GoldSilverHQ
gold—silver—

1776

Continental paper

Independence, new Continental notes, and a book that still treated gold and silver as money.

Obverse of a two-dollar Continental currency note dated February 17, 1776.
Two-dollar Continental note, emission of 17 February 1776.Public domain. Colonial Currency collection, University of Notre Dame.

On 4 July 1776 the Continental Congress declared independence. The war was already being paid in part with Continental currency, first authorized in 1775. The two-dollar note of 17 February 1776 promises the bearer two Spanish milled dollars, or the value in gold or silver. The promise is printed. The metal is not the paper.

Silver and gold coin, including the Spanish dollar, remained the metal people could test. The later saying “not worth a continental” names the paper’s collapse in the years after this one. It is not a 1776 price. The same year, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (9 March) still described gold and silver as the money trade had selected.