Why did they put the presidents' faces on US coins?

Answer 1

The first "presidential" coin was the Lincoln cent. Lincoln's image was put on the coin in honor of his centennial anniversary. For a long time after that it was considered to be a kind of one-time decision, but in 1932 the Mint used similar thinking to issue a commemorative quarter in honor of George Washington's bicentennial anniversary. The coin was only supposed to be issued for one year but was so popular that the design was brought back in 1934 and we still have it today.

Those 2 decisions set the precedent for the use of presidential portraits in spite of George Washington's original insistence that coins should never carry portraits; he felt that it was similar to the practice of putting the King's image on a coin like they did in England.

Jefferson's image followed in 1938, because he is considered almost as important as Washington in founding the country. FDR's image went on the dime in 1946 because he had polio and was a founder of the March of Dimes to collect money for research.

When the Walking Liberty design expired in 1947 Ben Franklin was chosen as the first non-president, but that design lasted only until the Kennedy assassination. Originally the plans were to put his portrait on the quarter but it was felt it would be inappropriate to displace Washington, so the half was chosen instead as it was now the only coin not to have a president's image. Unfortunately the result was that the new halves were saved by the billions as mementos, effectively killing the denomination as a circulating coin.

Presidential portraits have now become so much a part of coinage that they are fiercely defended by the delegations from each leader's state, often for purely political purposes. For example when the Mint proposed removing Jefferson's portrait from the nickel, the VA delegation used parliamentary maneuvers to hold up almost all work in Congress until a bill was passed guaranteeing that TJ's picture would stay on the coin forever. Given that action, it's very unlikely that our coins will ever have any other images on them, sad to say.