So, back from Arkansas, and utterly exhausted. So thought I'd do just a quick little post today, about that replacing Hamilton from the $10.00 bill thing that's been going around.
First off, I think it'd a bad idea to remove the person who created our banking system from the currency.
Second, if they had to remove somebody, I'd prefer it were General Grant, from the fifty -- a man famous mainly for killing a lot of his fellow Americans and then going on to preside over a notoriously corrupt and incompetent administration.
Third, if we're going to put a woman on our currency (a good idea in and of itself), I'd vote for Jeannette Rankin:* the first woman elected to the US Congress. A suffragette who served two terms twenty years apart, Rankin was a pacifist who voted against U. S. entry into World War I, for which she got booted out. She finally won re-election twenty years later, just in time to vote against U. S. entry into World War II (the ONLY member of Congress to do so). It's rare for a politician to stand by his or her principles, whatever the political cost.
So, it they were to make the best of a bad idea, I'd say leave Hamilton where he is, boot Grant from his current spot, and put Rankin in his place.
--JDR
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Rankin
Well, Grant killed his fellow citizens because they were insisting they weren't his fellow citizens any more, so that charge is at worst ambiguous.
ReplyDeleteI still vote for the removal of Jackson if anyone. The $20 is a more conspicuous bill than the $50. We have all of Jackson's notorious misdeeds with Indians and others to consider. And, most relevantly, Jackson spent much of his presidency systematically demolishing as much of Hamilton's banking system as he could get his hands on. Jackson would be furious to find himself depicted on a note issued by the Federal Reserve, which is basically the 1913 revival of what Jackson destroyed in 1836.
I was going to comment, but now I can just say "what David said".
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