Pres. Andrew Jackson on the $20
Not so fast.
Reducing Jackson to "champion of American Frontier values" and the Great Satan of Indian Removal overlooks a great deal. Jackson was foremost seen in his own time as a hero of the common man over elitism and privilege. He began life as a pennyless and fatherless boy with a saber cut across his brow dealt him during the American Revolution by a British officer who demanded the young boy polish his boots. When Jackson refused, the red-coat drew his saber and slashed him across the face. This left Jackson with a hatred for both Britain and for Britain’s most important export - banking. Jackson stood up against the banking and corporate system, making him doubly the hero of the common man. He destroyed Nicholas Biddle's central bank, the Bank of the United States (BUS); albeit he left it to Jackson’s successor Martin van Buren to figure out what should replace it ie. the Independent Treasury. The Independent Treasury didn’t last long, though. The private bankers and their supporters usurped that, too, and took back the reins of economic power. Jackson also stood for the Union and issued his famous Force Act of 1833 that stomped some of the earliest secessionist/nullification whining from South Carolina. And his supporters created the single longest surviving political party in world history, the Party of Jefferson and Jackson, the Democratic Party.
Jackson is widely condemned for Indian Removal, but Native American removal and related issues go all the way back to the 1789 Constitution and the Madison administration. Jackson didn’t create the mess; he was born into it. His legacy on Native American issues is complex, but he honestly sought to protect First Nations people from the rampage and murder of gold and land-hungry whites that FLOODED into the treaty lands regardless of the law. And the infamous Trail of Tears took place under Van Buren's administration, not Jackson. There is a lot more to this story than “Jackson hated the Indians” or “Jackson displaced the First Nations.”
The "settling" or colonization of the entire USA was an atrocity from the outset. One could reasonably say that the country was founded on land-theft and murder. But singling out Jackson ignores the historical context and his place in it; a species of anachronism or presentism.
Robert Remini has written the most balanced and reliable biographical works on Jackson, especially his three-volume biography Andrew Jackson. New York: Harper and Row, 1977-1984. Remini’s other works on Jackson are equally as reliable, but his three-volume set on the Jackson and the course of American history is by far the most absorbing and detailed; a masterpiece.
Did Jackson leave a complex legacy? Without a doubt.
Remove him from the $20 bill? Absolutely not.
Better to use the twenty and Jackson as a device to teach the real history of the United States and of the 7th President of the United States.
