Libertas Americana

The Libertas Americana medal is one of the most iconic medals in American history. Tasked with creating a monument to the American victory at the Battle of Yorktown, Benjamin Franklin instead envisioned a medal with powerful imagery, writing in 1782 that he had in mind striking a medal, “representing the United States by the figure of an infant Hercules in his cradle, strangling the two serpents, and France by that of Minerva sitting as his nurse, with her spear and helmet and her robes speckled with a few fleurs de lis.”

Augustin Dupré and Esprit-Antoine Gibelin developed the design which evolved to also show gratitude to France for acting as the protector of the infant United States as she fights the lioness Britannia who pounces at the baby. The obverse depicts Liberty with flowing hair flanked by a pole with a freedman’s cap. This design became a model for some of the first U.S. pattern coins in 1792 and 1793 and is an enduring image of America’s struggle for freedom and independence.