No woman is depicted on U.S. paper currency, making our money exceptional among the banknotes of our world peers, including Britain and Canada.

So an Internet movement, Women On20s, has started crowd-sourcing the selection of a proposed female replacement for President Jackson on the $20 bill – to be followed by an actual request for a substitution to President Obama. Obama has expressed sympathy with the idea, and he has full legal authority, through the secretary of the Treasury, to order a redesign.

Our pick would be Harriet Tubman, the courageous African-American woman who escaped from slavery in Maryland, helped others do the same, served the Union as an intelligence agent during the Civil War and then, after the war, advocated women’s suffrage.

Of the men on the four most widely circulated bills – George Washington on the $1, Abraham Lincoln on the $5, Alexander Hamilton on the $10 and Andrew Jackson – the latter’s reputation has undergone the greatest revision under modern scrutiny. Once unequivocally, and justly, lionized for victory at the Battle of New Orleans, for quelling the Nullification Crisis of 1832 and for leading a democratic political movement, Old Hickory’s career nevertheless bears the taint of his cruel policy toward Native Americans.

But for all his flaws, Jackson’s ouster from the $20 could trigger a currency culture war. The solution is simple: Add Tubman without subtracting Jackson. The government could issue the same number of $20 bills as always, half bearing Tubman’s face, half Jackson’s. An appropriate representation of American women on the dollars they work so hard to earn should not be beyond the wit of man, or woman.


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