Free Silver was an important political issue in the late 19th century United States. To understand exactly what is meant by "free coinage of silver", it is necessary to understand the way mints operated in the days of the gold standard. Essentially, anyone who possessed uncoined gold, such as successful prospectors, or assayers or refiners to whom they had sold their holdings, could deposit it at one of the U.S. Mints, where it would be made into gold coins. The coins would then be given to the depositor, less a small deduction for processing and funding Mint operations. Possibly in most cases the depositor would not receive coins made of the actual gold he had deposited, but would receive his due compensation in coins the mint already had ready. Free silver advocates wanted silver to be accepted by the mints in the same way; if you deposited enough silver, by weight, to manufacture a silver dollar, then the mint should pay out a silver dollar to you.

After the discovery of large silver reserves such as the Comstock Lode in the Western United States in the 12 years immediately after the American Civil War, one faction in American politics began to agitate for the federal government (which under the United States Constitution was responsible for coinage) to allow it to be minted freely at the rate of $1 per troy ounce. As the gold standard in effect at the time valued gold at the official price of $20 per troy ounce, the result of this policy would have been a considerable increase in the money supply and resultant inflation.

At the time, the general price level was in a long term deflationary trend, and so inflation was seen by many as an appropriate way of maintaining wages and real interest rates. Modern economists who have studied the period are divided on whether free coinage of silver would have been inflationary, but it was clear that geographically centered interests had particular views. Eastern interests, trading with an increasingly gold standard–based world, wanted gold money; interior interests, and particularly mining interests, wanted silver money. Since banks were based primarily on the two coasts, deflation's effect of increasing the real rate of interest for loans already made was popular, for manufacturers the ability to hold wages down was also popular. For farmers, who borrowed to plant every year, and for laborers outside of the factory economy, also perpetually in debt, the idea of higher wages was attractive.

Many populist and radical organizations actually favored a very inflationary monetary policy on the grounds that it enabled debtors (often farmers, laborers, and industrial workers) to pay their debts off with cheaper, more readily-available dollars; those who suffered under this policy were the wealthy creditors such as banks, leaseholders, and landlords, who under this theory could well afford any loss this caused them. Other supporters obviously included silver miners and those who supplied them, territorial and state governments in silver-producing areas, and other interests who desired to see gold demonetarized or at least reduced in prominence, including many Southerners.