Who should succeed Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill?

PITTSBURGH Treasury Secretary Jack Lew lit a firestorm when he announced this summer that he planned to remove his predecessor’s image from the $10 bill.

History professor Daniel Barr predicts that a similarly heated debate will follow on which woman should replace Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first treasury secretary, on the front of the currency.

Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony were the most popular names during a meeting this week in Seneca Falls, N.Y., the 19th-century birthplace of the women’s movement. Eleanor Roosevelt and the lesser known Elizabeth Cady Stanton also had their supporters at the town hall-style meeting last week with U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios.

While the redesigned $10 bill will not be printed until after 2020, Lew has said he will decide soon on whose portrait will be on it.

He also has rejected calls for leaving Hamilton alone and replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with a famous American woman. Backpedaling slightly, he also pledged that Hamilton’s image would remain “part of the $10 note.”

“It’s certainly time for a woman,” said Barr, a history professor at Robert Morris University, which is named for another of the nation’s founders. It was a wise move to pick a bill that is in wide circulation, he said. While the so-called “golden dollar” has featured Sacagawea, the Native-American guide on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, it is rarely seen and has proved unpopular with the public.

All four names discussed last week at Seneca Falls would be worthy candidates for currency portraits, Barr said. His position was echoed by Holly Mayer, associate professor of history at Duquesne University, although she put forth two strong candidates of her own.

Mayer, who teaches early American history, said which woman should appear on currency was a frequent topic when she met with history teachers over the summer. She would include the names of Clara Barton and Ida B. Wells to the list. Barton founded of the American Red Cross; Wells was active in civil rights and women’s suffrage campaigns.

Mayer sided with former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow in opposing the move to dump Hamilton.

“Keep Hamilton, replace Andrew Jackson,” she said, although she admitted it appeared to be a lost cause with the Treasury secretary. The Advanced Counterfeit Deterrence Steering Committee had recommended in 2013 that the $10 bill be the next to be redesigned, and Lew has said he would follow the recommendation.

Although strongly disliked by many, Jackson remains popular as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans and the first “common man” to be elected president, Barr said. On the other side of the ledger, Jackson declined to carry out a Supreme Court ruling with which he disagreed and forced the removal of Cherokees from North Carolina, resulting in thousands of deaths.

All the news isn’t all bad for Hamilton. While his image is likely to be removed from a prime spot on U.S. currency, his story has become a big hit on Broadway. The hip-hop musical “Hamilton” is based on Chernow’s biography of the first Treasury secretary.

It is rare to change the image on paper currency. According to the Treasury Department’s website, the last series of changes happened between 1914 and 1928 when a kind of monetary musical chairs took place. Hamilton was added to the $10 bill, replacing Jackson. Grover Cleveland was replaced by Jackson on the $20, while Cleveland replaced Hamilton on the $1,000 bill, which is no long printed.

DEBATE FLARES OVER ALEXANDER HAMILTON’S SUCCESSOR ON THE $10 BILL

Here are the top four candidates to replace Hamilton from the Seneca Falls town meeting:

Harriet Tubman (about 1822-1913) was born a slave in Maryland. She escaped to the North on her second try in 1849. Shortly thereafter she became a conductor on the Underground Railroad, going back south to help family members and other enslaved African-Americans flee to freedom.

Tubman’s efforts in support of abolition and, later, of votes for women brought her into contact with Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906).

Although her social activism and support for women’s rights made her a controversial figure for much of her life, Anthony became the first woman to have her image on U.S. currency. Her portrait appeared on a dollar coin in 1979. A postage stamp was minted in her honor in 1936.

Born in Massachusetts, Anthony was a volunteer in anti-slavery organizations while she was still in her teens. She and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another candidate for placement on the $10 bill, became partners in abolition efforts, women’s rights issues and the anti-alcohol temperance movement.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) is best known for her Declaration of Sentiments presented in 1848 at a suffrage convention at Seneca Falls, N.Y. The event is considered to mark the birth of the women’s rights movement. “(We) are assembled to protest against a form of government existing without the consent of the governed to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support,” she told the delegates.

Like Tubman and Anthony, Stanton was a strong supporter of abolition. In later life she concentrated on women’s rights, pushing for a broader reform agenda in family law, employment and inheritance as well as the right to vote.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) was the wife of four-term President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but she built a parallel career for herself as a social activist and diplomat.

She was a supporter of labor unions, expanded rights for women and civil rights for African-Americans. An early advocate for the United Nations, she served as a delegate and was chairwoman of its Commission on Human Rights.

President Harry S. Truman once called her the “First Lady of the World.”

Len Barcousky

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