A new face on the $20 bill

The currency of the United States has almost exclusively featured portraits of former presidents.  George Washington on the dollar bill.  Thomas Jefferson on the two dollar bill. Abraham  Lincoln on the five dollar bill.  And so on. 

The exceptions are notable.  Alexander Hamilton on the ten.  Benjamin Franklin on the hundred.  Dewitt Clinton on the $1,000 bill that no longer circulates and Salmon P. Chase on the $10,000 bill that also no longer circulates.  For some time now, it appeared that the first of the currently circulating bills to have a new portrait would be the $10, and that it would be a woman who would replace Hamilton, or share the honor of being pictured on this bill.  Now an official of the U. S. Treasury Department says it will be a different image being replaced.

President Andrew Jackson has been the face of the $20 bill since 1928.  While that was the 100th anniversary of his election to the White House there is no proof that the anniversary was the reason for choosing to commemorate his presidency.  It must be admitted that he was a war hero.  But he was not a perfect man.  He built his fortune through the plantation named The Hermitage, on the backs of the labor of the more than 100 slaves he owned.  Estimates of just how many people he "owned" during his life rise above the 300 plateau.

Now we've learned that Harriet Tubman will be the one to take his place on that bill.  Harriet Tubman, born a slave.  Harriet Tubman, abolitionist who was involved with more than one dozen missions to free slaves through the famed Underground Railroad.  Harriet Tubman, who helped to recruit men for John Brown.  Harriet Tubman, who fought for the Union Army.  Harriet Tubman, who later in life worked for the woman's suffrage movement.

In short, she is everything that Andrew Jackson despised.  Delicious irony indeed.