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The portrait of President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill will be replaced by one of legendary African-American abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
I’m just saying, I really don’t think we should mess with these bills “from long ago!” I like for things that were “created” a long time ago to be left alone! Let’s do a coin or holiday. There is no doubt that Harriet Tubman needs to be remember forever, but not by replacing Andrew Jackson.
Ok, now start putting all your Andrew Jackson $20 bills up for safe keeping…those bills will be more valuable one day!
Hey, the Andrew Jackson bill would be a great thing to put in your child’s memory book…want mean anything to them now…but what a “treasure” in later years!
I greatly admire Harriet Tubman…I’m just not all about change!
Here’s your history lesson!
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross; c. 1822[1] – March 10, 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and, during the American Civil War, a Union spy. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some thirteen missions to rescue approximately seventy enslaved families and friends,[2] using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped abolitionist John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era was an active participant in the struggle for women’s suffrage.
Born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various masters as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate slave owner threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another slave and hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. She was a devout Christian and experienced strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God.
In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or “Moses”, as she was called) “never lost a passenger”. Her actions made slave owners anxious and angry, and they posted rewards for her capture. When a far-reaching United States Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, she helped guide fugitives further north into Canada, and helped newly freed slaves find work.
When the US Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than seven hundred slaves. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women’s suffrage movement until illness overtook her and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African-Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. After she died in 1913, she became an icon of American courage and freedom.
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh President of the United States (1829–37). He was born near the end of the colonial era, somewhere near the then-unmarked border between North and South Carolina, into a recently immigrated Scots-Irish farming family of relatively modest means. During the American Revolutionary War, Jackson, whose family supported the revolutionary cause, acted as a courier. He was captured, at age 13, and mistreated by his British captors. He later became a lawyer. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and then to the U.S. Senate. In 1801, Jackson was appointed colonel in the Tennessee militia, which became his political as well as military base. Jackson owned hundreds of slaves who worked on the Hermitage plantation which he acquired in 1804. He killed a man in a duel in 1806, over a matter of honor regarding his wife Rachel. Jackson gained national fame through his role in the War of 1812, most famously where he won a decisive victory over the main British invasion army at the Battle of New Orleans, albeit some weeks after the Treaty of Ghent had already been signed (unbeknownst to the combatants).[1] In response to conflict with the Seminole in Spanish Florida, Jackson invaded the territory in 1818. This led directly to the First Seminole War and the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, which formally transferred Florida from Spain to the United States.
After winning election to the Senate, Jackson decided to run for president in 1824. He narrowly lost to John Quincy Adams, supposedly by a “corrupt bargain” between Adams and Speaker of the House Henry Clay, who was also a candidate. Jackson’s supporters then founded what became the Democratic Party. Jackson ran again in 1828 against Adams. Building on his base in the West and new support from Virginia and New York, he won by a landslide. Jackson blamed the death of his wife, Rachel, which occurred just after the election, on the Adams campaigners who called her a “bigamist”.
As president, Jackson faced a threat of secession from South Carolina over the “Tariff of Abominations” which Congress had enacted under Adams. In contrast to several of his immediate successors, he denied the right of a state to secede from the union, or to nullify federal law. The Nullification Crisis was defused when the tariff was amended and Jackson threatened the use of military force if South Carolina (or any other state) attempted to secede. In anticipation of the 1832 election, Congress, led by Clay, attempted to reauthorize the Second Bank of the United States four years before the expiration of its charter. In keeping with his platform of economic decentralization, Jackson vetoed the renewal of its charter, thereby seemingly putting his chances for reelection in jeopardy. However, Jackson, by portraying himself as the defender of the common man against wealthy bankers, was able to defeat Clay in the election that year. Jackson thoroughly dismantled the bank by the time its charter expired in 1836. Jackson’s struggles with Congress were personified in his personal rivalry with Clay, whom Jackson deeply disliked, and who led the opposition (the emerging Whig Party). Jackson’s presidency marked the beginning of the ascendancy of the “spoils system” in American politics. Jackson is also known for having signed the Indian Removal Act, which relocated a number of native tribes in the South to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).
Jackson supported his vice president Martin Van Buren, who was elected president in 1836. He worked to bolster the Democratic Party and helped his friend James K. Polk win the 1844 presidential election.
(Information from Wikipedia)
