Andrew Jackson’s place on the $20 bill has about six years remaining until his image is scheduled to be replaced by Harriet Tubman, the pistol-packing Underground Railroad operator. Tubman’s bravery continued with her direct participation in the Civil War.
But before Jackson fades into obscurity, it would be fitting to recognize a remarkable man.
Foremost, Jackson was a populist. He took on the Washington insiders. Known as the “People’s President,” he ended the Federal Reserve of the day (the Second Bank of the United States) and ignored the Supreme Court. President Donald Trump even hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office as one of his first acts, calling Jackson “an amazing figure in American history — very unique so many ways.”
January marks the 209th anniversary of Andrew Jackson’s improbable and crushing defeat of the British in the Battle of New Orleans. Fighting outnumbered against a better-equipped and trained force, Jackson won his victory 15 days after the War of 1812 ended with the Treaty of Ghent.
In the grand annals of American presidential history, few figures are as simultaneously awe-inspiring and confounding as Jackson. With a life story that reads more like a legend than a biography, Jackson was a man who, among other things, dueled an astonishing 103 times without earning himself a permanent residence six feet under (unlike that poor soul Alexander Hamilton who only made it to a $10 bill). Old Hickory didn’t just flirt with danger — he took it out for a
