Indian Peace Medal - 1853 Franklin Pierce, J-IP-32 Silver 76mm VF Ex.Garrett

Franklin Pierce Indian Peace Medals

Salathiel Ellis, who collaborated with Joseph Willson on the Millard Fillmore IPMs, was the artist for the Franklin Pierce IPMs. Ellis cut the dies for the obverse dies for the two sizes of the medal. He employed Willson's reverse from the Fillmore medals for the new one. It was within a week of Pierce's inauguration that the patron of Ellis and Willson, Ransom H. Gillet, wrote to Robert McClellan, the new Secretary of the Interior, "...a medallion likeness of the President is to be struck for his Indian children, as the chiefs call themselves...Permit me to ask the employment of Mr. Salathiel Ellis...He & Joseph Wilson [sic]...made that medallion of President Fillmore, which gave great satisfaction." Gillet added that "worthier men cannot be found, & none more deserve the patronage of our friends." McClellan approved the artist, and George W. Manypenny, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, made all necessary arrangement. He invited Ellis to visit Washington to meet and discuss the medal, while Gillet made arrangements for Pierce to sit for the young artist.

Using a new procedure, Manypenny drew up a formal contract with Ellis to produce the Pierce medals. The artists was to be paid $2,479.64, and received old Indian Peace medals containing around 264 ounces of silver to be used for the new IPMs. In exchange, Ellis agreed to cut the obverse dies carrying the profile bust of the president, and to employ the previous reverse dies to produce 120 large medals that were at least five ounces each. Plus 150 of the smaller medals that were at least three-and-one-quarter ounces each. The contract said that payment would be made as the work progressed. There were problems with producing the medals in New York. The larger medals were larger than they were supposed to be, while the smaller medals were below the specified minimum weight per the contract. Ellis also miscalculated the price he had to pay for silver: he thought he could get it for $1.21 per ounce, but it cost him $1.40 for an ounce. Manypenny solved the problem by accepting the lighter, smaller medals in return for Ellis's loss on the price of silver. Most of the Pierce IPMs were distributed. Only 23 large and 22 smaller medals were melted down for future medals.

Franklin Pierce and the Indians

In 1854 President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, incorporating territories into the US that included parts of present-day Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, and opened them up to white settlers. The Act provided for a railroad connecting Chicago with California. What stood in the way of the railroad, however, were over 10,000 members of Kickapoo, Delaware, Sac and Fox, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kansas, Wyandot, and Osage tribes. Those people had rights to their land guaranteed by treaties, but the US government was working to undermine those documents. The decade before the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act saw Congress appropriate lots of money to pay for railroad surveys and to liquidate Indian deeds to the land.

Meanwhile the Indian Ring, composed of politicians, rail companies, and land speculators, bought off politicians, took public money, and expropriated Indian lands. Indian agents forced Indians into corrupt deals, negotiating dozens of treaties with eastern Indian tribes that already had been resettled in Kansas. These new treaties removed those tribes a second time, while other treaties forced other tribes to give up land to make room for them.

Historian Clifford Trafzer, who wrote the book, American Indians/American Presidents, tells us that between 1854 and 1871, the Indian Ring employed "threats, bribes, and promises to force Native people to ceded thousands of acres of land, ushering in a second era of Indian removal in which the government forcibly relocated all but a handful of Indian bands from eastern Kansas, opening the territory for railroad development and white settlement."

Pierce, in his second annual address to Congress in December 1854, strongly urged that they increase military force to protect settlers. "The settlers on the frontier have suffered much from the incursions of predatory bands. The recurrence of such scenes can only be prevented by teaching these wild tribes the power of and their responsibility to the United States."   

Franklin Pierce Indian Peace Medal for Indians and Collectors

Dated 1853, the original silver medals were produced in 76 mm and 62 mm sizes. As with the Fillmore IPMs, the Pierce medals were not struck at the Mint. R.W. Julian writes, "The silver medals were again struck privately, possibly by Smith and Hartmann of New York City, one of the leading medallists of the period." The smaller medal was generally sold to collectors as a restrike after 1861. However, the larger example was produced regularly for numismatists before 1892.