Is it time to remove Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill? Liberal advocacy groups and and columnists are pushing hard to have Old Hickory’s image removed from American currency, primarily citing the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Trail of Tears, and his “genocide” of Cherokee Indians.
The Washington Post recently reported on how Women on the $20s organizers are trying to have Jackson removed in order to put a woman on the $20 bill. Their list of potential replacements includes Progressive feminist icons such as Betty Friedan, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Margaret Sanger, among others. Another recent column by Daily Beast contributor Arthur Chu titled “The Mass Murderer on Your $20” accused Jackson of “masterminding a genocide” on the Cherokee, painting our seventh president as generally villainous.
Few have come to Jackson’s defense. Most Americans, even those with a pro-American view of United States history, accept without question that the early nineteenth-century president must have been a virulent racist and Indian hater. However, this narrative of Jackson as a mastermind of genocide—almost demonically hateful toward American Indians—is false. The story of Cherokee Indian removal is far more complex than the simple, but ideologically useful narrative of greedy American oppression that one often encounters in a modern classroom.
Read Full Article »