As a Treasury Department website reports, during the Civil War, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase received many appeals from devout persons throughout the country to “recognize the Deity on United States coins.” As one petitioner argued, “You are probably a Christian. What if our Republic were not shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation?”
Heaven forfend!
As a result, in a letter dated November 20, 1861, Secretary Chase instructed James Pollock, Director of the Mint at Philadelphia, to prepare a motto:
Dear Sir: No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.
You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition.”
In December 1863, the Director of the Mint submitted designs for new one-cent coin, two-cent coin, and three-cent coin to Secretary Chase for approval. He proposed that upon the designs either OUR COUNTRY; OUR GOD or GOD, OUR TRUST should appear as a motto on the coins. In a letter to the Mint Director on December 9, 1863, Secretary Chase responded that he thought the words should read “IN GOD WE TRUST.”
Congress passed legislation allowing for the change on this day in history.
“IN GOD WE TRUST” first appeared on the 1864 two-cent coin.
You can read a history of related legislation when the act was affirmed in 2011, here.
Later, Congress passed additional coinage acts to expand the coverage of the first.
Legal Legacy 
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