Question #97268. Asked by
misskissed1.
Last updated May 13 2021.
Other of Franklin's bills bore similar political themes. The eight-dollar bill depicted a harp whose thirteen strings represented the various colonies. The motto, Majora Minoribus Consonant, asserted that "the greater and smaller ones sound together." Franklin further explained that the harp’s frame, which united the strings "in the most perfect harmony," symbolized the Continental Congress. Several months later, he again sought to reinforce American unity, this time by portraying the colonies as a chain of thirteen links, which appeared on Congress's half-dollar bill and other fractional notes.
Franklin’s vision for U.S. money was decidedly republican: it incorporated neither kings nor coats of arms but rather celebrated selfless deeds and laudable persons. The Confederation Congress never followed through on its plans to establish a mint and so it could not adopt Franklin’s idea for a new coinage. But over the long course of U.S. history, Franklin’s numismatic vision came to prevail, making it possible for the image of a former runaway, an ex-apprentice, by virtue of his public service, to grace our hundred-dollar bill.
|
|