oa Liberty and the Nineteenth Amendment

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When the Coinage Act of 1792 authorized the national monetary system of the United States, Congress stipulated that, on the obverse of each coin, ‘there shall be an impression emblematic of liberty’. Immediately, those responsible for designing the coins rendered this into a female personification of the concept. Through the course of the nineteenth century, females were making headway in their rights as both individuals and as a group. During this period, the United States Mint continued to design and strike coins with allegorical images of women, essentially using them as the face of monetary sovereignty. This paper discusses the paradox of women as an allegory and as a marginalized, second-class group.