Coinage Act of 1857

The Coinage Act of 1857 was an act of the United States Congress that did several things, the most important being that it prevented foreign coins from being legal tender in the United States of America. It also set the standard composition of coins. But most interestingly to me, in the final words of the act, hiding behind a semicolon, it stated that "; and the coinage of the half-cent shall cease".

Significantly, this act, currently 163 years old, dating to a few years before the civil war, was the last time that the United States discontinued a denomination of coin for being too small. There has obviously been a lot of inflation since then. The official government inflation calculator only goes back to 1913, and it says that in 1913, a penny was worth 29 cents. Assuming a half penny was worth 15 cents in 1913, it must have been worth almost 50 cents in 1850s money, if we could even make a comparison with prices. Given the relatively high value of the half penny at the time, it is surprising that the penny has held on for so much longer. Perhaps it is the magic of having an integral value that protects the penny, even when its value in purchasing power is so much lower than the half-penny was when it was cancelled.

Incidentally, in the version of the bill in the congressional record, there is no mention of what the vote is. Other than some procedural rewrites, it seems to have been passed without controversy, and the half-penny part itself doesn't even get a full sentence. The disappearance of the half-penny seems to have gone with a minimum of fuss.