Now, we think she is an excellent choice for our currency. A brave woman who took great risks to save others. A person admired by folks across the political spectrum. Yes, Harriet Tubman was an ideal choice for the first portrait change on US currency since Andrew Jackson displaced Grover Cleveland in 1928. But a funny thing happened on the way to Harriet Tubman’s immortality on the $10. A couple of funny things, in fact.One was the mega-hit Broadway play about Alexander Hamilton. Surely someone so famous, who could inspire a great musical, should not be removed from our currency.
It actually didn’t take much to see this one coming. In recent years, Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson have fallen out of favor with the progressives. There have been movements to remove their names or likenesses from many places, and many of the state Democrat Parties have cancelled or renamed their traditional “Jefferson-Jackson” dinners and events. Why? Because Tom Jefferson and Andy Jackson were slaveholders. Never mind their other achievements such as the Declaration of Independence or the Louisiana Purchase or the Battle of New Orleans or the struggle to preserve the union or having eras named after them, being a slaveholder cancelled it all out. And Andrew Jackson also hated Native Americans, another point against him. Of course, it is not as if their slaveholding was only recently discovered. It was known all along, but now, in the seventh year of the Obama Presidency, its importance was magnified.
To make a long story a bit shorter, Hamilton was saved, Harriet Tubman was honored, and Jackson was discarded. Wags had a field day, noting that a white male slaveholding Democrat was removed from our currency and replaced with a “gun-toting Republican” black female. Just as it was felt that it took a Republican such as Richard Nixon to go to China, it probably took a Democrat to remove Andrew Jackson from our currency.
The switch won’t be sudden. The Treasury has announced that it would be made in 2020 to honor the 100th anniversary of women being granted the right to vote. That gives plenty of time to get used to the idea. In fact, it will give plenty of time for other ideas, such as issuing a bill in a new denomination, such as $25, with Harriet Tubman’s likeness gracing the new bill. After all, Treasury switched from the $10 to the $20 in the span of less than six months, so who knows?
Other suggestions include changing the portraits on our currency to images of historic scenes, such as the moon landing, or the flag raising on Iwo Jima, or the signing of the Declaration of Independence (now on the $2 bill – the face of which features Thomas Jefferson, another slaveholder whose lifespan on currency might be measured in days instead of decades.)
The “Who’s on the $20 bill” episode illustrates a major point of modern progressive thought: we are no longer seen as individuals, but as representatives of a group. It would have been entirely fitting and proper for the Treasury Secretary to announce that “Harriet Tubman” would be given the place of honor on our twenty. Instead, he announced “a woman” would be so honored – and only much later was her identity decided. Honoring “Harriet Tubman” as an individual is appropriate and well-deserved, but the way it was done makes it just another box to be checked off to meet a quota.
Perhaps the most controversial part of the currency redesign is the plans for the back of the bills. Smaller images of Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt and others will be on the back of new bills – including Andrew Jackson! So, what will all of the people think who are thrilled that Jackson, oppressor of Native Americans and slaves, was removed from the front of the bill, only to find a secure home on its reverse? We have given up trying to determine the logic of anything the federal government does.