One of America’s guiding principles is the separation of church and state, but just as “there are no atheists in foxholes,” historically, when our nation is in crisis, religious sentiments tend to find new expression.
That was certainly the case during our greatest crisis, the Civil War, when America’s religious faithful, convinced that the war was God’s punishment for America’s insufficient religious fervor, appealed to the federal government to recognize the Deity in some official form. In what, in hindsight, was a fitting irony, the form finally settled on was to put a religious motto on our money.
As it happened, the Treasury secretary during the Civil War, Salmon P. Chase, was devoutly religious and he agreed that the “trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.” Chase therefore asked James Pollock, director of the U.S. Mint, to devise a suitable motto, and, borrowing from a little-remembered stanza in Francis Scott Key’s “The Star Spangled Banner” — “And this be our motto/ In God is our trust’ — the now familiar “In God We Trust” was chosen. It first appeared on the two-cent coin in 1864.
And then in 1865 Congress passed another act putting the motto on additional coins, including the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter and nickel. Eight years later Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1873, which gave the Treasury secretary the power to further expand the number of coins to include the motto.
Still, the decision to put a religious message on America’s money was not without controversy. Several prominent political leaders, including President Teddy Roosevelt, thought it was a “cheap stunt” at best and “sacrilege” at worst. One might as well put “In God We Trust” on postage stamps or billboards, Roosevelt complained, while others were convinced it violated church-state separation.
Partly as a result, the motto was taken off some coins, while retained on others, a “compromise” that satisfied no one, so this week (May 18) in 1908, Congress finally made the motto mandatory on all coins that previously had included it.
Which left open the question as to whether the motto would be mandatory on future currency, but that question was settled during another national crisis, the Cold War, when Congress passed a law requiring that the motto appear on all currency, paper as well as coins.
“In these days when imperialistic and materialistic Communism seeks to attack and destroy freedom,” the congressional directive read, America must not forget “this self-evident truth, that as long as this country trusts in God, it will prevail.”
Seeking to ensure that America permanently prevails, a year later, in 1956, Congress made “In God We Trust” the national motto. Which it remains today.
