoor on the roof of the mint had been left unlocked, and superintendent Green W. Caldwell testified that a great deal of money and other valuables were missing from his quarters in the mint building. Ultimately the judge chose not to hand down an indictment, and the case went officially unsolved. Caldwell continued to place the blame on Calvin despite the fact that the superintendent had not been at the mint at the time of the fire. [ATTACH=full]958234[/ATTACH] This rare 1844 Polk presidential campaign medalet referrs to him as, "young hickory." The slogan, "Enlarge the boundaries of freedom ... press onward," referrs the concempt of "manifest destiny." The idea was that The United States should become an empire that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. One result was the Mexican War, which remains controversal to this day. Fortunately for the citizens of the Charlotte area James K. Polk was elected president in 1844. Polk was a disciple of former president Andrew Jackson and shared Jackson's views on the monetary system and the need for large numbers of small denomination gold coins in circulation. Polk's nickname was "Young Hickory" which was derived from Jackson's pet name, "Old Hickory." Polk's presidential opponent, Henry Clay, had voted against the establishment of the branch mints when he had been a senator. It is almost certain that Clay would not have approved the rebuilding of the Charlotte Mint if he had been elected president. Mint superintendent Caldwell took charge of the reconstruction project. Caldwell determined that the new building and equipment did not have to be as large as first facility had been. Although the new mint was built on the same "T" shaped foundation as the first building, there was only one story above the basement instead of two, and the number of coin presses was reduced from two to one. Overall the cost of the entire facility was $26,572.97 which was well below the budget of $35,000 and almost $30,000 less than the original building had cost. None of these cost savings affected the operation of the mint. The Charlotte Mint resumed production in 1846 after not issuing any coins in 1845. The concept of issuing silver coins from the Charlotte Mint had been discussed from the time the facility had opened in 1838. Silver was a by-product of the gold refinement process. To some it seemed logical that the silver coins could be struck at Charlotte rather than shipping the silver bars that were produced there to the Philadelphia Mint. In the 1840s proposals to produce silver coins at Charlotte were introduced, but none of them were approved by both houses of Congress. In any case production of silver coinage larger than half dimes and dimes might have been difficult because there was some doubt that the Charlotte coin press was large enough to strike quarter dollars. [ATTACH=full]958236[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]958238[/ATTACH] In 1849 the Charlotte Mint began to produce the gold dollar. These tiny coins had been authorized by Congress as a way to stretch the limited gold production from the southern goldfields to higher mintages. The idea was to justify the continued existence of the Charlotte and Dahlonega Mints. The first run of Charlotte gold dollars produced a major rarity, the 1849-C with the Open Wreath reverse. Today only five examples of these coins are known. They range in grade from a piece with Very Fine sharpness with traces of jewelry use to an MS-63. This is the rarest Charlotte Mint coin. Its sister, the 1849-C gold dollar with the Close Wreath, is a scarce in its own right with an estimated population of from 200 to 300 pieces. [ATTACH=full]958240[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]958241[/ATTACH] The Charlotte Mint Type II and III gold dollars are among the worst coins the United States Mint System ever issued. All of these coins are poorly struck and unattractive. This 1855-C gold dollar is well above average becaue the reverse is sharp and clear. Collectors describe many Charlotte Mint gold dollars as "rustic" in appearance. This is partly due to the less than perfect dies the Philadelphia Mint often sent to the branch mints, but the primary cause was the often crude condition of the planchets upon which the coins were struck. The Charlotte and Dahlonega Mints had a lot of problems with their rollers which were used to flatten the ingots of gold to the thickness of the finished coins. The rolled out ingots were further equalized in thickness by running them through a drawing machine, but the resulting strips of gold were still marred by uneven thicknesses and surface defects. The problem became especially acute with the Type Two and Three gold dollars which were struck on wider and thinner planchets.  Numismatists have described these coins as among the poorest made pieces that were ever produced by a U.S. mint. In 1854 the U.S. mint system issued the first Three Dollar Gold Pieces. Although the Philadelphia Mint sent a pair of Three Dollar Gold Piece dies to Charlotte, mint officials decided not to strike any of these unusual coins. The three other mints, Dahlonega, New Orleans and Philadelphia did issue a limited number of these coins. There has never been an explanation as why Charlotte omitted these coins from its production run. Green W. Caldwell resigned his post as superintendent in 1847 to volunteer to fight in the Mexican War. Green was qualified as both a doctor and a lawyer and entered the Army to serve in the medical corp. Green served under General Zachary Taylor, and arrived in Mexico just after the conclusion of the Battle of Buena Vista. Caldwell was mustered out of the service on July 20, 1848 and returned to the Charlotte area to take up a career on politics. He was defeated in two attempts to win a seat in the House of Representatives, but he was elected to state offices in 1849 and 1851. In 1852 Franklin Pierce was elected President of the United States, and the following year Pierce appointed Caldwell to once more take up the reins of the Charlotte Mint. In the early years, Caldwell's tenure was relatively uneventful. In December 1854 there was another fire, but the blaze was quickly contained. The market value of silver bullion that was shipped to Philadelphia increased relative to the price of gold because the influx of the precious yellow metal from California. This resulted in weight reductions for all U.S. silver coins, except the silver dollar. "Sweeps" (gold and silver bearing debris recovered from furnaces, ashes and floors) was shipped to the Philadelphia Mint for processing, and assay coins were sent to the main mint for testing. Business as usual changed abruptly after the results of the 1860 presidential election were known. [ATTACH=full]958242[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]958243[/ATTACH] Political storm clouds were on the horizon when this 1858-C quarter eagle was issued. The election of Abraham Lincoln prompted several southern states to secede from the Union beginning with South Carolina in late December 1860. At first North Carolina was not a hotbed of radicalism, and communications between the Charlotte Mint and the Philadelphia head office were routine during the first quarter of 1861. All of that changed with the firing at Fort Sumter on April 15. After shots were exchanged many moderate southerners, including former vice president, John Breckenridge and General Robert E. Lee chose to side with the Confederacy. [ATTACH=full]958246[/ATTACH] The election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 quickly brought on the Civil War. This piece, called a ferrotype because the photograph is printed on a thin piece of iron, was among the first political pieces to show actual photos of the candidates. In April the Governor of North Carolina sent a detachment of troops to take charge of the mint, which had been the property of "the late U.S. Government." Caldwell asked for a reprieve citing that the soldiers had no idea how to make coins, and there was a considerable amount of bullion on hand that citizens had deposited for coinage. After leading citizens of the town supported Caldwell's petition, the governor relented and allowed the mint to continue operations. Sensing that their local mint would soon be closed, the gold producers stepped up their deposits for coinage. North Carolina joined the Confederate States of America on May 20, 1861. The state formally transferred the mint to the Confederate Government on June 27. The last run of Charlotte Mint coins, 877 half eagles, was delivered on May 31. Today it is impossible to distinguish between the 1861 half eagles that were made under the Union and Confederate jurisdictions. Green W. Caldwell was incredibly loyal to the mint. He stayed in the superintendent's apartment on the main floor to see that the facility was preserved so that it could once more serve its intended purpose as a mint. Although he asked for a small salary of $25 a month, it is probable that he was never paid. In the mean time the rollers at the mint were used for a short time to roll out copper for percussion caps which were used to fire weapons. Later the basement floor housed navel stores from Norfolk, Virginia. Caldwell remained at the mint until the day he died on July 10, 1864. At that time Dr. John H. Gibbon, who had been the mint assayer since the facility had opened in 1837, took up the watch. Gibbon was still at the mint when the war ended in 1865. Gibbon worked with Union officials to re-open the mint, but it was not to be. There was too much animosity toward the South after the war, and Philadelphia Mint Director, James Pollock, opposed the re-opening of all the southern mints. In 1867 Congress funded the opening of the Charlotte Mint building as an assay office. In that capacity it received and paid for unparted bars of gold and silver which the facility sent to the Philadelphia Mint. The Charlotte assay office did not refine the bars into gold and silver. It would continue to serve in that capacity until it was closed in 1913 after Congress refused to fund the operation. After a refurbishment the mint became a Federal court house and was later used in post office operations. In 1932 it was decided that the old mint building would be dismantled to make way for a new post office and other government facilities. A group of public spirited citizens stepped in and formed a committee to save the building. That group was able to salvage materials from the old mint and have them re-constructed at another location as a project of the Depression era Works Progress Administration (WPA). The building became the Mint Museum of Art, which has since been considerably expanded. Some of the old original walls can still be seen in the re-built structure and there is an impressive group of Charlotte Mint coins on display. Epilog Throughout its 24 years of operation, from 1838 to 1861, the Charlotte Mint produced 1,205,786 coins. Almost three quarters of those coins were half eagles. Today, roughly 1% of those coins survive. To put these numbers in context, the first United States Mint in Philadelphia, which was not a large operation, produced 1,025,343 coins, including 918,521 large cents in 1794 alone. The estimated survival rate for that early mintage has been estimated to be as high as 4%. Therefore there are probably more U.S. coins dated 1794 than there are Charlotte Mint coins from all its years of operation. Given these mintages and estimated survival rates, it is not surprising that collectors regard any coin from the Charlotte Mint as at least a minor rarity today.[/QUOTE]

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