What's Andrew Jackson going to do behind Harriet Tubman's back?

Now that we know Harriet Tubman will be taking the spot on the front of the $20 bill, word has come down that Andrew Jackson isn’t leaving your pocket entirely. Instead, he’s just slipping around back. The new $10 bill will see Alexander Hamilton backed by a panorama of suffragettes. But just what will Andy Jackson be doing on the reverse of the 20 while Harriet is holding down the prime slot? There are so many scenes that would make excellent panoramas.

Jackson at his plantation

Andrew Jackson made his wealth the old fashioned way—by owning slaves. Let’s let the people who manage The Hermitage, “home of the people’s president,” ‘splain how the people’s president got his cash.

The Hermitage was a 1,000 acre, self-sustaining plantation that relied completely on the labor of enslaved African American men, women, and children. They performed the hard labor that produced The Hermitage’s cash crop, cotton. The more land Andrew Jackson accrued, the more slaves he procured to work it. Thus, the Jackson family’s survival was made possible by the profit garnered from the crops worked by the enslaved on a daily basis.

When Andrew Jackson bought The Hermitage in 1804, he owned nine enslaved African Americans. Just 25 years later that number had swelled to over 100 through purchase and reproduction. At the time of his death in 1845, Jackson owned approximately 150 people who lived and worked on the property …

Andrew Jackson purchased his first enslaved African American in 1794. Over the next 66 years the Jackson Family would own over 300 men, women, and children. 

See, he really was the people’s president. He owned lots of them. But that’s not really fair to Jackson. First, he didn’t make all his money through slavery. He also made money by laying claim to millions of acres of Indian land, then signing treaties that took the land from the Indians. Also, Jackson wasn’t the only owned-people’s president. George Washington inherited 10 slaves and by the time he died, there were over 300 at Mt. Vernon. Thomas Jefferson had a head start, as he inherited over 150 slaves, but he ended with over 600. Ben Franklin? Just two slaves. Slacker. Even Alexander Hamilton married into a slave-holding family and both bought and sold slaves after the war.  Jackson did distinguish himself by actually engaging in slave-trading, which was thought of as a bit déclassé. 

So, really, any of these guys would make a fine reverse to Harriet’s obverse. You have to make it to Grant on the $50 bill before you can find someone who didn’t own anyone.

Perhaps a really clever bill design could use watermarks, or shifting-color ink, or holograms to show slaves escaping from the back of the bill and making it around to Tubman.