In late 19th-century Yankee history, advocacy of unlimited coinage of silver. The movement was precipitated by an act of Congress in 1873 that omitted the silver dollar from the list of licensed coins (the “Crime of 'seventy three”). Supporters of free silver included homeowners of silver mines in the West, farmers who believed that an expanded currency would increase the worth of their crops, and debtors who hoped it'd enable them to pay their debts more easily. For true believers, silver became the image of economic justice for the mass of the Yankee people.

The Free Silver Movement gained added political strength at the outset as a result of of the sharp economic depression of the mid-1870s. Its 1st important success was the enactment of the Bland-Allison Act in 1878, which restored the silver dollar as legal tender and needed the U.S. Treasury to buy every month between $a pair of,000,000 and $4,000,000 value of silver and coin it into dollars. When farm costs improved in the early Eighteen Eighties, pressure for new financial legislation declined, however the collapse of land and farm prices beginning in 1887 revived the demand by farmers for the unlimited coinage of silver. Congress responded in 1890 by enactment of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, that increased the govt's monthly silver purchases by 50 percent.

In the years immediately after 1890, a mix of pressures sharply reduced the number of gold in the U.S. Treasury, precipitating a panic within the spring of 1893. Conservatives charged that the Sherman Act was the reason for the panic, and within the summer of 1893 Congress repealed that act. Farmers within the South and West condemned this action, blamed the greed of eastern bankers for the depressed state of the economy, and resumed their demand for the unlimited coinage of silver.

This had been an necessary objective of the Populist Party within the election of 1892, and in 1896 the Democrats, despite strong opposition from President Grover Cleveland, made unlimited coinage of silver the principal plank in their platform. They then nominated William Jennings Bryan, the most effective champion of free silver (see Cross of Gold speech), as their candidate for president. The Republicans won the election, and in 1900 a Republican majority in Congress enacted the Gold Customary Act, which made gold the only real normal for all currency.