Do Not Weep for Andrew Jackson

Politico reports that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is set to announce that Alexander Hamilton will get a reprieve and remain on the $10 bill, while Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the face of the $20, and Treasury will make other changes including “putting leaders of the women’s suffrage movement on the back of the $10 bill, and incorporating civil-rights era leaders and other important moments in American history into the $5 bill” while relocating Jackson to less desirable real estate (his own Trail of Tears, one might say) on the back of the $20.

There are a few lessons here, not least the power of popular culture: Hamilton, previously the most obscure figure (to the general population) of the men on American currency was clearly saved in large part by the runaway success of the Broadway hip-hop musical celebrating his life. Conservatives may decry the politically correct identity-politics drive to demand a woman on the money and downgrade Jackson, but it’s worth remembering that Jackson has only been there since 1928, when he replaced Grover Cleveland, and decisions about whom we should honor on our money have always said as much about our values at a given moment as about any historical merit.

Jackson was and is a monumental figure in American history, an unapologetic nationalist who left the nation larger and more secure than he found it, bitterly opposed factional threats of secession, and fought for a larger role for the common man in our democracy, and at times in our history, those have been critical values. But Jackson was massively controversial in his own time and ever since for a great many reasons — as controversial as Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Lyndon Johnson, or Woodrow Wilson. And Jackson himself, in life, was never much restrained by the conventions of history. In retrospect, it is surprising he lasted this long on the $20.

Contemporary liberals, of course, focus on his record as a slave-owner and his brutal relocation of Native American tribes from the American South. Conservatives to this day have our own particular complaints to add: Jackson was a major influence in turning the federal government into an engine of partisan patronage, setting the model for client-based governing that the Democratic party in particular has followed ever since. And his demagogy and politics of grievance remain dangers to this day.

The Jacksonians are gone from the Democratic party now — Jim Webb was the last man to turn out the lights on his way out — but the Donald Trump phenomenon has underlined the extent to which they are no friend to principled conservatism, any more than Jackson himself was.

As for Tubman, I would argue that she’s not the most influential woman in American history; that honor should rightly belong to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the most important of all American novels. But Tubman herself is a worthy honoree, the first ordinary citizen on paper money and a woman of great courage and powerful Christian witness. She was also — this tends to be forgotten today — a nurse and scout during the Civil War and herself a leader of the women’s suffrage movement until her death at 91 in 1913, more than half a century after her “Underground Railroad” exploits.

Tubman’s life is not without its own controversies, like her assistance to John Brown in advance of the Harper’s Ferry raid that ended with Brown being hanged for treason (the justification of Brown’s actions is one of the great ethical dilemmas in American history: How far exactly should one go to stop something as bad as slavery?). And if the debates over the $10 and the $20 lead more Americans to learn the flesh-and-blood stories of Hamilton, Jackson, and Tubman, that can’t be a bad thing. They remind us that our politics have always been messy and sometimes bloody.

The writer's comment that "the Jacksonians are gone from the Democrat Party now," reminds us of their former "Jefferson-Jackson Day" events.

Using Jefferson and Jackson for the occasion of fund raising for the Democrat Party??

What a farce!

Consider this:

Excerpt from the 1801 Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson
"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

Now, the question is: do current Party leaders subscribe to principles and ideas which will lead us to "retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety"?
That seems to rule out any connection for current Democrats with Jefferson, which, might lead to a consideration of a possible ideological connection with Jackson. Consider this:
By the Founders' formula, "the People's" written Constitution was the anchor of our liberties, binding government to the "People's" limitations on its power.
Current Democrat Party philosophy, in effect, undoes all the monumental work accomplished by the Founders on behalf of liberty and leaves the law afloat and without anchor, relying, as of old, on mere men and women.
From Page xv of "Our Ageless Constitution," here are excerpted words from President Andrew Jackson's Proclamation of December 10, 1832:
"We have received it [the Constitution] as the work of the assembled wisdom of the nation. We have trusted to it as to the sheet anchor of our safety in the stormy times of conflict with a foreign or domestic foe. We have looked to it with sacred awe as the palladium of our liberties, and with all the solemnities of religion have pledged to each other our lives and fortunes here and our hopes of happiness hereafter in its defense and support. Were we mistaken, my countrymen, in attaching this importance to the Constitution . . .? No. We were not mistaken. The letter of this great instrument is free from this radical fault. . . . No, we did not err! . . . The sages . . . have given us a practical and, as they hoped, a permanent* Constitutional compact. . . . The Constitution is still the object of our reverence, the bond of our Union, our defense in danger, the source of our prosperity in peace: it shall descend, as we have received it, uncorrupted by sophistical construction, to our posterity. . . ."
*Underlining added for emphasis
And, it was Thomas Jefferson who used another metaphor with reference to the Constitution when he indicated that "the People" must "bind them (government) by the chains of the Constitution." In another instance, he declared: "It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers. . . ."

Perhaps a Wilson-FDR Dinner might be more appropriate now! And, while they're at it, relegating Jackson to the back of the bill may be the first step in that direction. Perhaps they fear that citizens may now read Jackson's philosophy on the Constitution and realize the degree to which they have perverted its principles and ideas in recent years.

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