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.
The explosion of the Negro Fort
Jackson didn’t just own slaves, he also spent some time tracking down fugitive slaves and blowing them up.
At the end of the War of 1812, during which Jackson earned his reputation as an Indian killer by … killing a lot of Indians, both fugitive Creek warriors and fugitive slaves fled into Florida, which was under the control of the neutral Spanish. Hearing news of an abandoned British fort that had been handed over to a force of fugitive slaves, a community of escaped slaves formed around the so-called Negro Fort in the Florida panhandle. The resulting town of about 800 people was seen as a threat to southern slavery, as in “if they know there’s a place to escape to, what’s to stop them from escaping?”
In the course of last winter, several slaves from this neighborhood fled to that fort; others have lately gone from Tennessee and the Mississippi Territory. How long shall this evil, requiring immediate remedy, be permitted to exist?
Not long. Jackson was not a fan. He also wasn’t a big believer in “neutral.” In 1815, he sent his men into Spanish Florida to attack the Negro Fort. The freedmen in the fort refused to surrender and shouted out “Give me liberty or give me death!” Jackson’s forces complied. They fired a “hot shot”—a cannonball heated glowing hot—into the fort, where it set off the powder magazine. About 250 men, women, and children went up in a massive explosion.
Personally, that sounds like a scene that would make one hell of a panorama.
A burning village. Or two. Or ...
Sure, Jackson is probably more famous for killing Native Americans with a stroke of his pen, but before he got around to inaugurating the Trail of Tears, Jackson did a lot of Indian killing at shorter range. On the same trip into Florida that saw the explosion of the Negro Fort, Jackson did a good deal of that killing in what would become the standard method for dealing with Native Americans for decades. If they fight, kill them. If they don’t … burn down their towns and kill them anyway.
For Jackson, the War of 1812 had only nominally been about fighting the British. Most of his war involved attacking warriors of the divided Creek nation and enforcing treaties that took about 20 million acres away from the Creek. In Florida, Jackson’s first big tangle was with the Mikasuki. The Mikasuki’s big problem was that they didn’t think they were Creek, or that the treaty that Creek leaders had signed applied to them. The U.S. disagreed. So, the Mikasuki ran, there were massacres in both directions, and eventually Jackson was in Florida. Followed by burning. About 300 Indian homes were burning in the first Mikasuki village. Then there were some villages of fugitive slaves. Which were burned. A hanging interlude. More village burning. Then way down to the Suwannee River … for more village burning, after which Jackson declared victory.
Any of these villages going up would make a pretty good panorama.
Fun fact: During his first election, a series of anti-Jackson tracts known as the “Coffin handbills” were circulated. The second of these contains an amazing account in which Jackson personally leads the slaughter of 1,000 Indians.
These poor wretches were massacred in cold blood, without the least provocation. The account of this bloody massacre, given by the monster Jackson himself, has already been published by the other eye witness in the Coffin Handbill. After this “sanguinary chieftain” had been guilty of these atrocious acts of barbarity, he lay down composedly and slept on the field, surrounded by five under and seventy human carcasses!!!
Yes, multiple exclamation points were a thing even then.
The day after this bloody affair, the blood thirsty Jackson began again to show his cannibal propensities, by ordering his Bowman to dress a dozen of these Indian bodies for his breakfast, which he devoured without leaving even a fragment.
You just don’t get many accusations of cannibalism in politics these days—not even with Donald Trump. Even though this was almost certainly a whole-cloth creation of the tract’s author (Jackson weighed in at about 130, so the number of Indian warriors he could consume in a sitting was probably something less than 12), it says something that people of the day might believe this of Jackson. And boy, think of what this could do for the national motto: America. If we don’t like you, will will f*cking kill you and eat you.
Prime panorama material.
Counting noses
Yeah … this one is not going to be nearly as cute as that title makes it sound.
In the middle of the War of 1812, Jackson had some serious issues with the Creek. The Creek were divided between traditionalists in the northern part of their area who mostly just wanted to be left alone, and a group in the south that was willing to accept the restrictions and “culture” being forced on them. The U.S., in the form of Jackson, played on the southern team, so while the whole thing was billed as the Creek Civil War, it was a lot less of an internal fight than the name implies.
Mostly Jackson’s issues were actually with his own soldiers, many of whom were enlisted for just 60 days at a time, which meant they kept getting near the Creek right before it was time to turn around and go home. Jackson’s nickname at this point was more “old really frustrated guy who spends all his time getting ready to fight, but doesn’t quite get there.”
When Jackson finally built enough roads and had enough men on hand to attack the main Creek force, he didn’t waste the opportunity. Jackson killed 800 Creek warriors at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and sent the remaining 200 running. We can be pretty sure the count was accurate, because Jackson’s men collected Indian noses as a way of keeping score.
Honestly, we don’t know that Jackson sat down in front of a stack of human noses and conducted this count. But someone did.
Jackson’s forces also made bridles for their horses from the skin of slain Creeks. Remember that cannibalism story? Doesn’t sound so unlikely now, does it?
Shooting someone in a duel
Jackson did so much dueling that it implies at least two miracles: he lived, and still had time to do all that slave trading, Indian killing, and politicking.
In 1805, Jackson made a large bet on a horse race, which someone else made fun of, which someone else was offended by, which caused someone else to insult Jackson, which caused Jackson to break his nose with a cane, which led to someone else insulting Jackson in the newspaper, which resulted in Jackson demanding a duel with attorney Charles Dickinson.
Dickinson fired first, and struck Jackson in the chest. Jackson fired next, and hit Dickinson in the chest. Jackson lived. Dickinson bled out on the field. Hey, Dickinson had called Jackson a “poltroon.” You can’t allow faldaral like that to go unpunished.
That would make a pretty good image all by itself, but Jackson didn’t stop there. Jackson fought somewhere between five and 100 duels, depending on who you trust about the body count, and ended up with a number of bullets or bullet fragments lodged here and there. May we suggest putting a different duel on the back of each $20 bill? Like trading cards!
Observers likened him to a volcano, and only the most intrepid or recklessly curious cared to see it erupt.... His close associates all had stories of his blood-curling oaths, his summoning of the Almighty to loose His wrath upon some miscreant, typically followed by his own vow to hang the villain or blow him to perdition. Given his record – in duels, brawls, mutiny trials, and summary hearings – listeners had to take his vows seriously.
Hmm. Volcanic temper. Huge ego. Never forgot an insult. Constantly making threats … now who does that remind … Never mind.
But yeah, duels weren’t the end of it. Those Coffin Handbills? The original set of coffins was for people Jackson had executed. He liked to do the executing. Enough so that for many members of Jackon’s militia forces, the biggest threat was probably Jackson.
The six militia members executed in Coffin Handbill #1 were hung during the Creek fight. They weren’t the only ones.
More people met ropes during Jackson’s military occupation of New Orleans, an occupation that occurred for no particular reason—though one guy did write a newspaper article critical of Jackson. That was probably enough. During this period, Jackson arrested said article writer. Then arrested a judge who dared to say he couldn’t do that. Then he arrested another lawyer, and a Louisiana legislator, and a federal judge.
Is there a way to make a panorama out of Jackson shredding Constitutional amendments?
Honestly, you know what would go well on the back of the bill? This would go well.
Only this image doesn’t even begin to show the true misery and sheer murder represented by the Indian removal policy. Something that really brings home the ugliness of the policy—and avoids showing us Jackson himself—would be much more suitable.