IN GOD WE TRUST: The Story of How America’s National Motto Appeared on Coins

A Nation at War, a Treasury Secretary with a Vision

The story of IN GOD WE TRUST on American coinage begins not in a mint, but on the battlefields of the Civil War. As the Union struggled through the darkest years of its existence, a wave of religious sentiment swept through the Northern states. Citizens wrote letters to government officials urging that the nation’s coins — its most tangible symbols of national identity — reflect a formal acknowledgment of divine providence. One of those letters, written in November 1861 by Reverend M.R. Watkinson of Ridleyville, Pennsylvania, landed on the desk of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase and changed the course of American numismatic history.

Chase was receptive almost immediately. A deeply religious man and one of the most consequential Treasury secretaries in American history, he directed the Director of the Mint, James Pollock, to explore the practicality of including a religious motto on United States coinage. Several phrases were considered, including “Our God and Our Country” and “God Our Trust,” before the familiar and final wording — IN GOD WE TRUST — was settled upon. The legal framework followed with the Coinage Act of April 22, 1864, which authorized the new two-cent piece and gave the Treasury Department latitude to modify coin designs, including the addition of the motto.

The Two-Cent Piece: A Modest Coin, a Monumental First

The two-cent piece of 1864 holds a singular distinction in American numismatics: it was the first regularly issued United States coin to bear the inscription IN GOD WE TRUST. Designed by James B. Longacre, the Chief Engraver of the United States Mint, the coin features a bold shield on the obverse with a banner reading IN GOD WE TRUST, flanked by arrows and grain stalks. The reverse carries a simple but elegant wreath surrounding the denomination. It was a coin born of wartime necessity — the hoarding of silver and gold had left the country desperately short of small change — but it carried a message that would endure long after the denomination itself was retired.

The two-cent piece had a short lifespan, struck from 1864 through 1873, but its historical importance is disproportionate to its brief run. For collectors, this denomination represents a genuine moment of national transformation, a tangible artifact from a period when the country was redefining its identity under the most extreme circumstances imaginable.

Small Motto vs. Large Motto: The 1864 Varieties

Among the most compelling aspects of the 1864 two-cent piece is the existence of two distinct varieties defined by the size of the motto lettering on the obverse: the Small Motto and the Large Motto. These varieties were produced in the same year as the mint refined the working dies, and distinguishing between them is a fundamental skill for any serious collector of the series.

The Small Motto variety is the scarcer of the two. It features noticeably thinner, more delicate lettering in the IN GOD WE TRUST banner, with the word WE appearing particularly narrow. On the Large Motto — the far more common variety — the letters are bolder and more uniform, and the overall design has a more confident, finished appearance. The distinction is visible to the naked eye, though a loupe confirms it readily. In circulated grades, both varieties are collectible, but in Mint State the Small Motto commands a substantial premium and represents a genuine rarity. Most collections of the two-cent series treat the acquisition of a problem-free Small Motto specimen as a significant milestone.

The Motto Spreads Across the Coinage

The success of IN GOD WE TRUST on the two-cent piece set in motion a gradual campaign to place the motto across the entire United States coinage spectrum. By 1866, Congress passed legislation requiring the motto to appear on all gold and silver coins large enough to accommodate it. The half dollar, quarter, dollar, and gold denominations from the $5 half eagle through the $20 double eagle were all updated. The motto’s appearance on these coins was not always uniform — placement, font size, and stylistic integration varied by denomination and era — but its presence became an established expectation of the American coinage tradition.

Smaller denominations, including the cent and the nickel three-cent piece, were excluded initially on practical grounds of size, but the motto eventually found its way onto the five-cent piece as well. By the turn of the twentieth century, IN GOD WE TRUST had become so thoroughly embedded in American coinage that its removal seemed unthinkable — until Theodore Roosevelt decided to try exactly that.

Theodore Roosevelt and the Saint-Gaudens Controversy

President Theodore Roosevelt harbored strong aesthetic opinions about American coinage, and he found the motto objectionable not on theological grounds but on artistic ones. Working closely with the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens on a comprehensive redesign of American gold coinage, Roosevelt argued that placing the name of God on commercial currency was, in his own words, a form of irreverence — that the motto trivialized the sacred by associating it with monetary transactions. When the stunning new Saint-Gaudens eagle ($10 gold piece) and double eagle ($20 gold piece) debuted in 1907 without IN GOD WE TRUST, the public reaction was swift and largely hostile.

Religious organizations, members of Congress, and ordinary citizens protested vociferously. The omission was viewed not as an artistic refinement but as an assault on national tradition. Congress moved decisively, passing legislation in May 1908 that mandated the restoration of the motto to all gold and silver coinage. Roosevelt signed the bill, and by 1908 the motto had returned to the eagle and double eagle. The episode did nothing to diminish the artistic legacy of the Saint-Gaudens designs, which remain among the most celebrated in world coinage, but it underscored just how deeply IN GOD WE TRUST had become woven into the American national fabric — a status that had its origin in the modest, shield-adorned two-cent piece of 1864.