-
Massachusetts Firsts Issues Currency
Massachusetts is the first state to issue paper money (The Continentals). The other states soon follow. (Up until this point, people mainly used foreign coins and British money as currency) This form of currency was very prone to being counterfeit! -
Debt Recovery Act
Act passed that allowed land and slaves to be used to repay debt from the colonists to the British -
Benjamin Franklin Counterfeiting Solution
Continentals were subject to mass counterfeit, and they were very easy to do so. Benjamin Franklin and his printing press created a new bill that had raised impressions of leaves in them, making them harder to counterfeit. This method was soon applied to the Continentals. -
Currency Act I
First Currency Act Passed
This act limited the production of bills of credit. Bills of Credit were thrown crazy by parliament as currency. They were not all equal. Some could only be used to pay off debts, some could be used for more luxurious purchases. Some had interest, others did not. -
Currency Act II
Second Currency Act Passed
This Act completely killed the Bills of Credit. They could not be handed out any more, and those in circulation were no worthless. -
Revolutionary War Begins
Once the Revolutionary war began, the colonies began throwing continentals out like crazy to fund the war. There were soldiers to pay and supplies to buy. Unfortunately, these bills weren't backed and this mass inflation of fake money really hurt the continentals. There was counterfeit up to this point, but after the war began, counterfeit went up like crazy. -
End of Revolutionary War
At this point, continentals are worth so little that they can only be used as treasury bonds, and are only worth 1/10 of their face value. They were not used as actual money since 1781. -
US Dollar Introduced
In 1785 after the revolutionary war, the US Dollar was introduced as the new form of paper currency in the US -
US Coinage Act
The first coinage act was created to make the US Mint for printing money, and also placed the silver dollar as the primary use of currency in the United States