Required Reading:
Robert Greenfield and Hugh Rockoff, "Yellowbacks out West and Greenbacks Back East: Social-Choice Dimensions of Monetary Reform," Southern Economic Journal 1996, pp. 902-915.
Look at this website on currency issues and the 1896 presidential election. At the bottom, you will find a number of pro- and anti-silver cartoons. Print one, and come to class prepared to discuss it.

Further (and Background) Reading:
Milton Friedman, "The Crime of 1873," Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990), 1159-1194.
Milton Friedman and Anna Schwarz, The Monetary History of the United States (1971).
W. Nugent, The Money Question during Reconstruction (1967).
Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance (1964).