Posted on 06/11/2004 12:15:48 PM PDT by RWR8189
Would President Reagan have wanted Alexander Hamilton taken off the $10 bill?
"WE THINK it's premature at this point to discuss any changes to currency," Anne Womack Kolton told the New York Times on Tuesday. Like most Americans, she was reacting to the death of Ronald Reagan, albeit in her own particular way. Kolton is a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department. The currency changes to which she refers are several outstanding proposals that would memorialize Reagan's visage by grafting it to cash money. For Reagan to inhabit the dime, which currently houses Franklin Delano Roosevelt's profile, is one possibility; the $20 bill (now home to Andrew Jackson) is another, as is the $100 (Franklin), the 50-cent piece (Kennedy), and the $10.
The $10 bill now features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, who, unlike Reagan, was never president. He was instead many other things. He was aide-de-camp to General George Washington during the Revolutionary War, for one. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, for another. Also, he was one of the three writers who made up the pseudonymous Publius, the author(s) of the Federalist Papers, one of the United States' most important founding documents (the other two were James Madison, the fourth president, and John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court). And Hamilton was the first secretary of the U.S. Treasury, the man who nationalized the colonies' debt, financed and encouraged the newborn nation's industrial expansion, and created the financial and credit markets that fueled two centuries' worth of prosperity. He was a Founding Father. The man, it's safe to say, was no small fry.
But now he is treated as such. According to the Hill newspaper, the assistant majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell, says he wants to "take the lead" to replace Hamilton with Reagan on the $10 bill. McConnell is in agreement with conservative activist Grover Norquist, who is president of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, which seeks to name a "significant" landmark after President Reagan not only in each of the 50 states, but each of the nation's 3,142 counties, and which has long maintained that Hamilton should be banished from the nation's currency.
Why Hamilton? "Hamilton has less of a built-in constituency of people who would be opposed to him being removed," the directory of the Legacy Project, Chris Butler, told the New York Times. His boss agrees. "Hamilton is an easier target, said Norquist, because he was never president," the Hill reported. Hamilton was neither a Republican nor Democrat, of course, but a Federalist, though it should be said he was killed by a Democrat, Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson's vice president. No one will raise a fuss, in other words, if old Alexander were shunted aside. The same would probably not be true if the Legacy Project and congressional Republicans set their sights on FDR or Jack Kennedy.
It's worth asking what Reagan would think of all this, however. And it's worth asking, too, how Reagan felt about Alexander Hamilton. Reading over Reagan's speeches, an answer suggests itself: Reagan liked Hamilton quite a bit.
This, for instance, is an excerpt from Reagan's speech to the 1964 Republican convention:
Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one!" Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace . . . and you can have it in the next second: Surrender!
This is from a speech Reagan delivered to the National Black Republican Council in September 1982:
Alexander Hamilton, one of our greatest Founding Fathers, once said that "a power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will." What we've seen in too many cases in the inner city is the broken will of people who desire to be as proud and independent as any other American. And perhaps unintentionally, many government programs have been designed not to create social mobility and help the needy along their way, but instead to foster a state of dependency. Whatever their intentions, no matter their compassion, our opponents created a new kind of bondage for millions of American citizens.
"It was men of enormous intellectual capacity and courage--John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and John Stuart Mill--whose powerful ideas fed our notions of individual freedom and the dignity of all people," Reagan said in a toast to Margaret Thatcher on February 26, 1981. "Let us rededicate ourselves to the advancement of human rights throughout the world, recalling the words of Alexander Hamilton that 'natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent creator to the whole human race . . . and cannot be wrested from any people without the most manifest violation of justice,'" Reagan said, when he declared a Human Rights Day and Week in December 1985.
This is just a cursory sample. But it is easy to see that Reagan's patriotism, his worshipful attitude toward the power of the American idea, flowed in part from the reverence he felt toward the Founding Fathers--Hamilton among them.
Still, the sad fact is that Norquist is right. The Founders don't have much of a political constituency these days. With Ronald Reagan's death, that constituency lost yet another member.
Matthew Continetti is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
I am firmly in the keep Hamilton camp. Dump Old Hickory or US Grant. Grant's probably the best choice actually.
Sounds to me like Reagan would have protested replacing Hamilton with himself.
The best tribute to Reagan would be to put his visage on a gold coin, not this fiat crap.
Whatever the pros and cons of a Reagon $10 bill, I think its immaterial what Reagon would have wanted. What is germane, however, is how we now, today, want to pay respect to one of our greatest Presidents. To use this argument, is to put forth the opinion that he should not be on it.
Put Reagan on a dollar coin, same size as the silver dollar.
"The best tribute to Reagan would be to put his visage on a gold coin, not this fiat crap."
Actually, a very good idea. Sales of such a coin, which wouldn't actually be circulated, could generate a lot of money for the treasury, as well as letting people keep a tangible, and valuable, memento of Reagan's presidency.
Make the coin legal tender, but at a value that would keep the coin from actually circulating in the economy. Interesting idea.
I think we should pause a bit before doing anything, but am now in the keep Hamilton camp.
I agree....dump Grant. I would not be cool with dropping Andrew Jackson though.
That's what I and tet68 said on another thread yesterday. Personally I favor a hundred dollar gold piece.
Yeah, I like the higher circulation of 20s, and I have no problem dumping Jackson (not out of spite, just a basic disregard), but Grant is probably a fairer choice (what's the argument for keeping him?), and honestly, the 50 is probably more proportionate choice. And besides, Reagan had a great economic policy. A 50 is a fine choice. I can leave the 20 alone. But dont dump Hamilton. He was the FIRST EVER Sec of the Treasury--George Washington's Sec of the Treasury. Surely that gets a guy on a bill, don't you think? And that's just part of his record.
Someone a day or so ago suggested putting Reagan on the quarter. Washington already has the dollar bill -- so we're not axing anyone from currency -- and the quarter is arguably the most useful and circulated coin we have. I like it.
I wouldn't mind dumping Grant, but I'm curious why you are loyal to Andrew Jackson. Would you care to elaborate?
I personally like having a monument similiar to the lincoln memorial somewhere in D.C
Sacagawea fans would be nonplussed. How about a $10 coin, made of real silver.
Between the time the Revolutionary War was over and the ratification of the Constitution, Hamilton defended a Loyalist against a state law in New York which was nothing less than legal retribution. Hamilton argued that, since the law was designed to punish a Political Class, and could not be applied to everyone equally, it was unjust and the court had a moral obligation to refuse to uphold the law.
He won that pre-Constitution case.
Well, I don't like some of his stuff, but I guess I am just a bit attached to his "common man" persona.
But then again, he was on the wrong side of the nullification controversy....he fought states rights. He also hurt the Indians. His "common people" presidency had contradictions as well.
Probably just unreasonableness on my part.
Gold is a tender irrespective of FDR's diktats. :)
Let's put him on a $1000 bill, which is bound to increase in circulation in the future (given the inevitable advance of inflation).
For those who missed C-Span this morning with Grover Norquist, a caller intimated that one of the reasons that Hamilton was being targeted for removal is because he may have some black heritage (via his Carribean roots).
Trying to get Norquist to acknowledge this heritage, even Brian Lamb had to explain to him the story of this assertion. Whether it's true or not is still open for debate unless or until they do a DNA test...but it is great ammo for the left to attack the mean, racist Republicans.
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