The American twenty dollar bill has been referred to as a “Jackson” for almost an entire century, since seventh president Andrew Jackson was originally placed on the bill in 1928. Jackson’s unsmiling, stoic face has stared us down from the bill for as long as most of us can remember, and his presence is something most citizens accept—with very little knowledge of who the president actually was. The truth is, we have immortalized this man on our currency who has proven to be nothing more than a murderer and responsible for a mass-American genocide.
Jackson’s virtues as a politician continued to prove questionable throughout his career. Jackson was ultimately the founder of “spoils system,” a practice in which political parties reward government jobs to friends and family after winning an election. And you can’t talk about Andrew Jackson without mentioning Hermitage plantation, where Jackson and his wife are buried. Here, Jackson owned almost 150 slaves at the plantation’s peak.
These men, women, and children lived as many as ten to a room in twenty-square foot spaces. While at the plantation’s peak, it enslaved around 150 people, Jackson has been estimated to have owned 300 slaves in his total lifetime. Those who presided over the slaves had approval from Jackson himself to whip slaves as a form of not only punishment, but means of increasing productivity. To make matters worse, the land was acquired after Native Americans who previously inhabited the land before being pushed out from the region.
While the corrupt political practices and ownership of Hermitage plantation is offsetting, Jackson’s treatment of Native Americans is what’s truly most appalling about his “legacy.” Before he was even president, Jackson was a businessman who blatantly disregarded a treaty by buying and selling land reserved for the Cherokee and Chickasaw.
Afterwards, Jackson was also an esteemed military leader who led a campaign in Georgia against the Seminole and Creek Indians in order to justify the Seminole Wars. Jackson served in the First Seminole War, and led the burning of houses and crops of the Seminole, despite his orders to “terminate the conflict,” claiming self-defense. Even after this fit of disregard for authority and total destruction of Native American land, Jackson was actually rewarded by being named Florida’s military governor.
However, his destruction of Native American culture was by far at its worst during his presidency, when he signed and authorized the Indian Removal Act. The American government put extreme pressure on Native Americans in all states east of the Mississippi River to “voluntarily” relocate, making their migration inescapable. The Indian Removal Act eventually led to the Trail of Tears, where fifteen thousand Cherokees walked over 800 miles to new Indian Territory. During the Trail of Tears alone, 25% of the remaining Cherokee population died on the terrible journey.
The Women on 20s campaign has been fighting to remove Andrew Jackson from the bill and replace him with an influential woman bill by the year 2020. Some of the women finalists were Wilma Mankiller (the first female chief of the Cherokee nation and recipient of the Medal of Freedom), Rosa Parks (a civil rights activist credited by the United States Congress as the "mother of the civil rights movement"), Eleanor Roosevelt (First Lady and avid human rights activist), and finally, the winner, Harriet Tubman (an escaped slave, abolitionist, and Union spy).
The group made a tremendous impact towards change when it was officially announced a woman would finally be featured on American currency, however, it would be on the ten dollar bill instead of the twenty, removing Alexander Hamilton. The group is continuing to fight for Harriet Tubman to be featured on the twenty dollar bill, using the hashtags #TheNew10, #TheNew20, and #RemoveJackson to call public attention to the movement.
However, after this fight for change, Andrew Jackson’s face remains immortalized as an American hero on our twenty dollar bill. Even after his political immorality and extreme, atrocious acts of racism have been realized, the government will replace Hamilton, an immigrant who built this nation with his bare hands and unmatched wit, on the ten dollar bill instead of Andrew Jackson. How can we accept such a murderer to be memorialized in our culture as a founder? The United States was built on top of the backs of the enslaved and degraded. It’s time to recognize new founders—it’s time for a new face.
