At The Future of Freedom Foundation, Jacob G. Hornberger explains the intent of the Constitution’s Framers for the American system of money, and what FDR ultimately did to destroy that intent. Hornberger writes:

Once the Constitution was ratified and the federal government came into existence, the federal government began issuing gold coins and silver coins. Those coins became the official money of the United States and continued being such for more than a century. The stability they afforded in terms of value was a major factor contributing to the enormous increase in the overall standard of living of the American people in the late 1800s.

Why did the Framers adopt a gold-coin, silver-coin standard and reject a paper-money standard? Because they knew that with a paper-money standard, federal officials would inevitably begin inflating the amount of paper money in circulation by simply using a printing press to print any amount of paper money they wanted, in order to pay for their ever-growing expenditures. The Framers knew that that is what regimes had done ever since Gutenberg invented the printing press.

While it was possible to debase the value of gold coins and silver coins by surreptitiously and fraudulently reducing their gold and silver content, that never happened with U.S. coins. America’s gold coins and silver coins were among the most honest and reputable coins in world history.

This remarkable constitutional monetary system came to an abrupt end in the 1930s. Using the Great Depression as an excuse, President Franklin Roosevelt decreed a permanent end to America’s gold-coin, silver-coin monetary system. He ordered that it be replaced with a paper-money system — the very system that the Framers and our American ancestors had rejected. FDR did this without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

Thus, for some 90 years, Americans have lived under the paper-money system that FDR established. When we examine what his paper-money system has done to the value of people’s money, we can understand why the Framers and our American ancestors were so ardently opposed to a paper-money system and why they chose instead a gold-coin/silver coin monetary system.

Read more here.