There were three types of silver dollar coins circulated between 1850 and 1900. They were the “Seated Liberty,” the “Trade dollar” and the “Morgan dollar.” Each had an interesting history, and a very specific use in American trade and commerce.

Seated Liberty Silver Dollar
The Seated Liberty silver dollar was circulated for a very long time (from 1836 until 1873). After the Civil War broke out, a Pennsylvania minister asked the Secretary of the Treasury to consider whether the Mint could produce coins that would pay tribute to God. The Director of the mint, James Pollock, considered several different mottos:
• God our trust
• God and Our Country
• In God We Trust

He finally chose, “In God We Trust,” and the motto began to appear on U.S. coins. The Seated Liberty half-dollar was a coin that showed America’s religious and patriotic feelings.

Trade dollar
Another historical event soon influenced the design of the Silver dollar coin. Miners in Western Nevada had discovered the Comstock Lode, the richest silver deposit in the United States, in the late 1850's. Soon, there was a rush to get rich mining because there was $300 million-worth of precious metals in the area.

Suddenly, there was a huge supply of silver available on the market, and miners and investors found it hard to sell their silver. The market price of silver started to drop. There was one thing miners could do to get their money’s-worth out of their silver. They could deposit it with the U.S. mint to change it into silver coins. As a result, the mint made millions of silver dollar coins in 1871 and 1872.

Congress had to do something about it. The mint was forced to make millions of silver dollar coins that nobody needed! So, Congress created the Coinage Act of 1873, and ordered the mint to stop making silver dollars. The powerful mining industry did not like this, and they complained and made threats until Congress came up with another plan—one that would make it possible for miners to produce silver coins without putting too many of them in circulation for people to spend. The plan was to produce a "Trade Dollar." It was a coin that was minted only so that it could be used to trade with foreign countries such as China and India. It was not supposed to be used very much inside the United States.

Congress made one mistake, however, and allowed some of the Trade Dollars to be used as legal tender in the U.S. Millions of trade dollars were dumped into circulation, and soon, sneaky employers realized that they could buy Trade Dollars from the banks for about eighty cents. Then they would pay their workers for a dollar’s-worth of labor by putting a trade dollar in the worker’s pay envelope. When workers went to the bank to deposit their pay, the banks refused to take the coins, or told employees they were only worth eighty cents. Workers, who earned about $10.00 per week for their labor did not like it at all when the banks told them the money in their pay envelopes was really only worth about $8.00.

Soon, no one would take a trade dollar, and the government stopped producing them.

Morgan dollar
Silver miners had a lot of power with the government, and eventually, they succeeded in forcing the government to start producing silver dollars again, even though it cost more to make the coins than they were worth. The designer of the new coin was George T. Morgan, and he asked a Philadelphia schoolteacher named Anna Willess Williams to pose for the new design.

Some people didn’t like the design of the new dollar. They thought the eagle on the reverse of the coin looked too skinny, and the coin became known as “the buzzard dollar.” Morgan was the first designer to include his own initials on the coin (both sides of the Morgan dollar have an “M” in the design).