Politico reports that abolitionist Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, with founding father Alexander Hamilton remaining on the front of the $10.
The Treasury Department announced last spring that it would issue new 10s in the year 2020 with a woman on the front, demoting Hamilton to the reverse side of the bills or keeping him in future circulation with a separately issued series. The decision prompted pushback from Hamilton’s defenders, including THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s Jay Cost, noting the “embarrassment” that treasury would need a reminder of why Hamilton, the nation’s first treasury secretary, was so essential:
Though he died at the young age of 49, he did more than even the best among us could do in three lifetimes. He was George Washington’s indispensable man during the Revolutionary War. He was a key behind-the-scenes player in the movement for a Constitutional Convention. He defended the new Constitution with remarkable erudition and sophistication in the Federalist papers, of which he was the most prolific author. During his brief tenure at Treasury, he not only righted the nation’s teetering public finances, he also formulated policies that became the backbone of our political economy for the next century. He even saved the country from an economic panic in 1792 by initiating a prototype of what the Federal Reserve calls open market operations.
Instead of Hamilton, Jackson was floated as a suitable candidate for replacement. Old Hickory’s critics noted his mismanagement of the nation’s finances as a key reason, in addition to the moral questions of his controversial legacy with the treatment of Native Americans.
CNN had reported last weekend that Jackson would be removed from the currency, though a replacement hadn’t been named. A government source told the outlet that the earliest a new $20 note could be issued is 2030.
Update: The official release from the Treasury Department Wednesday stated that Jackson’s image will be moved to the reverse side of new issues of the $20 note. Here is the bulk of the release:
Secretary Lew also announced plans for the reverse of the new $10 to feature an image of the historic march for suffrage that ended on the steps of the Treasury Department and honor the leaders of the suffrage movement—Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul. The front of the new $10 note will maintain the portrait of Alexander Hamilton. Finally, he announced plans for the reverse of the new $5 to honor events at the Lincoln Memorial that helped to shape our history and our democracy and prominent individuals involved in those events, including Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. The reverse of the new $20 will feature images of the White House and President Andrew Jackson.
