1848 BRAIDED HAIR 1C PR64 Red Brown

You wouldn’t thing that a war happening in the South-West of the United States would relate to an area in the North-east, however, that was not the case from 1845-1848. Philadelphia, where many coins were still minted, felt direct repercussions of the Mexican-American War, which ended in 1848, due to its reputation as one of the country’s most important cities and its population size. The Pennsylvanian governor at the time, Francis R. Shunk whose term ended in 1848, sent volunteers to help the U.S. front as the need arose. Unfortunately, during the same time Philadelphia was nearing the end of what is now considered two of the worst decades for the city in which it saw mass epidemics of both riots and disease; much of this violence was carried over to the war front. One of the main causes of the violence that carried into 1848 was the ever popular Nativist movement that began in 1844. It was quite obvious that violence would continue on into 1850 as a head party leader was once again re-elect in 1858 to a seat in the House.
As a “middle-of-the-road” year for this particular one-cent coin design, considered to still be the best of all the Liberty head designs, this denomination became exponentially useless as time passed. In any case, despite the same design being struck as proofs only on some half-cent years, there were very few to no coin proofs struck for the one-cent from 1839 to 1857; making each available proof a rarity.