Louisiana Purchase Sesquicentennial half dollar
The Louisiana Purchase Sesquicentennial half dollar was a proposed United States commemorative coin. Legislation for the coin passed both houses of Congress, but was vetoed in 1954 by President Dwight Eisenhower. No commemorative coins were authorized or issued by the U.S. after 1954 until a new issue was struck in 1982.
About Louisiana Purchase Sesquicentennial half dollar in brief
The Louisiana Purchase Sesquicentennial half dollar was a proposed United States commemorative coin. Legislation for the coin passed both houses of Congress, but was vetoed in 1954 by President Dwight Eisenhower. The coin was intended to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. No commemorative coins were authorized or issued by the U.S. after 1954 until a new issue was struck in 1982. The Treasury Department was strongly against their issue; the bill was opposed by Assistant Director of the Mint F. Leland Howard. The Louisiana Purchase gave the United States over a million square miles of previously French territory for the price of USD 15 million. The Purchase was ratified by the US Senate on October 20, 1803, and the new land subsequently doubled the size of the US. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill to subsidize the Louisiana purchase Exposition, which would become known as the St. Louis World Fair of 1904. Of the USD 5 million paid to the fair by the government, USD 250,000 was in the form of commemorative gold dollar coins. Some of these issues were deemed abusive, with coin dealers given an exclusive right to buy all the coins, or issues continuing for years, such as the Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar, first struck in 1926, last struck in 1939. One such bill in 1938 was vetoed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1939, Congress put an end to commemoratives for the time being, ordering anend to the multi-year series, such to the Oregon trail issue of 1926, which was last issued in 1939, and was replaced by a single issue of the New England half dollar in 1940.
In 1951, the Missouri Historical Society proposed a commemorative half dollar for the anniversary. The bill passed the House of Representatives in April 1953, but the Senate was slow to act, passing it in January 1954, and after the House concurred with the Senate amendments, it was sent to Eisenhower later that month. Eisenhower vetoed the bill, as well as two other commemorative Coin bills, on February 3, 1954. Congress made no attempt to override his vetoes. In 1953, a group of Missouri and Louisiana congressmen tried to work together to get a coin bill through Congress. A hearing was held on the Boggs and Curtis bills before the House and Senate Banking Currency Committee briefly before yielding to a former member of the committee. Both congressmen introduced bills in early 1953, and agreed to work on the coin bill together as well. In 1954, the House passed the bill and the Senate passed it, and their states’ groups were urged to do the same. In 1956, the bill passed and was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, who signed it into law the same day. In 1957, Congress passed a bill authorizing the issue of a half dollar to be struck for the ses quicentennial of the Purchase.
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