No quarters had been made since 1807 when, in July 1815, the Planters Bank of New Orleans asked the Mint for them. The Mint had no quarter dies or hubs and offered dimes instead, but the bank insisted, so John Reich adapted the Capped Bust design he had made for the half dollar and dime. The 89,235 quarters of 1815, all from one pair of dies, were delivered on December 16, 1815 and January 10, 1816. A fire at the Mint in January 1816 then halted silver coinage, and quarters did not return until 1818.
From 1818 to 1828 quarters were struck every year except 1826, in small and uneven amounts. Dies were kept and re-dated: three 1822 obverses left over after a small coinage became the 1823/2, the 1824/2 and the 1825 overdates. The Mint also reported deliveries by calendar year rather than by date, so several figures are uncertain. NGC thinks only 1,800 quarters were struck with the date 1823, that the 16,000 delivered on December 31, 1823 were 1824/2s, and that the 4,000 delivered in December 1827 were dated 1828 or 1825. No 1827 quarters went into circulation. The few originals are traditionally called proofs, and restrikes were later made from the same obverse die, most of them decades afterward.
No quarters were struck in 1829 or 1830. When the quarter returned in 1831, William Kneass, chief engraver since 1823, had reworked Reich's design for a smaller coin struck in a close collar. Mint Director Samuel Moore regarded E PLURIBUS UNUM as repeating UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and on January 28, 1831 President Andrew Jackson approved dropping it from the quarter. Mintages rose, reaching 1,952,000 in 1835. Christian Gobrecht's Seated Liberty quarter replaced the design in September 1838.
