# Why isn't John Adams on money? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 29, 2010, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896 "2010-06-29T04:51:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2010, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896/21 "2010-06-29T20:10:43Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > But more to the point, Hamilton was intimately involved in the currency and banking of the nation in addition to being: > > [ul] > [li]General Washington’s chief of staff during the revolutionary war after having fought in several battles in the northeast[/li][li]a member of the Continental Congress[/li][li]a framer of and signatory to the Constitution[/li][li]the founder of a political party[/li][li]the author of the Federalist Papers (along with Jay and Madison, although Hamilton wrote about half himself)[/li][/ul] > > So, Hamilton was a primal force in banking and currency in the US addition to being a founding father, so I think his claim to a place on our currency is unique in its strength. > > YMMV > > ETA: not that Chase wasn’t an important political figure in his own right, but it’s not quite on the same level Hamilton is also regarded as the founder of the U.S. Coast Guard. And on a lesser note, he started the “New York Post”. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896/22 "2010-06-29T20:13:35Z")
Samuel P. Chase is on the $10,000 bill. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896/23 "2010-06-29T20:13:37Z")
Hamilton died in his late 30’s. Imagine how much more he would have accomplished had he lived a long life. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2010, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896/24 "2010-06-29T20:18:53Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > Hamilton died in his late 30’s. Imagine how much more he would have accomplished had he lived a long life. Late 40s. He was either 47 or 49. ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896/25 "2010-06-30T13:45:53Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > Hamilton is also regarded as the founder of the U.S. Coast Guard. And on a lesser note, he started the “New York Post”. Next time they redesign the bills, they should put the headline ‘Headless Body in Topless Bar\*’ on the reverse side to honor this achievement. \*Or, in olde-timey script, “Headleff Body in Topleff Bar” ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896/26 "2010-06-30T15:22:19Z")
> [@Mr.Moto](#): > > I don’t know. Grant’s presidency had its problems but many of them were not of Grant’s making (except that he should have controlled his subordinates better). The Credit Mobilier scandal actually began in the Lincoln administration, yet this gets counted against Grant by lots of people unwilling to let anything stain Lincoln’s memory. > > Grant was tremendously forward thinking on the subject of race relations, signing the first Civil Rights Act (1875) and working to improve Native American relations. He was vicious in his pursuit of the Klan, even breaking them up entirely in several states - they would only regroup after Reconstruction was forced to an end by Democratic gains and Republican defections in the 1870s. > > His foreign policy was moderate - and led to far better relations with Britain by settling war claims left over from the Civil War through arbitration. Grant was actually a very good president, and one of America’s greatest sons (for much more than his Civil War service. He really completed the Lincoln Revolution. However, in this very thing was so much ahead of the people that many simply didn’t realize or udnerstand, and things tended to go back after he left office because people just weren’t ready for it. But he made a fine President and warded off far more trouble than most give him credit for. As president, he stopped the banking fraud and cheating - the problem is that since it burst on his watch, he was blamed by historians. Historians are generally a pretty stupid lot. He founded and innovative new direciton in AmerIndian relations: assimilation. He wanted them to become one people with the United States. Shocking, I know (that was sarcasm). It actually worked pretty well for a while, but he couldn’t control the latent racism or stop the process of corruption after he left office, though he managed to ease it while he was President. His work in race relations and working to bring the South back into the Union as whole, peaceful, and free states worked very well. It was not until after he left office that the “Jim Crow” nonsense really began in earnest. This was the period when Longstreet, Forrest, and some other ex-Confederates came over to the Republican side and worked for racial harmony (ironically, Forrest helped found the KKK, though it was more of a drinking club at the time). Mr. Moto mentioned his work destroying the KKK, of course, which was yet another good work undone by later generations. He avoided trouble with Spain after the Virginius incident, where some Cuban revolutionaries lied about their purpose, got the ship registered, and were smuggling armaments when they were captured and executed by Spain. Spain was right, and matter was negotiated to a comfortable end. He has tended to get blamed for the panic of 1873 for some reason. This doesn’t make sense because it started in Vienna of all places and spread across Europe and into the United States. He used banking policy to ease the Wall Street collapse and managed to release a lot of cash without inflating the dollar. This didn’t stop the panic, but I’m honestly not sure what would have. He’s “blamed” because he acted slowly and deliberately, but again, I can’t think of anything that really could have helped: down at the bottom of it banks were just overextended, in one of the boom-bust cycles that characterize the growth of the American economy. I suppose it can be argued he should have signed the inflation bill, but this could have had huge negative long-term impact on the economy. There were the two scandals, though it’s ironic because instead of a guilty Grant sacrifices subordinates, he was innocent and defended the guilty. Such is life. Nonentheless, while the scandals were sad, they were also pretty normal then and now. After the Presidency, he went on a world tour which proved to be quite useful in building some personal diplomacy for America. He even helped form a peace treaty between China and Japan! Ultimately, I think a lot of historians hated Grant because of his good side. Many of the most dedicated historians of the era were Southern - sometimes Civil War veterans and deeply racist. Their very biased histories have altered public perception of history of this era and the antebellum. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896/27 "2010-06-30T16:16:28Z")
> [@](#): > > He founded and innovative new direciton in AmerIndian relations: assimilation. He wanted them to become one people with the United States. Shocking, I know (that was sarcasm). Pardon a slight hijack, but assimilation was hardly “an innovative new direction”. Americans had been doing it since colonial times – Harvard started a school for Indians in its earliest years for precisely this purpose, and the colonists up and down the seacoast kept it up ever since. Since many such assimilation programs sought to separate Indians from their culture, language, religion, and other cultural traits in the process of making the “one people with the United States”, I’d have to agree that it _was_ shocking. No sarcasm intended. end of hijack. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896/28 "2010-06-30T16:30:49Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > … Grant. What did he do to deserve the $50 bill? Crédit Mobilier scandal? I’m going to have to read up some on Grant’s association with CM, because I’m just finishing up a book on the transcontinental railroad, and C-M’s excesses began way before Grant took office, and at least in this book Stephen Ambrose does not associate Grant with those actions. ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896/29 "2010-06-30T17:10:12Z")
Looking through wiki, there were some high denominations bills issued in the 1920s (since discontinued) with some weird choices: William McKinley? Grover Cleveland? Salmon Chase? Woodrow Wilson and James Madison are sort of understandable but why the former and not the likes of John Adams or Theodore Roosevelt? I guess the Secretary of the Treasury (Andrew Mellon) had a lot to do with choosing who goes on currency. > **[Large denominations of United States currency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_denominations_of_United_States_currency)** > > Large denominations of United States currency greater than $100 were circulated by the United States Treasury until 1969. Since then, U.S. dollar banknotes have been issued in seven denominations: $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. > Large-denomination currency (i.e., banknotes with a face value of $500 or higher) had been used in the United States since the late 18th century. The first $500 note was issued by North Carolina, authorized by legislation dated May 10, 1780. Virginia quickly follo... ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896/30 "2010-06-30T17:52:25Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Pardon a slight hijack, but assimilation was hardly “an innovative new direction”. Americans had been doing it since colonial times – Harvard started a school for Indians in its earliest years for precisely this purpose, and the colonists up and down the seacoast kept it up ever since. > > Since many such assimilation programs sought to separate Indians from their culture, language, religion, and other cultural traits in the process of making the “one people with the United States”, I’d have to agree that it _was_ shocking. No sarcasm intended. It’s no hijack. Yes, there had been some interest this way, but most people simply didn’t think of Indians as “Americans” in the political or social sense. They were other, not citizens, and so forth. Grant saw that this should not continue with the increasing territorial mash, and mostly on his own intiative started a program to bring the tribes into the United States. While this program was intende dot teach them European learning and such, it wasn’t trying to wipe out the Indian identity. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-john-adams-on-money/544896.md?page=1)