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| 1922 $100 Gold Certificate Thomas Hart Benton |
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| 1922 $100 Gold Certificate |
Paper Money of the United States: One Hundred Dollar Gold Certificate, Series of 1922
Obverse: Thomas Hart Benton is the man wearing a bow tie on the left hand side of bill. He was politician in the 1850s and was featured on the $100 gold certificate as early as 1882.
The reverse featured a perched Bald Eagle and the Roman numeral for 100, C.
Signatures: (as depicted) Harvey V. Speelman (Register of the Treasury) and Frank White, Treasurer of the United States.
Predominant colors: The obverse and the back is a bright orange-gold color as a reminder that this note was redeemable for gold.
Printer & Engraver: Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Inscriptions: Gold Certificate - This Certifies That There Have Been Deposited In The Treasury Of The United States Of America One Hundred Dollars In Gold Coin Repayable To The Bearer On Demand - Series of 1922 - Register Of The Treasury - Treasurer Of The United States - Amer Septent Sigil Thesaur - The United States Gold Certificate - This certificate is a legal tender in the amount thereof in payment of all debts and dues public and private. Acts of March 14, 1900, as amended and December 24, 1919 - Bureau Engraving & Printing
United States Gold Certificates, Series 1922
1922 50 Dollar Bill Gold Certificate 1922 100 Dollar Bill Gold Certificate
1922 500 Dollar Bill Gold Certificate 1922 1000 Dollar Bill Gold Certificate
Thomas Hart Benton
Thomas Hart Benton (born March 14, 1782, near Hillsborough, N.C., U.S. — died April 10, 1858, Washington, D.C.), nicknamed "Old Bullion", was a U.S. Senator from Missouri and a staunch advocate of westward expansion of the United States. He served in the Senate from 1821 to 1851, becoming the first member of that body to serve five terms. Benton was an architect and champion of westward expansion by the United States, a cause that became known as Manifest Destiny.
After military service in the War of 1812, Benton settled in St. Louis, Mo., in 1815 and became editor of the St. Louis Enquirer (1818–20). Vigorously asserting that the West must “share in the destinies of this Republic,” he appealed to a mixture of agrarian, commercial, and slaveholding interests and was elected a U.S. senator in 1820, an office he held until 1851.
Building an electoral base among small farmers and traders in the mid-1820s, Benton became a crusader for the distribution of public lands to settlers. His views on many issues grew to coincide with those of President Andrew Jackson, and he was soon acknowledged as the chief spokesman for the Democratic Party in the Senate. In the 1830s he led in Congress Jackson’s successful fight to dissolve the Bank of the United States. Benton also eschewed wildcat state banks as economically unsound; rather, he advocated a federal independent treasury and a hard-money policy.
Although he was generally considered proslavery and pro-Southern and was an early supporter of statehood for Missouri without restriction on bondage, in the 1840s he came to oppose the extension of slavery into the territories on the grounds that it inhibited the national growth and was a menace both to the Union and to his vision of the freeholder’s Arcadia. This steadfast antislavery position, applied repeatedly to emotionally charged sectional issues, finally cost him his Senate seat in 1851. He continued his opposition in the House of Representatives, however, from 1853 to 1855. Unlike many other antislavery Democrats, he rejected the newly formed Republican Party, and he went so far as to oppose his own son-in-law, John C. Frémont, as Republican presidential nominee (1856).
Benton’s imposing memoir-history of his years in the Senate, Thirty Years’ View, 2 vol. (1854–56), was eloquent with agrarian and Jacksonian Democratic faith, opposition to slavery extension, and concern for the imperiled Union. He produced a learned Examination of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1858 (which reaffirmed that the status of slaves, as property, could not be affected by federal legislation), and his 16-volume Abridgement of the Debates of Congress through 1850 is still useful.
United States 100 Dollar Bills