The ten dollar woman

If the news that the U.S. Treasury plans to put a woman’s image on the new $10 bill takes you by surprise, you’re behind the curve. Last spring, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., proposed legislation that would direct the secretary of the treasury to create a panel of citizens to recommend a female subject for U.S. currency—but it was for the $20 bill, not the 10.

The Women on 20s website sponsored a campaign to nominate and select a likely candidate for the honor: Early nominees included women from a wide range of achievement, but the primary round of voting narrowed the scope to activists and political figures like Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Rachel Carson, and Margaret Sanger. On May 10, Women on 20s announced that the winner, out of 256,659 votes cast, was Harriet Tubman.

Tubman was a devout Christian with boundless faith and courage, whose exploits have inspired generations. Her direct influence on the history of our nation is questionable, though.

The reason the $20 bill was originally selected for the honor of bearing a female image was that, of all the white guys on our paper currency, Andrew Jackson is the most problematic today. Jackson embodied Davy Crockett’s motto: “Be always sure you’re right—then go ahead.” Fiery and often intemperate, he shut down the Bank of the United States and forcibly displaced the Five Civilized Tribes from their ancient homeland. But his go-ahead attitude set the nation up for its next great Western push, which led to a newspaper editor coining the phrase “Manifest Destiny” during his presidency. In the long run, Jackson may have been the right man at the right time.

But then, so was Alexander Hamilton, who we honor on the $10 bill. The nation was very young and shaky when he became the secretary of the treasury, and burdened with debt besides. By consolidating state debt under the federal government and creating a single depository (the same Bank of the United States Jackson would later destroy), he laid the foundation for stable finances going into the 19th century. Though Hamilton was never president, his financial prudence kept the United States from the same sort of economic crisis that nearly destroyed pre-revolutionary France.

Why the 10 and not the 20? The decision is practical rather than ideological: the $10 bill is a higher priority for the anti-counterfeiting features the Treasury Department regularly incorporates in our currency. Also, Hamilton’s image is not to be displaced entirely, but “shared” with an appropriate female (on half the notes, I suppose—Hamilton and Tubman would make an odd couple together). Still, there’s a mighty irony here. On his radio program Glenn Beck remarked that $10 bills are destined for wallpaper regardless of the image on them—a reference to out-of-control spending that leads to runaway inflation sooner or later. Rather than pat ourselves on the back for empty symbolism that separates us into “underrepresented” groups, shouldn’t we unite to get a handle on our finances, the way Alexander Hamilton did 225 years ago?