Art historian Cornelius Vermeule considered the Alabama coin "a good example of the trite motifs, partly real and partly symbolic, that go into one of these statehood commemoratives". He suggested that the use of the jugate portraits "recall that this classical device was first revived in American coinage on the Washington-Lafayette silver dollar of 1900." Vermeule concluded that "vigorous lettering has saved uninteresting portraits from weakening the reverse and the defiant eagle of the obverse is handled in a spirit worthy of Saint-Gaudens."