How great would it be to have currency that isn’t embarrassing to show to foreigners and isn’t nauseating to look at?
FDR and Obama on bills? Eh, I’m cool with the current cadre. I mean, look at the drama!
Sacagawea on the $1 coin. She helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition survey the Louisiana Purchase made by a future president who was the first Secretary of State under …
Washington on the $1 bill and quarter. Revolutionary War hero, his record before winning the war wasn’t very good. That didn’t stop Washington from showing up in regalia at the Continental Congress, debating over his title, yet still ending up a great guy and the Founding-ist Father. The other chief of the Founding Fathers was …
Franklin on the $100. Not a war hero but was the pivotal Minister of France during the war, he slept through parts of the Continental Congress. Among an insane amount of stuff he did in his life, he helped design the “Great Seal of the United States”, displayed on the Washington $1, with …
Jefferson on the $2 bill and nickle. Also not a war hero, he was against a standing army and navy. In between the stuff Jefferson did (founding the University of Virginia, for example) he envied, emulated, and hated Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, …
Hamilton on the $5. A Revolutionary War hero, his policies, especially assuming the states’ debt and founding a national bank, arguably was the glue that held the young republic together. However, Hamilton’s ideas were antithetical to …
Jackson on the $20. A hero of the War of 1812, he shut down the Bank of America (no relation to the current behemoth bank). That move had ramifications that precipitated the US Civil War and election of President …
Lincoln on the $5 bill & penny. Not a war hero, he went through many generals until he found the general that completed what my brother-in-law calls the “War of Northern Aggression” …
Grant on the $50. A Civil War hero. His Presidential campaign was backed by Frederick Douglas, who had a close friend and fellow suffragist in …
Susan B. Anthony on the $1 coin. Her legacy was the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote was ratified during the Wilson administration, and his Assistant Secretary of the Navy was …
FDR on the dime. He was our longest serving President, ignoring the two-term precedent Washington established. Roosevelt was President during WWII, and Commander-in-Chief during the service of a PT boat commander LTJG …
Kennedy on the half dollar. A war hero, he died in office as did FDR and Lincoln.
That’s all I got. Two presidents in the 20th Century, only one in the latter half, and none who served or lived during my lifetime.
But the bills, the coins, the currency … that is a tactile connection to the past if we but take a moment to appreciate it. And to have good looking paper money, priceless.
