James Pollock - Political Career

Political Career

James Pollock graduated from the College of New Jersey at Princeton before setting up a law practice in his home community, in Milton, Pennsylvania. District attorney and judicial appointments followed and in 1844 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives where he served three successive terms.

As a freshman congressman, Pollock boarded in the same rooming house as another new congressman, Abraham Lincoln and they soon developed a mutual respect and longstanding friendship.

Pollock was an early supporter of Samuel Morse and his idea for a telegraph and was instrumental in getting the United States Congress to appropriate a small amount to help build the first line. He was present in the room when the first message, “What hath God wrought” was received, ushering in a new age of telecommunication.

Pollock was also the first in Congress to advocate the construction of a railroad across the continent, connecting newly acquired California with the east. In a speech in 1848 he said, “At the risk of being considered insane, I will venture the prediction that, in less than twenty-five years from this evening, a railroad will be completed and in operation between New York and San Francisco, California.” The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, four years inside the limit fixed by Mr. Pollock.

He returned to the judiciary in Pennsylvania's Eighth District in 1850.

Pollock was nominated by the Whig Party for the governor's race in 1854, amid controversy surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

During his administration, Pennsylvania began to sell its publicly held railroads and canals, and he helped steer the state through the financial Panic of 1857. He chaired the Pennsylvania delegation to the Washington Peace Convention in 1861, and was appointed by President Lincoln as Director of the Philadelphia mint that same year. While leading the United States Mint, he was instructed by the Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase in a letter to come up with suggestions for including "the trust of our people in God" in a motto on America's coins. Pollock proposed a number of mottos, including "Our Trust Is In God" and "God Our Trust," which Chase ultimately revised to "In God We Trust."

The 1864 two-cent piece was the first coin with the approved motto and today all American coins are inscribed with “In God We Trust.”