Recently, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew mentioned modifying the $10 bill to feature a woman instead of Alexander Hamilton as it was next in line to be redesigned in 2020 though I do not believe he committed to totally ousting his portrait on the note...maybe it'll still be the watermark? I don't know. However this has been causing a minor uproar in various newspaper editorials on why Hamilton ought not be removed and it's the same provincial reasoning that has kept dead Presidents/elder statesmen on our coins since 1948.
The rules for currency redesign are not codified in law to my knowledge but the Coinage Act of 1890 does specify that a design may be changed on a coin without the approval of Congress after 25 years and while this was done for a little while.
Barber coinage replacing the long-lasting Seated Liberty coinage from 1892-1916 which in turn was replaced by a veritable renaissance of Liberty depictions covering a span of 1916-1947 which in turn was replaced, starting in 1909 or 1932 depending on how you look at it, with Presidents that have never been replaced. Only the Franklin half dollar yielded to John F. Kennedy in 1964 and that design has proven unremovable as well.
In fact, the only President successfully replaced on a coin was Eisenhower whose dollar was made from 1971-1978. He was replaced by Susan B. Anthony in 1979 and she proved replaceable with the Sacagawea dollar starting in 2000. The key difference here though, the dollar coin barely circulates so no one's constituencies feel "threatened".
Our currency, like our coins, was once colorful and imaginatively designed. The idea of a portrait of a famous American to act as a focal piece of the note began from its inception in 1861. They even featured Lincoln while he was still alive, something which cannot be done now.
But also like our coins, starting in the 1920s, it became a goal to standardize our currency which up until that point had frequent redesigns and depicted a wide variety of portraiture such as Presidents, famous generals, Treasurers, notable Americans like Lewis and Clark, American Indians, and even allegorical depictions of Science, Liberty, America, and Industry.
Additionally, by the late 1920s it was deemed necessary to save money on printing by reducing the size of bank notes to their present-day size. When these small-sized notes were introduced, the portrait line-up was frozen with $1 Washington, $2 Jefferson, $5 Lincoln, $10 Hamilton, $20 Jackson, $50 Grant, $100 Franklin, $500 McKinley, $1000 Cleveland, $5000 Madison, and $10000 Chase.
These notes were introduced in 1929.
1929!
That's almost 90 years ago. There's probably less than a hundred people still alive with a living memory of anyone other than Hamilton appearing on the $10 bill and odds are that memory would be of Andrew Jackson who graced the 1914 series $10 Federal Reserve Note, 1918 series $10 Federal Reserve Bank Note, and 1923 series United States Note. Other current portraits on $10 bills at the time before the changeover were the first Treasurer of the United States, Michael Hillegas, graced the 1922 series $10 Gold Certificate and recently deceased Vice-President Thomas Hendricks appeared on the 1908 series $10 Silver Certificate. Assassinated President William McKinley graced the 1902 series $10 National Bank Notes.
Money used to be a lot more than Federal Reserve Notes!
I'm not saying I hate Alexander Hamilton, a man instrumental making this country what it is today, no. Though that is what people would imply of me but it's not the case. It's about sharing the spotlight with other notable Americans like was done previously. Replace all the current portraiture in fact, even Washington and Lincoln.
You can't tell me there are no other men and women truly worthy of such commemoration. You can make a rule like they have to not only be dead but maybe dead for at least 50 years so as to allow perspective to develop. I don't know who Thomas Hendricks is. I seriously only learned looking up whose portrait graced the various $10 bills of yesteryear. He was commemorated too quickly one might presume. I would argue the same with Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Dwight Eisenhower on the dime (less than a year after his death), half-dollar (less than a year after his assassination), and dollar coin (about two years after his death) respectively.
Change the vignettes on the reverses too.
But the point is, 90 years is too long. If the Federal Reserve wants to redesign currency every 7-10 years to keep up with counterfeiters then why not introduce new portraiture and vignettes while we're at it?
I feel like the US missed a great opportunity for a grand redesign of our coins and currency during the Bicentennial. We got a new reverse for the $2 bill (the old ones prior to the 1976 series featured Jefferson's mansion Monticello) and some reverse-modified quarters, halves, and dollar coins but that was it (and in the case of the latter, the design was produced only for 18 months with the previous designs resuming in 1977).
We could have had currency vignettes depicting important/triumphant events in US history. The $2 bill led the way with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We could have had things like the Surrender at Saratoga (which ended the Revolutionary War), the signing of the Constitution, an artist's rendering of the assault on Fort McHenry (where the Star Spangled Banner was written), Lincoln delivering the Gettysberg Address (or the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse which ended the Civil War), the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, and the Moon Landing among other possibilities.
Who might have graced such notes? I don't know, but the point is...we should have tried. Same with our coins. All our money designs are tired and stale. Surely good art is not dead in this country. Surely we can do better...
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