The Bland-Allison Act became the law of the land in 1878. It reintroduced silver dollars as viable currency pieces in the United States and committed the U.S. Treasury to purchase between $2 million and $4 million of silver bullion each month.
The goal of the Act was quite simple—its proponents wanted to restore the U.S. as a bimetallic system. They aimed to thread the needle between shifting entirely toward gold and abandoning silver as a viable option.
The Bland-Allison Act was nothing short of a rebuke of the Coinage Act of 1873—also known as the “Crime of ’73.” The American experiment with a de facto gold standard lasted only five years this time, but the response provided by the Bland-Allison Act did not, in any way, end the debate about gold and silver.
So, let’s dive deeper into what the Bland-Allison Act actually did, why it arose as a proposed law, and—most importantly—the effect that it had on the political and economic atmosphere of the United States during the last two decades of the 1800s.
The list of acceptable currency in early America was surprisingly long. Until 1857, it was permissible to use a wide variety of coinage to settle debts—including, somewhat surprisingly, foreign currency from the Spanish and French.
One quirk of the early system was that Americans could submit gold and silver bullion to the U.S. Mint and have it coined into legal tender upon demand. However, by 1873, the only silver coin that could still be freely minted from deposited bullion was the standard silver dollar.
The Coinage Act of 1873 sought to put the final nail in the coffin for silver. It ended the free coinage of silver dollars, effectively removing silver from the standard coinage system and closing the last remaining avenue for Americans to have their bullion coined.
However, for many Americans, this law was extremely unsettling because of both its practical effects and its cultural implications. Miners could no longer convert their findings into cash. Farmers and debtors across the country—who frequently used silver dollars for their transactions—now struggled to keep their finances afloat.
Culturally, the “Crime of ’73” came to draw lines between several groups. For one, the law was seen as an unfair advantage for creditors at the expense of debtors. For another, it pitted the gold-using eastern United States against the silver-preferring western part of the country.
The plight of silver advocates attracted the attention of two key policymakers: Congressman Richard Bland of Missouri, a Democrat, and Senator William Allison of Iowa, a Republican.
As mentioned, the Bland-Allison Act’s best-known provision was its restoration of silver dollars as legal tender in the United States. The reintroduction interrupted the nation’s de facto shift toward a gold standard, though a formal gold standard would not be enacted until 1900.
The Act also required the Treasury to purchase between $2 million and $4 million worth of silver bullion every single month. These purchases served as a concession to silver miners, who had quickly found themselves without recourse after the “Crime of ’73.”
The new law directed the Treasury (and, by extension, the U.S. Mint) to use the purchased silver to produce standard silver dollars. Thus, it allowed members of the working and debtor classes—those most adversely affected by the Coinage Act of 1873—to once again use silver in everyday commerce.
What it did not do was restore to the public the previous ability to have their silver bullion coined freely. In the minds of Bland and Allison, this omission helped to balance the competing interests of goldbugs and silverites (the proponents of each metal). In fact, Bland had initially pushed for the restoration of free silver, but Allison amended the Act to its final form to ensure unity among members of Congress—and the broader public.
One of the most unusual aspects of the Bland-Allison Act was how it became law. President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed the bill for fear that its silver provisions would harm public credit. However, both houses of Congress overrode his veto—a feat achieved by only about 4% of vetoed bills in U.S. history.
With silver dollars back on the books as legal tender and the U.S. Mint receiving massive amounts of silver bullion each month, it made sense for the Mint to unveil a new design for post-1878 silver dollars. The result of these efforts became one of the most beloved coins in American history—the Morgan Dollar.
The Morgan Dollar enjoyed one of the longest and most iconic production runs in U.S. coinage history. It was minted from 1878 to 1904, and again in 1921, meaning that its circulation spanned eras from the Wild West to the dawn of flight.
Furthermore, the Mint created an enormous number of them. With silver flowing in monthly under the new law, the government produced more than 650 million Morgan Dollars during its run.
On a side note, the Mint reintroduced the Morgan Dollar as a collector’s item in 2021, and it continues to be an active production piece today. Original Morgans were struck from 90% silver, while the new issues feature 99.9% fine silver.
Of course, just because the Treasury was producing large numbers of silver dollars didn’t mean they were widely used. The coins were too valuable for most everyday transactions, and a great many of them ended up in Treasury vaults instead of circulation.
They remained there until 1918, when the Pittman Act mandated that about 270 million Morgan Dollars be melted down to support the British war effort in World War I.
Ironically, that melt and the subsequent scarcity of surviving pieces helped fuel America’s growing interest in coin collecting. In a roundabout way, the Bland-Allison Act helped pave the way for U.S. numismatics—and, much later, for companies like JM Bullion that celebrate that legacy.
As with most compromises, the Bland-Allison Act left both sides unsatisfied. The goldbugs were frustrated to see their progress toward a gold standard reversed, while the silver advocates were equally disappointed that the Act didn’t go far enough toward restoring free coinage and full bimetallism.
It also did little to stabilize the economy in the long term, as silver’s greater price volatility compared to gold made it a less reliable store of value. As the coming decades would reveal, one of the biggest arguments against the silver standard was silver itself.
The Act did, however, highlight the growing political influence of the western silver-mining states, which began to challenge the long-standing economic dominance of the East.
The Bland-Allison Act also paved the way for further legislative debate over silver and gold. Most notably, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 expanded upon its provisions, though a key difference between the two laws would eventually backfire on silver advocates.
Ultimately, laws like the Bland-Allison Act and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act pushed the national conversation to a breaking point—one that dominated the Presidential Election of 1896. That contest between Democrats and Republicans quickly evolved into a competition between silverites and goldbugs.
Everything culminated at the Democratic National Convention of 1896, where Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan delivered his famous Cross of Gold speech in defense of bimetallism, concluding with the line:
“You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
The speech propelled Bryan to the Democratic nomination, but Republican candidate William McKinley prevailed in the general election and dealt a fatal blow to silver advocates.
McKinley would go on to officially place the country on the gold standard with his signature on the Gold Standard Act of 1900. Thus, while the Bland-Allison Act appeared to restore silver as a viable underpinning of the U.S. economy, it ultimately signaled the beginning of the end for the silver standard debate.