One has to give credit where it’s due, and if CNN is correct, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is about do something very, very right.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is expected to announce this week that Alexander Hamilton’s face will remain on the front of the $10 bill and a woman will replace Andrew Jackson on the face of the $20 bill, a senior government source told CNN on Saturday.
Lew announced last summer that he was considering redesigning the $10 bill to include the portrait of a woman. The decision to make the historic change at the expense of Hamilton drew angry rebukes from fans of the former Treasury Secretary.
…Lew also plans to announce this week that Andrew Jackson — a less beloved former president whose face graces the front of the $20 bill — will be removed in favor of a female representing the struggle for racial equality, according to the government source.
Kudos to Lew et al for recoginizing that Jackson* – the fellow best known for wrecking the American banking system and the hideous Indian Removal Act (the law that authorized the Trail of Tears) – was a far better figure for deprioritizing that our nation’s first Treasury Secretary. In fact, this was the daily double for those of us who sympathized with the political opponents of Jefferson and Jackson: the chief rival of the former stays on the $10 while the latter leaves the $20.
* – It should be noted that yours truly is the great-great-great-great grandson of Thurlow Weed, one of the leading anti-Jacksonian political organizers in New York State.
