Kick Andrew Jackson Off the $20 Bill!

Slate ^ | March 3, 2014 | Jillian Keenan

[C19fan]

My public high school wasn’t the best, but we did have an amazing history teacher. Mr. L, as we called him, brought our country’s story to life. So when he taught us about the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears, Andrew Jackson’s campaigns to force at least 46,000 Cherokees, Choctaws, Muscogee-Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminoles off their ancestral lands, my classmates and I were stricken. .......................................................

But then it was lunchtime, and we pulled out our wallets in the cafeteria. Andrew Jackson was there, staring out from every $20 bill. We had been carrying around portraits of a mass murderer all along, and had no idea.

[Mrs. Don-o]

It would be quite wrong to defend Jackson on the Indian expulsions of the 1830's on any grounds.

Jackson is the "model"

• for Obama's selective enforcement of law;

• for Obama's coercing, bribing and suborning of legislators;

• for Obama's contempt for private property;

• for Obama's forced redistribution of wealth;

• for Obama's punishment of the productive

• for Obama's unearned subsidies to the shiftless,

• for Obama's destruction of farmers

• for Obama's "stroke of the pen" style of autocracy: law, states, and the U.S. Supreme Court be damned, and

• for Obama's massive import of immigrants to create constituencies for himself.

These people were not enemies of, or belligerents against, the United States. They weren't even so culturally different from their Euro-American neighbors. They held legal title to their lands, farmed, used plows, harrows and wagons pulled by horses and mules, ran sawmills, grain mills and printing presses, sang Christian hymns in their Christian churches. They were lawful, hard-working, sober and productive.

George W. Harkins, Choctaw

Cherokee Principal Chief John Ross

Betsy Stephens, Cherokee

Marcia Pascal, Cherokee

This was an ethnic cleansing Holder and Obama can only dream of.

[Mrs. Don-o]

See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3129767/posts?page=61#61>

[Buckeye McFrog]

Only if they get Woodrow Wilson off of that $100,000 note.

[verga]

He had a $20 bill for lunch? What neighborhood was he raised in?

Yeah, Usually all I got was PB&J or Baloney. Who eats money?

[DoodleDawg]

Jackson was the only president who worked as a slave trader, and he accumulated much of his fortune that way.

No, he didn't.

[fruser1]

Like the european colonialization, U.S. expansion in this time period was a run for resources.

That’s what the “modern” countries did back then. In this instance, the Cherokee lost. They had prior sovereignty agreements, which were violated. I don’t dispute that.

What I dispute is making some type of moral judgement against the victor for coming out on top of the conflict.
That somehow, just because they “lost”, the Indians were somehow more human than human.

Had roles been reversed, meaning, Europeans living in the stone age w/Indians being the colonizers, do you think it would’ve gone differently for the weaker side? I doubt it.

Quibbling over the treatment of the defeated by the victor in conflicts of the past seems to me to be just a way of modern propagandists to claim the U.S. is “bad” and therefore must change, which always seems to be in a direction of communism strangely enough.

I’m not buying it.

Throughout history, crappy things have happened to all sorts of folks.

AJ is on the bill for his positive contributions to U.S. history (maybe because it’s U.S, currency), not for his contribution to Cherokee history. If the Cherokee come up w/their own currency, they can put who they want on it.

Even if it’s someone who was mean to white folks.

[aimhigh]

My point is basically is, in the period of history, his actions did not appear so severe as they do from the vantage of OUR point in history.

That is not a valid excuse for inhuman actions, in any period of history. America was established by people fleeing persecution in Europe. They knew what civilized governance was.

[fruser1]

It’s not an excuse, it’s an attempt to establish context.

Do you think that Roosevelt should be taken off the dime because of Japanese Internment camps?

Should Lincoln come off the 5 for his suspension of habeus corpus?

[Mrs. Don-o]

No. Jackson’s too unConstitutional, too Obamunistic to merit public honor. Or I should say, Omaba’s too Jacksonite.

[aimhigh]

I’d love to see Roosevelt come off the dime. People have always known what evil is, regardless of the times. Unfortunately, when someone else’s rights are being gored, it’s too easy to turn your back.

[fruser1]

But the indians were part of sovereign nations, not citizens of any of the united states. Had AJs actions been against citizens the unconstitutional argument would have better muster. His actions in regards the indians, in a legal sense, were more like treaty violations, if anything.

[fruser1]

But, if you haven’t noticed, there is no call to remove Roosevelt from the dime.

Yet there is one for a president who performed actions disagreeable to the left, based on what is basically political correctness.

[Arthur McGowan]

I agree. Replace Jackson with Coolidge.

[Mrs. Don-o]

If that’s the case, then Jackson’s actions in regards the Indians, in a legal sense, were more like acts of war without just cause, without provocation and and without an act of Congress, and a violation of a Supreme Court ruling which would have restrained his aggressions, (thus doubly un-Constitutional), as well as trespassing, theft, fraud, aggravated assault, arson, kidnapping, and murder.

[fruser1]

Yes, an act of war, from the Indian perspective, is a better characterization.

However, congress was in with Jackson in continually changing treaties and laws in what was effectively a one-sided contract change.

That’s why congress didn’t impeach him after the supreme court ruling.

[dfwgator]

[Jed Eckert]

I say we put Brigadier General Stand Waite on the 20 to replace Jackson. He was a Cherokee who served honorably in the Confederacy. That should keep nearly everyone happy, except of course for the usual suspects. It will be fun to watch them squirm as they try to publicly condemn a Cherokee.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Good info. Thank you.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

The Indian removal caused some problems people look over.

The Indians WERE going to be removed, so the rich ones took their goods and slaves by ship and steamboat to the Indian Territories. No trail of tears for them.

Those left behind, were divided. Tribal spokesman John Ross was going to the treaty negotiations to get a better deal when he was kidnapped by Cherokees opposed to his policies. They then sent their own delegates who signed over the Indian lands, realizing they were signing their own death warrants, and moved west on the Trail of Tears.

Once in Oklahoma, a mini civil war broke out between the two factions in which many Indians slaughtered each other.

This split lasted clear to the US Civil War in which John Ross sided with the Union and the opposition (Stand Watie faction) sided with the South.

After the Civil War was over, Watie being the last Confederate to cease hostilities, all the Cherokees lost more than they had gained.

[wardaddy]

I like anal fissures more than political correctness

Screw these jackasses and make em listen to Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton....ala Noriega torture

Revisionists say what they like. Jackson had balls so big he needed a wagon to carry them

And he suffered for the birth and early years of this nation more than the intellectuals did then or now

And I like them too....actually

Even the northern ones