This is from the interesting book "Totally Incorrect - Conversations with Doug Casey". (https://www.amazon.com/Totally-Incorrect-Conversations-Doug-Casey/dp/0988285134)
It was only in 1913 that US coins and bills had dead presidents on them. Before then, there was the buffalo, Indian, etc. But specifically NOT presidents. And of course, as he mentions below - 1913 was the start of the income tax, and then Federal Reserve.
Quite interesting to me is that in the days of the republic, Roman coins portrayed mythical figures, like gods and goddesses, and ideal concepts. They changed to portraits of the emperor after Caesar.
In the US, 1913—a pretty bad year overall, with the initiation of both the income tax and the Federal Reserve—was the year the first coin with a dead president's head on it was introduced, the Lincoln penny. Before then, we only had things like Liberty, Indians, buffaloes, etc. on our coins.
Since then, all our coins have had dead emperors on them. We started out with semi-mythic figures like Washington and Jefferson. But now we do the recently dead—Roosevelt, Kennedy, Eisenhower. It's simply wrong to put the features of your rulers on the coinage. The Romans, before Augustus, agreed. And, of course, gold was taken out of daily circulation in 1933, silver in 1965, and copper from the penny in 1982. Nothing new.
I wonder if there's some other parallels with Rome here. For the fall of Rome, there's certain dates, like The Crisis of the Third Century (235 AD) and the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths (410 AD), that are supposed to be very significant, like milestones along the path of the fall of Rome?
I wonder, if for the fall of the American empire, we'll be looking at 1913 and 1971...