Harriet Tubman once staged a sit-in to get $20. The Treasury just gave her all of them.

Harriet Tubman once staged a sit-in to get $20. The Treasury just gave her all of them.

The account that Harriet Tubman will be replacing Andrew Jackson on the foreground of the $20 bill is cogent for all sorts of reasons. Slave buyer Jackson is getting pushed to the aback of the bill by a above slave; Tubman, who led added than 300 disciplinarian to abandon on the Underground Railroad, is displacing a admiral who collection 16,000 Cherokees (and bags added from added built-in tribes) out of their homelands on the Trail of Tears.

But even if Tubman weren't displacing Jackson, the $20 would be the absolute bill to account her, because the sum of $20 played a cogent role in her activity on two abstracted occasions.

For one thing, $20 was the bulk she becoming as a account alimony afterwards the Civil War, for which she helped the Union as a advance and spy. It was still beneath than the $25 a ages paid to abounding soldiers, but it was the aftereffect of a continued acknowledged action to acquire a soldier's alimony at all. (Vox's Phil Edwards wrote about this endure year, if the amusing media attack to put Tubman or addition woman on the $20 was at its height.)

But even afore that — as Yoni Appelbaum of the Atlantic acicular out on Twitter — the sum of $20 played a huge role in Tubman's efforts to accomplishment her own ancestor from slavery.

In Tubman's aboriginal biography, the 1869 bookScenes in the Activity of Harriet Tubman, columnist Sarah Hopkins Bradford told the adventure of Tubman's efforts to save her parents as an archetype of just how attenuate it was for Tubman to ask for annihilation from others. "But admitting so afraid for herself," Bradford wrote, "she is adventurous abundant if the wants of her chase are concerned" — and adventurous to abash able people, if necessary.

"I'm not gwine till I git my twenty dollars"

In this case, Bradford writes, Tubman believed she'd gotten "directed" by God to ask for funds to accomplishment her parents from "a assertive admirer in New York," whom Appelbaum identifies as arresting abolitionist Oliver Johnson:

When she larboard the abode of her accompany to go there, she said, "I'm gwine to Mr.--'s office, an' I ain't gwine to lebe there, an' I ain't gwine to eat or alcohol till I git abundant money to yield me down afterwards the ole people."

She went into this gentleman's office.

"What do you want, Harriet?" was the aboriginal greeting.

"I wish some money, sir."

"You do? How abundant do you want?"

"I wish twenty dollars, sir."

"Twenty dollars? Who told you to appear actuality for twenty dollars?"

"De Lord tole me, sir."

"Well, I assumption the Lord's mistaken this time."

"I assumption he isn't, sir. Anyhow I'm gwine to sit actuality till I git it."

So she sat down and went to sleep. All the morning and all the afternoon she sat there still, sleeping and activation up--sometimes award the appointment abounding of gentlemen--sometimes award herself alone. Many fugitives were casual through Now York at that time, and those who came in declared that she was one of them, annoyed out and resting. Sometimes she would be alive up with the words, "Come, Harriet, you had bigger go. There's no money for you here." "No, sir. I'm not gwine till I git my twenty dollars."

Ultimately, Tubman got her twenty dollars — and again some. Bradford writes that Tubman eventually fell comatose in the office, and woke up to acquisition $60 in her pocket. But they hadn't appear from Johnson; they'd appear from the added "fugitive" ex-slaves casual through the office, who managed to accession a amazing bulk of money to advice Tubman accompany one added to their ranks.

Tubman acclimated the money to accomplishment her ancestor — who was on balloon for allowance disciplinarian escape — and accompany him all the way up to Canada, area he couldn't be recaptured into slavery.

Admittedly, $20 doesn't go as far as it acclimated to. But already Tubman's face is getting minted assimilate new $20 bills, she'll be allotment of every barter in the bulk of banknote even a arresting abolitionist wouldn't accord her to save her own father. And to humans who apperceive that story, it ability even serve as a admonition of how abundant added admired $20 is to those who accept less.

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