Then There's the 1837 Panic

When the Constitution was put into effect George Washington tapped Alexander Hamilton to refound the monetary system and he based the system on a commodity standards that would be things like gold and silver so government could take on a national debt. During the civil war we had something called greenbacks and because of Gresham's law sometimes the government would fix it would be like you know okay this many ounces of silver to this many ounce of gold but that wasn't the real price so people would want one over the other. Ulysses S Grant and Grant wanted the currency to be based entirely on gold he supported the gold standard a standard, which essentially ensured the gold standard in the United States for generation.