[WEEKLYSTANDARD] Alexander Hamilton can't get no respect. First, he gets born with at least four strikes against him---in the British West Indies, not exactly the hub of the universe; poor, illegitimate, dead-beat dad, and mother dead when he was eleven; then he blunders into the first great sex scandal of the nascent Republic; then he gets murdered at age 49, shot in a duel by the sitting vice-president, a sociopath who was running a side-line in plotting secession, creating a new state in which he'd be King. Now, two weeks before the 211th anniversary of the duel that killed him, comes the unkindest of cuts: the move to oust his loveable visage from the ten dollar bill, to be replaced by some yet-to-be-picked-out person of gender, to atone for years---nay, decades and centuries----of 'otherness,' dissing, and grief.
Everything is wrong with this ill-advised project, among them the fact that Hamilton eclipses in impact all but a very small handful of presidents, much less the well-meaning but much more obscure list of social workers etc. the feminists want to see in his stead. Why can't they see that this makes them ludicrous? Why can't they go for the two-dollar bill---Jefferson still has the nickel---or one of the less-used denominations, filled by less worthy men? Why should women get on a bill before African Americans do, who have suffered much more (sorry, ladies), and have people, like Frederick Douglass, with much greater claims upon consequence? And why not wait for a woman to come along who really deserves it? The bullpens are filling up with some serious talents, and it won't be long now. Hamilton and Franklin are as far as I can recall the only non-presidents to grace our currency. It was not always thus. The silver dollar used to carry a portrait of Liberty, represented by the face of the concept as a woman in profile. A grand and lovely lady she was. They took her off the dollar and retired her to a nursing home, where she died on January 21st, 2009.
Hamilton, a Dead White Male, contributed much of substance to the making of Our Fair Land, starting with founding an artillery company at the start of the War for Independence and serving as General Washington's chief of staff. He was a founder of the Federalist Party and Secretary of the Treasury. He was killed in a duel by the despicable rascal Aaron Burr. That was before there were secret service details.