Hamilton wins this duel

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is a graduate of Forest Hills High School. He must have missed its class in American history. Because Lew has made the astonishingly boneheaded decision to demote Alexander Hamilton from his place of veneration on the $10 bill while continuing to accord Andrew Jackson full honor on the $20.

Lew’s insult to Hamilton stems from a correct, long-overdue decision to open a place on U.S. currency notes for a woman. Who she will be is yet to be determined.

One of the oft-disrespected Dead White Men has to go, so Lew chose Hamilton on the ground that the Treasury Department is well into redesigning the $10 for security reasons. But the secretary’s proposed solution denigrates both Hamilton, who will be demoted to a kind of junior status with an image somewhere on the new bill, and the woman, who will not get a bill to herself.

Rather than cast Hamilton into obscurity, Lew should have either designated the woman for the $20 in the future, or reserved that spot for Hamilton, with Jackson dumped entirely to meet a welldeserved fate.

To help Lew recover the ground he lost in high school, let us compare and contrast Hamilton and Jackson.

Hamilton: An orphaned, penniless Hamilton arrived in New York City from the West Indies. Brains and courage made him a Revolutionary War officer and Gen. George Washington’s aidede-camp.

A lawyer, he founded the Bank of New York, was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and was the only New Yorker to sign the Constitution. He wrote most of the Federalist Papers urging ratification.

Washington named Hamilton America’s first treasury secretary, a post in which he put the infant country on sound financial footing.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, North and South, Hamilton never owned another human being and was a founding member of a group that sought to end slavery in New York.

As we’ve noted before, “Among Hamilton’s lesser achievements were serving in the state Assembly and founding the New York Post.”

Jackson: Simply put, Jackson was a slave-owning, plantation-running, bank-hating, mob-inspiring, spoils-system-starting man whose supporters trashed the White House. His genocidal policy toward Indians still stains the nation, and his great victory at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 came two weeks after the conflict ended with the signing of a peace treaty.

This contest is not close: Accord full honors to a woman. Accord full honors to Hamilton. Banish Old Hickory.