raw attention to an unaccountable delay in the execution of
one of the medals. It seems scarcely credible that the one voted in
1857 to Dr. Elisha Kent Kane for his discoveries in the Arctic Seas
has not yet been struck. Elder, in his "Life of E. K. Kane" (page
228), says:

"Congress having failed at its first session after his (Kane's)
return to appropriate, by a national recognition, the honors he
had won for his country, had no other opportunity for repairing
the neglect till after his death; then a gold medal was ordered,
of which, I believe, nothing has been heard since the passage of
the resolution."

To complete my undertaking, it was necessary not only to study the
composition and history of all our national medals, but also to have
plates of them engraved, which could only be done from the originals
or copies, or, as a last resort, from casts.

My first step was to apply to the Mint in Philadelphia for bronze
copies of all the medals. In 1855 the director of that establishment
had been authorized by the Secretary of the Treasury, to strike from
the original dies, copies of the medals for sale, as is the custom at
the Paris Mint. But when he sought to avail himself of this
authorization, it was discovered that many of the dies were missing.
It was thought probable that those of the medals which had been (p. xxviii)
struck in France during the War of Independence would be found there,
and the French Government was communicated with, in 1861, in regard to
the following: "Washington before Boston; General Wayne, for capture
of Stony Point; Colonel Fleury, for same; Captain Stewart, for same;
Major Lee, for capture of Paulus Hook; Colonel John Eager Howard, for
Cowpens; Colonel William Washington, for same; Major-General Greene,
for Eutaw Springs; Captain John Paul Jones, for capture of the Serapis
by the Bonhomme Richard."[13]

[Footnote 13: See H, page xlvii.]

But the Paris Mint possessed only the dies of the two Washington, of
the Howard, and of the John Paul Jones medals; moreover, the rules of
that establishment did not permit them to be given up. Bronze copies
of the four were obtained, however, and from them Messrs. George
Eckfeldt and R. Jefferson of the Philadelphia Mint cut new dies.

In Washington, in January, 1872, I was informed by Mr. Spofford, of
the Library of Congress, that after the fire which destroyed a portion
of that library, December 24,