The U.S. Mint has unveiled new designs for coins to mark the country’s 250th anniversary, and redesign of the dime excludes the olive branch carried by the eagle in the United States seal.
The ten-cent coin has had the same design since 1946, featuring President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who died in 1945) on one side, and on the back, a torch with branches of olive and oak. The Semiquincentennial version of the dime instead features “a determined Liberty as the winds of revolution waft through her hair” on the front, per the Mint, and an eagle carrying arrows in its talons on the reverse.
“The designs on these historic coins depict the story of America’s journey toward a ‘more perfect union,’ and celebrate America’s defining ideals of liberty,” said U.S. Mint Deputy Director Kristie McNally. “We hope to offer each American the opportunity to hold our nation’s storied 250 years of history in the palms of their hands.”
Notably missing from the eagle’s talons are an olive branch. The Great Seal of the United States, which the coin’s reverse design draws from, features an eagle with an olive branch in one set of its talons and thirteen arrows in the other. As the National Museum of American Diplomacy notes, “The eagle always casts its gaze toward the olive branch signifying that our nation desires to pursue peace but stands ready to defend itself.”
As Fortune editor Catherina Gioino notes, “For a country that sure loves its symbols, the olive branch omission from the back of the dime raises some eyebrows.” She added, “Charles Thomson, who shepherded the final design [of the Seal], was explicit: the arrows represented the power of war, the olive branch the power of peace, and together they carried a single message: the United States had a strong desire for peace, but would always be ready for war. The eagle’s head facing the olive branch was not incidental. It was a statement of national preference, drawn directly from the Olive Branch Petition of 1775, Congress’s last diplomatic appeal to King George III before the war escalated beyond return.”
Thus, Gioino writes, “Dropping the olive branch from the dime isn’t just a design choice: it’s a cultural signal. The Founders spent six years perfecting the balance between peace and war on the Great Seal. Erasing half of that equation, on a coin meant to celebrate their legacy and especially 250 years after they fought for ‘Liberty over Tyranny,’ says something about which half the country currently feels like.”
