‘In God We Trust’ to appear on all U.S. currency, July 11, 1955
On this day in 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill mandating that the inscription “In God We Trust” be presented on all U.S. paper and coin currency. The first dollar bills bearing these words entered circulation in 1957, shortly after Congress made “In God We Trust” the official national motto.
Rep. Charles Bennett (D-Fla.) was the chief advocate for the measure’s passage. “Nothing can be more certain,” Bennett said, “than that our country was founded in a spiritual atmosphere and with a firm trust in God.”
“While the sentiment of trust in God is universal and timeless,” he added, “these particular four words ‘In God We Trust’ are indigenous to our country.”
In introducing the bill, Bennett, who served 44 years in the House, invoked the Cold War. “In these days,” he said, “when imperialistic and materialistic communism seeks to attack and destroy freedom, we should continually look for ways to strengthen the foundations of our freedom.”
(Bennett, who died in 2003 at age 93, remains the longest-serving member of either house of Congress in Florida’s history. The Democrats have fielded a candidate in the northeastern Florida district only four times since Bennett’s retirement in 1992, and none of them has cleared the 35 percent mark.)
Democratic Reps. Herman Eberharter of Pennsylvania and Oren Harris of Arkansas furthered Bennett’s initiative. It won quick support from the Banking and Currency Committee and cleared the House on an unrecorded voice vote. The Senate approved the measure less than three weeks later.
The biblically derived phrase first appeared in 1864, on the 2-cent coin, when Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase urged its adoption. It also appeared soon after the Civil War, if inconsistently, on nickels, quarters, half dollars and silver and gold dollars. An 1873 law permitted, but did not require, use of the motto.
The motto has been in continuous use on the one-cent coin since 1909, and on the 10-cent coin since 1916. It disappeared from the 5-cent coin in 1883, and did not reappear until production of the Jefferson nickel began in 1938. Since then, all U.S. coins have carried the inscription.
The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that the nation’s “institutions presuppose a Supreme Being” and that government recognition of God, on currency and elsewhere, does not constitute the establishment of a constitutionally prohibited state-sponsored religion.
Aside from constitutional objections, all of which have been set aside by the courts, President Theodore Roosevelt took issue with using the motto on coinage because he viewed putting God’s name on money to be an act of sacrilege.
A 2003 joint poll by USA Today, CNN and Gallup found that 90 percent of Americans support the inscription “In God We Trust” on U.S. coins.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF HISTORY AND PRESERVATION, CLERK OF THE U.S. HOUSE