Alexander Hamilton is making a play to stay on the $10 bill.
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Back in June of 2015, when Lin-Manuel Miranda’s HAMILTON was merely a sold-out Public Theater hit preparing a transfer to Broadway, the United States Treasury Department announced intentions to redesign the country’s $10 bill, now graced by a portrait of the man Miranda’s lyric describes as “the ten-dollar founding father”, in order to honor a famous American woman. There was also talk that Hamilton might be replaced entirely.
Jackson, the seventh US president, was a slave owner and is criticized, among other things, for forcibly removing Indians from their tribal lands through the Indian Removal Act and what became known as the Trail of Tears, which sent tribes in the southeastern U.S.to “Indian territory” in what is now Oklahoma.
It turns out he also met with Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to urge him to keep Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill. Additionally, according to Stone, the $20 bill makes up a much larger portion of our currency, in part because unlike the $10 its circulated internationally and it’s more commonly produced by ATMs. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department has launched their own page – The New 10 – to solicit suggestions from the public about how US currency could or should be redesigned.
Lew said at the time that Hamilton would still be present in some form on the $10, and now the breakout success of Hamilton, the hip-hop Broadway musical, is ensuring that he sticks to his promise. It’s safe to say that a record number of Americans are excited about the first US Treasury secretary. Although she is hopeful that Lew’s assurances mean that Treasury has a plan for the $20.
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Though the bill will not be available until 2020, to mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, the Department of Treasury is expected to release an image of the redesigned bill this year.
