The first (?) official suggestion for commemorative coins.

[RWB]

Tucked amid dense text of the Congressional Globe for the First Session of the 39th Congress (p.1843) was this enticing memorial:

 

Sen. Johnson.

I present the petition of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, a corporation created by the State of Pennsylvania, in which they represent that the coinage of the United States might be made of interest and of permanent value by becoming the repository of events of note, whether civil or military, in the history of the country; that a long and unmeaning series of coins whose chief variety is a mere difference in date is almost an anomaly and a retrograde step in civilization, and praying that the mode of coinage may be changed in that particular in the way stated in the memorial. I move its reference to the Committee on Finance.

 

It was so referred.

 

[leeg]

The Thirty-ninth United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1865 to March 4, 1867, during the first month of Abraham Lincoln's fifth year as president, and the first two years of his successor, U.S. President Andrew Johnson.

 

Could possibly be.