…and some of you are asking, “What the Hell is Nemo talking about?”
The United States Mint issued a series of dollar coins commemorating the Presidents of the United States.
As a follow-up to that, the Mint is now issuing a series of First Spouse coins. Alright, no problem. But they ran into a few issues that needed to be resolved. Not every President was married while he served as President. Buchanan never married and four Presidents were widowers before assuming office. There were also six Presidents who were married more than once (and Wilson was married to two different women while he was President).
So the Mint could have decided to honor all of the women who were married to a President, including those who died before their husbands were President. Or the Mint could have chosen to honor the women who filled the ceremonial role of First Lady for the Presidents who were unmarried while in office. Or the Mint could have done both or neither.
What the Mint decided to do was try to maintain a pairing by matching each President to his wife if he was married while in office. For those who weren’t, some generic “Liberty” coins were issued. (Wilson, having screwed the whole thing up, got a coin issued for both his wives.) I think this was a poor choice but I wasn’t consulted. It was, if nothing else, at least a consistent system.
Except for Alice Paul. (Remember her? She was in the thread title.) Alice Paul was a historical figure - she was a leading figure in the women’s suffrage movement and a noteworthy figure. She was not some abstract personification of Liberty. Nor was she, by any stretch of the imagination, a First Spouse, no matter how loosely you define the term.
But apparently back when the Presidential One Dollar Coin Act of 2005 was enacted, somebody decided to pork barrel Paul in. A special provision was made that one of the First Spouse coins would honor Paul. Chester Alan Arthur’s was chosen because there was a vacancy (Ellen Arthur having died a year before her husband was elected) and this was “justified” by the fact that Paul was born during Arthur’s term of office.
Now I have great admiration for Alice Paul. She did a good job for a good cause and righted a long-existing wrong. If they wanted to issue a series of coins honoring Great Americans, I’d be happy to see her included. But she was simply not a First Spouse and she doesn’t belong in this commemorative series.