To celebrate the bicentennial of Abraham LincolnÂ’s birth, the US Mint will issue commemorative pennies with a variety of designs on the reverse.

“A penny for your thoughts” will have extra meaning in 2009 — the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Lincoln cent.

To commemorate the event, the U.S. Mint, at the direction of Congress, will introduce four rotating designs on the 1-cent coin for that year depicting different aspects of LincolnÂ’s life.

Those designs will replace the engraving of the Lincoln Memorial on the “tails” side of the coin. The famous profile of the 16th president will remain on the “heads” side.

The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, which provides recommendations on such matters, met Tuesday and got into a lively debate over what those rotating images should be.

The question of the design to depict the Lincoln presidency provoke some discussion and dispute. The panel didnÂ’t like the designs of the incomplete US Capitol building (Lincoln ordered construction to continue during the war to signify that the union would endure). Instead, there was a request for designs related to Lincoln as a war president (perhaps visiting troops) or relating to emancipation. Personally, I believe a design depicting Lincoln at Gettysburg would be most appropriate, given the fact that the Gettysburg Address so neatly unifies those two elements.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

A masterpiece of American rhetoric and a cogent statement of our nation’s republican form of government, love of liberty, and debt to those who serve our nation in time of war. They are words to remember today – ideas appropriate to commemoration on our nation’s coinage.

H/T Don Surber

Posted by: Greg at 10:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 555 words, total size 4 kb.