Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Why It Was Always Going to Be Tubman on Our Money
Why It Was Always Going to Be Tubman on Our Money
Jan 10, 2026 11:12 PM

Last Summer I predicted that Harriet Tubman would be replacing Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill. I was almost right. She’ll be replacing Andrew Jackson.

The U.S. Treasury announced last year that the $10 bill is the next paper currency scheduled for a major redesign — a process that takes years because of the anti-counterfeiting technology involved — and will feature a “notable woman.”

The new ten will be unveiled in 2020, the 100th anniversary of the passage of the nineteenth amendment, which gave women the right to vote. As the Treasury explained, “The passage of the nineteenth amendment granted women their right to fully participate in the system our country was founded on—a government by the people, a democracy.”

In a post last June I wrote: “I’m almost certain they already know who Treasury is going to choose: It’s going to beHarriet Tubman.” Instead, it was Jackson who got demoted to the back of the currency while Tubman will take his placeon the front.

I think the Treasury made the right decision. As the first Treasury secretary, Hamilton deserved to stick around on the $10 (leaders of the women’s suffragemovement will be featured on the other side). But it was time for a woman to join the men on our money and, based on the criteria used for consideration, Tubman is a solid choice. She was not only an abolitionist, she served inthe Civil War as a Union spy and became the only woman during that conflict to lead men into a battle.

Unfortunately, fans of Tubman will have to wait awhile longer to see her new portrait: the $20 isn’t scheduled for a redesign until 2030.

In the meantime, here was my reasoning from last year on why Tubman was all but inevitable based on the Treasury’scriteria for a “noble woman”candidate:

She will be dead, and pro-democracy — A primary criteria for getting your face on America’s money is that you have to be dead. Plenty of famous women meet that criteria, of course, but that’s the first hurdle. The second one sets a higher bar. As the Treasury website notes:

Democracy is the theme for the next redesigned series and the Secretary will select a woman recognized by the public who was a champion for democracy in the United States. The person should be iconic and have made a significant contribution to — or impact on — protecting the freedoms on which our nation was founded.

That requirement narrows the field considerably.

She will have name recognition — If you didn’t hear her name mentioned in history class in junior high, you likely won’t see her name linked to the new ten.

She will not be Susan B. Anthony — Anthony seems like she would be the obvious choice, considering her connection to the 19thAmendment. And she has plenty of champions (such as Dominic Bouck, O.P. at First Things) who would love to see her share the bill with Alexander Hamilton. But there is also an obvious reason it won’t be Anthony: she was already on the dollar.

The Susan B. Anthony dollar was a dollar coin minted from 1979 to 1981 and again in 1999. The public hated it—not Anthony, just the coin (which was too similar in size to the quarter). But Anthony had her shot. The Treasury Department is not going to waste this historic opportunity to simply shift Anthony’s visage from a coin to a paper bill.

She will be African American — To date, only two women have appeared on U.S. paper currency. One was white (Martha Washington) and the other was Native American (Pocahontas). It’s time for an African-American woman.

In light of those tentative requirements, the field is narrowed to only three candidates: Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth.

Parks has been called the “mother of the civil rights movement” because of her role in the Montgomery bus boycott. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993, was presented the Medal of Freedom Award by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999, and after her death on October 24, 2005, Congress approved a resolution allowing her body to lie in honor in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. She’s a solid contender, but she’s too current a figure.

At the time of the currency unveiling, Parks will have been gone from this life for 15 years. Assuming that America will continue to exist and that Bitcoin won’t replace paper money, there will be plenty of opportunities in the future to honor Parks by putting her on our money.

That leaves only Tubman and Truth.

Both Tubman and Truth were former slaves who became abolitionists and later fought for women’s suffrage alongside Susan B. Anthony. Both are the very models of “inclusive democracy”, which make both the primary contenders for placement on the new ten.

I could have titled this article “Why Sojourner Truth Will Be on the $10 Bill”—and I almost did. If Truth were chosen over Tubman it’d be only a mild surprise. But Tubman gains a slight advantage because of her name recognition.

Tubman is better known because her role in the abolition movement is slightly more impressive. Truth gained prominence mainly as a speaker while Tubman was active in helping slaves escape to freedom. The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison even dubbed Tubman “Moses” because of the way she led her people out of bondage.

For these reasons, Harriet Tubman will be the one sharing space on the new ten with Alexander Hamilton, the only Founding Father on our currency who never owned slaves.

How sure am I this will be Treasurer Lew’s choice? Almost certain. If I were a betting man I’d bet you a $10 it’ll be Tubman.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the dragon slayer
At City Journal, Solzhenitsyn scholar Daniel J. Mahoney offers “A Centennial Tribute” marking the 100th anniversary of the Russian author’s birth. Mahoney, who holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, describes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as “the century’s greatest critic of the totalitarian immolation of liberty and human dignity.” The Russian novelist and historian was … … a thinker and moral witness who illumined the fate of the human soul hemmed in by barbed wire in...
Explainer: Christmas 2018 by the numbers
$75– Average amount U.S. consumers spent on real Christmas trees in 2017. $107– Average amount U.S. consumers spent on fake Christmas trees in 2017. 27,400,000– Number of real Christmas trees sold in the U.S. in 2017. 21,100,000– Number of fake Christmas trees sold in the U.S. in 2017. 7– Average growing time in years for a Christmas tree. 350 million–Number of Christmas trees currently growing on Christmas tree farms. 329.2 million– Current population of the United States. $27.21— The energy...
Here’s a fascinating visualization of the growth of the world’s 10 largest economies
GDP (i.e., gross domestic product) is the market value of all finished goods and services, produced within a country in a year. When people talk about how “the economy” is doing they are usually referring to GDP. GDP isn’t the most important thing in life, but it is an important measure of our standard of living, helps us know if we’re ‘better off’ than before, and is correlated with many of the non-monetary improvements that contribute to human flourishing. Recently,...
Explainer: What you should know about France’s Yellow Vest (Gilets Jaunes) protests
What’s going on in France? For the past two months, a protest movement known as Gilets Jaunes (the Yellow Vests) has rocked France. The French government has considered imposing a state of emergency to prevent a recurrence of some of the worst civil unrest in more than a decade. What are theGilets Jaunes protesting? The protests were started to oppose a “green tax” increase on gasoline and diesel fuel. The taxes are part of an environmental measure to encourage reduction...
Rethinking the Iron Lady: lessons for today Brexit
Since the British population decided to strike a coup in the liberal political establishment voting for the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union (Brexit), Westminster is in a political crisis. David Cameron resigned after the referendum’s e, and Theresa May’s government is burning in flames, and no one knows if she will survive a vote of confidence initiated by conservative backbenchers. To understand the political drama of the modern United Kingdom and Brexit, one must understand the significance of...
A way back from secularism
Secularism separates all things, says Rev. Anthony Perkins in this week’s Acton Commentary, even sacred ones, from their source and turns them into objects. These are difficult times that divide Christians from their neighbors and from one another. In large part this is because we do not agree on how to relate with secular culture and which parts of it, if any, can be blessed. Eastern Orthodox theologian and ethicist Vigen Guroian’s new analysis of secularism and how it insulates...
Radio Free Acton: The Church and the market; Who is Lord Acton?
On this episode of Radio Free Acton, Senior Editor at Acton, Rev. Ben Johnson, speaks with the Director of the Center for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics, Rev. Richard Turnbull, about the role the Church should take in the market and how that has played out specifically in the UK. After that, Producer Caroline Roberts speaks with Acton’s librarian and research associate, Dan Hugger, about the life and work of the Acton Institute’s namesake, Lord Acton. Check out these additional resources...
Saving the entitlement state: Balancing ‘humanitarian policy’ with economic reality
When debating entitlement reform, any critic of the status quo will be quick to remember the infamous 2012 mercial wherein Rep. Paul Ryan pushes his grandmother over a cliff. For some, the ad was typical political-hardball-turned-cultural-meme; for others, it remains a haunting reminder of the vilification one is bound to endure by asking even the tamest questions about frightening math. It’s mon cultural confusion—that we must choose between lofty humanitarian goals and grounded economic realism. The reality, of course, is...
Conservatives get failing grade on education
An interesting perspective from which to study the history of the conservative movement is the relationship of conservatives to education. Every true conservative is, at some level, invested in tradition. Since Edmund Burke, modern Kirkean conservatives and classical liberals have held that historical experience is a primary guide to political life and that the survival of any society depends mostly on the transmission of this accumulated experience. It should, therefore, be considered natural for conservatives to be at the forefront...
Brazil rejoins the West
Since the 1960s, Brazilian foreign policy has an undistinguished history, and has gradually been reduced to the pursuit of ideological leftism. This was not always the case. During the imperial regime (1824-1889), Brazilian diplomacy policy was known for the high-quality of its members, for their ability to read politics, for negotiating talent and, above all, for their fidelity to the interests of Brazil. Paulino José Soares de Sousa, the Viscount of Uruguay, Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão, the Marquis of Parana,...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved