Definition
A gold coin of the United States with a face value of twenty dollars. The double eagle was so named because it represented twice the value of the eagle coin, which carried a face value of ten dollars. Authorized by Congress in 1849, the double eagle was struck in standard gold at nine-hundred-thousandths fineness and weighed five hundred and sixteen grains. It constituted legal tender for its face value without limit. The coin circulated as a primary instrument of large commercial transactions throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, until the domestic gold standard was effectively ended and private gold coin holdings were restricted in the 1930s.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A gold coin with a face value of $20 formerly used in the United States; also, in golf, a score of three under par on a single hole; also, a heraldic representation of a two-headed eagle as used in the arms of Russia and Austria.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A gold coin of the United States worth twenty dollars.
The legal term is narrower than modern common usage suggests. In legal and commercial documents, a double eagle is always the U.S. gold coin. The golf usage and the heraldic usage are entirely outside the legal meaning and will not appear in any legal instrument or statute. A researcher encountering "double eagle" in historical contracts, probate inventories, banking records, or criminal indictments should read it exclusively as a reference to the $20 gold coin.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter the double eagle most frequently in four contexts: monetary statutes and regulations, commercial and banking records, criminal law (counterfeiting, coin clipping, and later hoarding prosecutions), and probate or estate inventories where coin collections or cash holdings are described.
The most significant research trap is temporal. After Executive Order 6102 (1933) and the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, private ownership of gold coins in quantity became federally restricted, and double eagles held in private hands entered a legally ambiguous status. Documents from the 1930s onward may reference double eagles in the context of seizure, forfeiture, or compliance, rather than ordinary commercial exchange. The coin's legal meaning as tender did not disappear from statutes overnight, but its practical status as circulating currency did.
A second research consideration involves valuation disputes. In estates, insurance claims, and commercial litigation from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the question of whether a double eagle should be valued at face ($20) or at market (often a premium over face, especially in times of currency instability) generated litigation. Researchers examining such disputes should note whether the document treats the coin as currency or as commodity.
The double eagle also surfaces in numismatic law. The 1933 double eagle — the last year of mintage before restrictions took effect — became the subject of significant federal forfeiture litigation in the modern era, illustrating how a historical monetary instrument can reenter contemporary legal proceedings through property and forfeiture doctrine. Researchers should not assume that double eagle litigation is confined to the nineteenth century.
Corpus connections: Double eagle appears in monetary statutes alongside eagle, half eagle, and quarter eagle. Bouvier's reference to the Act of March 3, 1849 and the Revised Statutes is the controlling legislative lineage; tracing amendments to those provisions will map the coin's full statutory life.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three dictionary sources agree on the essential definition: a U.S. gold coin worth twenty dollars. The entries are brief and primarily descriptive, reflecting the term's status as a defined monetary instrument rather than a contested legal concept.
Bouvier's entry is the most substantive, providing the fineness standard (nine hundred thousandths), the weight (five hundred and sixteen grains), the legal tender character, and the statutory basis in the Act of March 3, 1849. This makes Bouvier's the preferred starting point for any research requiring the coin's technical monetary specifications. Black's and Rapalje & Lawrence offer the same core definition without elaboration, sufficient for identification but not for technical monetary or statutory analysis.
None of the historical dictionaries address the post-1933 regulatory transformation of the double eagle's legal status. This is an expected gap — the restriction of private gold ownership postdates the relevant editions — but it means that researchers relying solely on historical dictionaries will have an incomplete picture if their research extends into the New Deal era or later.
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Jurisdictional Note
As a federal monetary instrument, the double eagle's legal definition and tender status were creatures of federal law exclusively. State law governed some downstream questions — valuation in estates, treatment in commercial contracts — but the coin's status as legal tender and the regulations governing its possession were entirely federal. No meaningful state-by-state variation exists in the core definition.
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