October 30th, 2013

These historical vignettes will lead you from the very beginnings — the American Revolution, where the paper Continental Dollar depreciated in value by 1000 – 1; to the Constitutional debates where the founders thought they had stripped the federal government of the power to print money; to the work of Alexander Hamilton putting America onto a sound monetary footing leading to an American golden age; into the 19th century and the First and Second Banks of the United States, the precursors of the Federal Reserve System; to the Civil War greenbacks, the resumption of gold convertibility, the prairie populists and the “free silver” movement culminating in the most famous speech in political history, William Jennings Bryan’s “cross of gold” speech; to a 20th century defined by an erosion and then repudiation of the gold standard, and also by world wars and crises; to the history that is being made today.

http://thegoldstandardnow.org/beginnings-of-the-us-gold-standard