To settle a dispute please inform us through Our Curiosity Shop whether the United States ever issued a coin called the “York shilling?” Was there not a coin of some kind called a York shilling?
Reader.
Answer.—The United States certainly never did mint any such coin. Neither did New York itself before the adoption of our present Constitution, under which individual States are not permitted to coin money. Most of the original thirteen States had issued bills of credit during colonial times, which had depreciated in the several colonies in different degrees, according to provisions made for their redemption and other incidents. In New England, after the adoption of the Federal decimal system, the pound in paper currency was worth only $3.33⅓ and the shilling 16⅔ cents, equal to six shillings to the dollar. This standard prevailed also in Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. In New York the paper currency pound was worth only $2.50, and so the shilling was reckoned but 12½ cents, equal to eight shillings to the dollar. This last is the “York shilling,” a money of account. The only coin that ever passed by that name is the Spanish real, known along the Ohio and Lower Mississippi as “a bit,” which, until a few years ago, was current through the country at 12½ cents, the value, as above shown, of the New York paper currency shilling of the olden times. In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland the pound was worth $2.70, making the shilling worth 13½ cents, or 7s. 6d. to the $1. In Georgia and South Carolina the pound was worth $4.20, and the shilling 21-3/7 cents, or 4s. 8d. to the dollar. Such was the force of habit that, long after the old colonial paper money passed out of use, people continued to buy and sell and keep accounts in pounds and shillings; and schoolboys were required to familiarize themselves with the rules for reducing the several State currencies to Federal currency.
THE GREAT NAPOLEON’S DEFEATS.
Chicago, Ill.
1. Was Bonaparte repulsed at Acre? 2. Was he forced to leave Egypt? 3. Did he make a disastrous retreat from Moscow? 4. Did the Duke of Wellington suffer defeats parallel to those endured by Napoleon Bonaparte?
Thomas Wilson.
Answer.—1. In 1799, after laying siege to the stronghold of Acre, Syria, for sixty-one days, Napoleon Bonaparte resolved to raise the siege and return to Egypt, where his presence was demanded by the threatening state of affairs, which culminated at last in the great battle of Aboukir, in which he defeated Murad Bey, for the second time, with great slaughter. There is no doubt that, although victorious over the Ottoman and Egyptian armies, the almost utter annihilation of the French fleet by the English and Turks in the famous naval battle of the Nile, some months before this, and the menacing state of affairs in France, made it prudent for Napoleon to take advantage of the prestige of this victory to retire from Egypt, leaving the government of the country he had conquered to General Kleber, who soon after this totally defeated the Ottoman army, 70,000 strong, before Heliopolis. Not until after Kleber was assassinated and months of the unwise administration of his successor, General Menou, did the insurrection fomented by the English, and finally assisted by an English naval and land force, compel the French under Menou, to withdraw from Egypt, nearly two years after Bonaparte himself had returned to France. Taken all in all the French expedition into Egypt, planned by Napoleon Bonaparte, although distinguished by several brilliant exploits, must be regarded from a political and military standpoint as a failure. 3. So was the expedition to Moscow, which, after a succession of victories, ended in a disastrous retreat in midwinter, forced upon the French, not by arms, but by threatening starvation and other results of the burning of Moscow. 4. The Duke of Wellington, although several times compelled to retreat before French armies during campaigns in the Netherlands and in Spain, never suffered any disasters comparable with those inflicted on Napoleon; neither did he ever exhibit, even at Waterloo, where, with the allies, he had double the strength of the French army, such marvelous generalship as made Napoleon Bonaparte for many years more than a match for all the powers of Europe combined, the arbiter of all their thrones.