(Bloomberg Opinion) -- President Trump’s decision to include his signature on stimulus checks has struck many as unseemly, even unconstitutional. From the perspective of U.S. history, it could have been worse.
If not for a colorful little episode during the Civil War, Trump may have had the leeway to go bigger, putting himself on actual money. But he can’t – thanks to a forgotten self-promoter named Spencer Clark who inspired a federal ban on the appearance of the living on the nation’s currency. Such an act risked becoming “derogatory to the dignity and self-respect of the nation,” Congressman Martin Thayer of Pennsylvania said at the time.
Prior to the Civil War, living people did not appear on the federal government’s currency. Instead, the United States Mint stuck to allegorical figures of Liberty and other uncontroversial subjects. (Washington himself may have quashed an attempt to have his portrait put coins).
When the southern states seceded, the cash-strapped federal government reluctantly turned to issuing a new, fiat currency: paper “greenbacks,” so called because of the ink used to print them.
This new currency, though, was very different: It featured living, breathing politicians and political appointees. The undisputed star of the new monetary order was Lincoln’s one-time rival Salmon P. Chase, who had joined the new president’s cabinet as Treasury secretary – and appeared on the ubiquitous one-dollar bill.
It’s not entirely clear how Chase sneaked this past Lincoln. In his own account, he described the Treasury Department as experimenting with different images. Chase modestly claimed that “the engravers thought me rather good-looking [so] I told them they might put me on the end of the one-dollar bills.”
The portrait was flattering, and unusual: a slight smile plays over Chase’s face, his arms are defiantly crossed. He looks confident, even cocky. The denomination, appearing alongside the portrait, could be read as a not-so-subtle boast: “Yes, Abe, I am number one.” (Chase’s portrait was actually larger than Lincoln’s, which was relegated to the ten-dollar bill, a rarer denomination.
The rest of the bills featured deceased leaders like Alexander Hamilton and the statue of Lady Liberty that now adorns the Capitol. So-called “fractional notes” -- equivalent to nickels and dimes -- depicted figures like Washington.
At first, the federal government turned to private bank note companies to print all this money, shipping sheets to an office in Washington known as the National Bureau of Currency. There, the money was cut and prepared for circulation.
Chase appointed a little-known man named Spencer Clark to run the place. Clark had come to Chase’s attention early in the war, and for reasons that remain unclear, became his political protégé. Clark had some talents, like devising devices to thwart counterfeiters of the new currency. But he wasn’t the obvious choice.
He quickly attracted controversy, particularly after he took on the job of printing some of the notes, becoming the chief of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in the process. In 1862, Congress began investigating Clark for paying top dollar for secondhand printing presses as well as other financial improprieties. He escaped prosecution.
By late 1863, though, Clark was back in the spotlight as allegations of sexual improprieties began leaking to the press. This time, Chase ordered an informal investigation, hiring a reckless fixer named Lafayette Baker to investigate the married, middle-aged Clark.
Baker dug up a staggering amount of dirt, which Congress decided to publish in full detail. Clark stood accused of preying on the young women in his charge, paying them for sex, carrying on affairs, and, in the words of one Republican critic, turning the Bureau “into a house for orgies and bacchanals.”
Thanks to political connections and Baker’s own lawlessness, Clark miraculously escaped with his job. But in 1865, he was put in charge of producing a new series of fractional notes. Like so much about Clark, we don’t really know what happened, except that the wily survivor had a hand in it.
Some accounts say that Clark deliberately misinterpreted an order to put “William Clark” – one half of the Lewis and Clark duo – on the five-cent note, substituting his face instead. Others have it that Clark had a portrait drawn up like Chase did, swapping it into production before anyone could notice.
Whatever Clark’s gambit, the disgraced director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing appeared on millions of 5-cent notes in 1866. Indeed, Clark’s face arguably adorned more pieces of money than any other person, living or dead.
Congress exploded with fury. Thayer, the Pennsylvania lawmaker, attached an amendment to an appropriations bills forbidding the use of any portrait of a living person on the nation’s bonds, currency, notes or postage.” Thayer held up the offending note for all to see, noting that George Washington no longer enjoyed a place of pride, while Spencer Clark was lining pockets across the nation.
Congressman James Brooks of New York, who had already tried to get rid of Clark, took the floor. In a mocking monologue, he imagined a future when the names of Grant, Sherman, and even Lincoln had faded from history. “There will arise one remarkable man; high on the horizon, and that is Clark, printer of the paper money!,” he said.
Thayer was right, Brooks told his colleagues. Only after history had rendered its verdict on the dead should anyone be honored on the nation’s money. In short order, the amendment passed, and since that time, no living person has made an appearance on the nation’s currency.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Stephen Mihm, an associate professor of history at the University of Georgia, is a contributor to Bloomberg Opinion.
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