The front of the U.S. $20 bill, featuring a likeness of Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States, in Boston. (AP Photo/Bill Sikes)
Andrew Jackson was the first American icon. So famous, so powerful was he that Jackson is the only person from our nation with an era named in his honor — the Age of Jackson. In 1833, New York's mayor, Philip Hone, explained, Jackson "is the most popular man we have ever known. ...Washington was only the first Jackson."
President Harry Truman admired Jackson because he was the first president to fight for average Americans, not the wealthy 1 percent. Truman wrote, Jackson "is destined to remain a commanding figure in our national life."
Now, 70 years later, Jackson's story is obscure despite his depiction on our world's most recognized currency.
Critics want Jackson removed from the $20 bill primarily because of Indian removal, but Indian removal's complicated story is not fully understood. There was greed, betrayal and bloodshed among whites and Indians.
Jackson adopted an Indian boy, so why did he condemn entire Indian nations to move to the west of the Mississippi River?
To understand, we must see things from the 19th-century perspective.
The 1830 Indian Removal Act made it legal for the federal government to negotiate treaties for the removal of the southeastern tribes (Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole). The British and the Spaniards would give Indians weapons to attack American settlers in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and other states. For the U.S. government, Indian attacks became a matter of national security.
The law bears Jackson's name, but Indian removal was not his idea. For that we can thank our revered Founding Father Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson believed the United States was destined to stretch across the continent, but Indians inhabited that land. Jefferson "encouraged" Indians to "abandon hunting."
"If they become farmers, they will settle, stop hunting and ... become civilized," he wrote. "This will be "better than ... their former way of living. I trust and believe we are acting for their greatest good."
In 1803, after the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson actually wrote Andrew Jackson about Indian removal, saying, "Louisiana ... will open an asylum for these unhappy people [the Indians], in a country which may suit their habits of life better than what they now occupy, which perhaps they will be willing to exchange with us." So wrote the man who penned, "all men are created equal."
Some tribes assimilated; others resisted. Jefferson came to believe assimilation futile. He believed relocating the Indians to a new territory, where their culture could be preserved, was the only realistic solution for Indians and whites to live peacefully. It was segregation, not genocide, as some have alleged.
Indians were faced with a dilemma: remain on their "fathers' lands" but become as the "white man," or move west and retain their culture. Indians could not agree, and rather than uniting against the white man, they fought among themselves.
Factions of radical Indians were furious — and justly — about treaty promises broken by the United States. "Hostile Indians" turned to violence, killing anyone who was an American. In May 1814, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, The National Intelligencer, wrote that hostile Indians were driven by "blind fanaticism" to attack innocent Americans.
Whites murdered Indians; Indians murdered whites. Revenge. Anger. The cycle continued, blood for blood.
White settlers moving into Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia squatted illegally on Indians' lands, but Jackson could not have sent U.S. troops to protect the Indians. White soldiers would have fought the Indians alongside white settlers.
The Cherokees' removal was managed dreadfully. Congress passed the bill, but failed to allocate appropriate funds. Worse, white U.S. troops' harsh treatment of the Cherokees caused horrific death. A soldier recalled: "I fought through the Civil War and have seen men shot to pieces, slaughtered ... but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever done."
Weeks before Jackson died in 1845, he asked the Rev. John Edgar, "What do you think posterity will blame me for most?" Indian removal did not surface in their conversation.
The sad truth was that the majority of Americans wanted the Indians gone. In fact, Jackson was re-elected in 1832 — after the Indian Removal Act became law — by a larger percentage of the population than re-elected President Barack Obama after passage of the Affordable Care Act.
While grappling with our social issues today, we should not distance ourselves from our forefathers' errors, but rather learn from them. Had tolerance prevailed, whites and Indians would have shared traditions, learned from one another and grown together.
Jackson was hailed for defending the marginalized in 1830s America. Today, Native Americans are justly viewed as the marginalized.
As the first president to champion average Americans, Jackson paved the way for every civil-rights group to petition, protest and participate in our government.
Jackson should remain on our $20 bill — a reminder of the human potential for both strength and weakness.
In this country, we have risen to the occasion with honor as many times as we have fallen short with shame. Jackson's story is our story.
Ryan Vallo of Dayton is a music theatre graduate of Baldwin Wallace University and writer of a new TV drama series about President Andrew Jackson.
