In this task, you will be given a passage to read. A fill in the blank question will be given to you. Your answer should fit the blank appropriately.

The gold dollar continued to be produced in the late 1850s , though mintages declined from the figures of two million or more each year between 1850 and 1854 . Only about 51 @,@ 000 gold dollars were produced in 1860 , with over two @-@ thirds of that figure at Philadelphia , just under a third at San Francisco , and 1 @,@ 566 at Dahlonega . Roughly a hundred are known of the last , creating one of the great rarities from Dahlonega in the series . The other candidate for the rarest from that mint is the 1861 @-@ D , with an estimated mintage of 1 @,@ 000 and perhaps 45 to 60 known . Two pairs of dies were shipped from Philadelphia to Dahlonega on December 10 , 1860 ; they arrived on January 7 , 1861 , two weeks before Georgia voted to secede from the Union , as the American Civil War began . Under orders from Governor Joseph E. Brown , state militia secured the mint , and at some point , small quantities of dollars and half eagles were produced . Records of how many coins were struck and when have not survived . Since dies crack in time , and all the mints were supplied with them from Philadelphia , coining could not last , and in May 1861 , coins and supplies remaining at Dahlonega were turned over to the treasury of the Confederate States of America , which Georgia had by then joined . Gold coins with a face value of $ 6 were put aside for assay . Normally , they would have been sent to Philadelphia to await the following year 's meeting of the United States Assay Commission , when they would be available for testing . Instead , these were sent to the initial Confederate capital of Montgomery , Alabama , though what was done with them there , and their ultimate fate , are unknown . The rarity of the 1861 @-@ D dollar , and the association with the Confederacy , make it especially prized . Dahlonega , like the other two branch mints in the South , closed its doors after the 1861 strikings . It and the Charlotte facility never reopened ; the New Orleans Mint again struck coins from 1879 to 1909 , but did not strike gold dollars again . After 1861 , the only issuance of gold dollars outside Philadelphia was at San Francisco , in 1870 . The outbreak of the Civil War shook public confidence in the Union , and citizens began hoarding specie , gold and silver coins . In late December 1861 , banks and then the federal Treasury stopped paying out gold at face value . By mid @-@ 1862 , all federal coins , even the base metal cent , had vanished from commerce in much of the country . The exception was the Far West , where for the most part , only gold and silver were acceptable currencies , and paper money traded at a discount . In the rest of the nation , gold and silver coins could be purchased from banks , exchange agents , and from the Treasury for a premium in the new greenbacks the government began to issue to fill the gap in commerce and finance the war . fill in the blank : The gold dollar continued to be produced in the late __________________s , though mintages declined from the figures of two million or more each year between __________________ and 1854 .
1850