Political pressure, not public demand, brought the Morgan
dollar into being. There was no real need for a new silver dollar in the late
1870s; the last previous “cartwheel,” the Liberty Seated dollar, had been
legislated out of existence in 1873, and hardly anyone missed it.
Silver-mining interests did miss the dollar, though, and
lobbied Congress forcefully for its return. The Comstock Lode in Nevada was
yielding huge quantities of silver, with ore worth $36 million being extracted
annually. After several futile attempts, the silver forces in Congress led by
Representative Richard (“Silver Dick”) Bland of Missouri finally succeeded in
winning authorization for a new silver dollar when Congress passed the
Bland-Allison Act on February 28, 1878. This Act required the Treasury to
purchase at market levels between two million and four million troy ounces of
silver bullion every month to be coined into dollars. This amounted to a
massive subsidy, coming at a time when the dollar’s face value exceeded its
intrinsic worth by nearly 10%.
In November 1877, nearly four months before passage of the
Bland-Allison Act, the Treasury saw the handwriting on the wall and began
making preparations for a new dollar coin. Mint Director Henry P. Linderman
ordered Chief Engraver William Barber and one of his assistants, George T.
Morgan, to prepare pattern dollars, with the best design to be used on the new
coin. Actually, Linderman fixed this “contest” in Morgan’s favor; he had been
dissatisfied with the work of the two Barbers William and his son, Charles, and
in 1876 had hired Morgan, a talented British engraver, with plans to entrust
him with new coin designs. At that time, resumption of silver dollar coinage
was not yet planned, and Morgan began work on designs intended for the half
dollar. Following Linderman’s orders that a head of Liberty should replace the
full-figure depiction then in use, Morgan recruited Philadelphia school teacher
Anna Willess Williams to pose for the new design.
Morgan’s obverse features a left-facing portrait of Miss
Liberty. The reverse depicts a somewhat scrawny eagle which led some to vilify
the coin as a “buzzard dollar.” The designer’s initial M appears on both sides
a first. It’s on the truncation of Liberty’s neck and on the ribbon’s left loop
on the reverse. Mintmarks (O, S, D, and CC) are found below the wreath on the
reverse. Points to check for wear on Morgans are the hair above Liberty’s eye
and ear, the high upper fold of her cap and the crest of the eagle’s breast.
Soon after production began, someone advised the Mint that
the eagle should have seven tail feathers, instead of the eight being shown,
and Linderman ordered this change. As a result, some 1878 Morgan dollars have
eight feathers, some seven and some show seven over eight. The seven-over-eight
variety is the scarcest, though all are fairly common. - Coinsite