Abraham Lincoln, the 16th U.S. President (February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865), a self-taught lawyer, he also served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1858, while campaigning for a seat in the U.S. Senate, Lincoln engaged incumbent Stephen A. Douglas in a series of debates over slavery. Though he lost the election, Lincoln's eloquence won him national attention, and in 1860, he received the Republican Presidential nomination. Lincoln became President of the United States in 1861 as the Nation descended into the Civil War.

While he was President, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves living in the Confederacy. Although the Confederate States ignored the proclamation, it allowed Union soldiers to free slaves they found in the South and recruit them into their army. By the time the Civil War ended, one out of eight members of the Union Army was black. On November 19, 1863, he delivered his famous Gettysburg Address. While the Civil War and efforts to abolish slavery dominated his presidency, Lincoln also signed into law the Homestead Act, which made it possible for poor people to buy land provided they agreed to settle and work there for at least five years. This law began the settlement of the American West.

On April 14, 1865 — only a few weeks into his second administration and just as the Civil War was ending — Lincoln was shot by Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, and died the next morning in Washington, D.C.

Designer and engraver: Don Everhart (DE).

Striking rendition of the Statue of Liberty, a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York City, in the United States. The Statue is the work of sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, who enlisted the assistance of engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower.

The Statue of Liberty was completed in 1884 in France and shipped to the United States in June 1885, having been disassembled into 350 individual pieces that were packed in over 200 crates for the transatlantic voyage. In four months’ time, it was re-assembled in New York Harbor, standing just over 151 feet from the top of the statue’s base to the tip of the torch her right hand holds high above the waters of New York Harbor.

Originally intended as a gift to celebrate the American Centennial in 1876, the Statue of Liberty was given to the United States as a symbol of the friendship forged between the new American government and the government of France during the American Revolutionary War.

Designer: Don Everhart (DE).

Inscribed along the edge of the coin is the year of minting or issuance of the coin, the mint mark, 13 stars, and also the legends E Pluribus Unum. E Pluribus Unum — Latin for "Out of many, one" — is a phrase on the Seal of the United States. Never codified by law, E Pluribus Unum was considered a de facto motto of the United States until 1956.

Position A: edge lettering reads upside-down when the president's portrait faces up.
Position B: edge lettering reads normally when the president's portrait faces up.