8 Things You May Not Know About American Money

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

On February 25, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the National Banking Act (originally known as the National Currency Act), which for the first time in American history established the federal dollar as the sole currency of the United States. On the law’s 150th anniversary, explore eight surprising facts about American money.


TIMELIME OF AMERICAN BILLS:
https://www.uscurrency.gov/content/history-american-currency


1. The Constitution only authorized the federal government to issue coins, not paper money.

Article One of the Constitution granted the federal government the sole power “to coin money” and “regulate the value thereof.” However, it said nothing about paper money. This was largely because the founding fathers had seen the bills issued by the Continental Congress to finance the American Revolution—called “continentals”—become virtually worthless by the end of the war. The implosion of the continental eroded faith in paper currency to such an extent that the Constitutional Convention delegates decided to remain silent on the issue.



2. Prior to the Civil War, banks printed paper money.

For America’s first 70 years, private entities, and not the federal government, issued paper money. Notes printed by state-chartered banks, which could be exchanged for gold and silver, were the most common form of paper currency in circulation. From the founding of the United States to the passage of the National Banking Act, some 8,000 different entities issued currency, which created an unwieldy money supply and facilitated rampant counterfeiting. By establishing a single national currency, the National Banking Act eliminated the overwhelming variety of paper money circulating throughout the country and created a system of banks chartered by the federal government rather than by the states. The law also assisted the federal government in financing the Civil War.





3. Foreign coins were once acceptable legal tender in the United States.

Before gold and silver were discovered in the West in the mid-1800s, the United States lacked a sufficient quantity of precious metals for minting coins. Thus, a 1793 law permitted Spanish dollars and other foreign coins to be part of the American monetary system. Foreign coins were not banned as legal tender until 1857.





4. The highest-denomination note ever printed was worth $100,000.
The largest bill ever produced by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing was the $100,000 gold certificate. The currency notes were printed between December 18, 1934, and January 9, 1935, with the portrait of President Woodrow Wilson on the front. Don’t ask your bank teller for a $100,000 bill, though. The notes were never circulated to the public and were used solely for transactions among Federal Reserve banks.




5. You won’t find a president on the highest-denomination bill ever issued to the public.
The $10,000 bill is the highest denomination ever circulated by the federal government. In spite of its value, it is adorned not with a portrait of a president but with that of Salmon P. Chase, treasury secretary at the time of the passage of the National Banking Act. Chase later served as chief justice of the Supreme Court. The federal government stopped producing the $10,000 bill in 1969 along with these other high-end denominations: $5,000 (fronted by James Madison), $1,000 (fronted by Grover Cleveland) and $500 (fronted by William McKinley). (Although rare to find in your wallet, $2 bills are still printed periodically.)





6. Two American presidents appeared on Confederate dollars.

The Confederacy issued paper money worth approximately $1 billion during the Civil War—more than twice the amount circulated by the United States. While it’s not surprising that Confederate President Jefferson Davis and depictions of slaves at work in fields appeared on some dollar bills, so too did two Southern slave-holding presidents whom Confederates claimed as their own: George Washington (on a $50 and $100 bill) and Andrew Jackson (on a $1,000 bill).




7. Your house may literally have been built with old money.
When dollar bills are taken out of circulation or become worn, they are shredded by Federal Reserve banks. In some cases, the federal government has sold the shredded currency to companies that can recycle it and use it for the production of building materials such as roofing shingles or insulation. (The Bureau of Engraving and Printing also sells small souvenir bags of shredded currency that was destroyed during the printing process.)





8. The $10 bill has the shortest lifespan of any denomination.

According to the Federal Reserve, the estimated lifespan of a $10 bill is 3.6 years. The estimated lifespans of a $5 and $1 bill are 3.8 years and 4.8 years, respectively. The highest estimated lifespan is for a $100 bill at nearly 18 years. The federal government reports that approximately 4,000 double folds (forward, then backward) are required to tear a note.

resource: http://www.history.com

Following his beliefs: The Ralph Lazo Story

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Following his beliefs led him to Manzanar
Ralph Lazo's decision to voluntarily join his Japanese American classmates in the internment camp still resonates 65 years later.
May 27, 2007|Cecilia Rasmussen | Times Staff Writerreprint: http://articles.latimes.com

Manzanar, Calif., May 1942.
It's a warm morning at the dusty, inhospitable World War II internment camp on the bleak edge of the Owens Valley. Latino teenager Ralph Lazo arrives by bus to join his Japanese American friends from Belmont High School. Lazo, a 16-year-old Mexican-Irish American, was motivated by loyalty and outrage at the internment of his friends. He became the only known non-spouse, non-Japanese who voluntarily relocated to Manzanar. "Who can say that I haven't got Japanese blood in my veins?" Lazo told The Times in a 1981 interview. That sentiment is voiced by actor Alexis Cruz , who plays Lazo in a 33-minute docudrama, "Stand Up for Justice: The Ralph Lazo Story." The film, which also uses archival footage, is part of a project to make local history and civics lessons more interesting for high school students.

The Los Angeles Unified School District recognized Lazo's act of friendship and loyalty last week as the Board of Education presented his relatives with a certificate for his contributions to the Japanese American community. Film participants, teachers and members of the Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress group were also awarded certificates for the project, part of the board's Asian Pacific Heritage Month Resolution. Lazo was "an individual who showed courage. He stood up for his neighbors, doing the right thing at a difficult time," said John Esaki, who wrote and directed the film and is program director at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. "This story has been told hundreds of times, but never through the eyes of a Mexican American. He was legendary, winning the hearts of everyone at Manzanar, and it was hard to ignore such a powerful and enduring character."

The film, made for about $100,000, was produced by Visual Communications, an Asian
Pacific media arts center, and funded by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Project. It recreates the period after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. More than two months later, on Feb. 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed an executive order for the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast, believing them to be a threat to national security.

Lazo, who was born in Los Angeles in 1925, grew up in the Temple Street neighborhood on Bunker Hill, a melting pot of Japanese, Basques, Jews, Latinos, Anglos, Filipinos, Koreans and African Americans. As he watched posters go up in community churches giving instructions for the internment process, "it really hit home," he told The Times in 1981. Anger overwhelmed him as he helped his friends hurriedly sell their belongings for a pittance. "Internment was immoral," he said. "It was wrong, and I couldn't accept it."

His father, John Houston Lazo, was a widower who supported Ralph and his sister, Virginia, by working for the Santa Fe Railroad and painting houses. When his father was on the road, Ralph Lazo often ate at the homes of Nisei friends -- second-generation Japanese Americans. He also played basketball on a Filipino community church team.  In May 1942, prodded by Japanese American classmates "to come along," Lazo slipped aboard a train. He'd told his father that he was going to camp with his Japanese American friends but was vague about the particulars. "I think he thought I meant weekend camp," Lazo told The Times. But when his father learned that his son was at Manzanar, he made no effort to bring him home. "He was a wise man," Lazo said. "He knew I was safe."

No government official asked about his ancestry, he said. "Being brown has its advantages." Despite Manzanar's name, Spanish for "apple orchard," the area had been left barren decades earlier when Owens Valley water was diverted to Los Angeles. But Lazo helped to make the place as attractive as possible by planting trees. He also delivered mail and kept spirits up by holding holiday parties that featured punch, deviled-egg sandwiches and the Jive Bombers, the camp's dance band. He even played cupid, matchmaking several friends, according to Esaki, the filmmaker. "He was enthusiastic. He spoke a little Japanese and was a cheerleader who fired up the crowd at all the sporting events," Esaki said. Lazo told The Times that camp inmates tried to make the best of their situation. "We didn't just sit around and complain," he said. "In the summer, the heat was unbearable; in the winter, the sparsely rationed oil didn't adequately heat the tarpaper-covered pine barracks with the knotholes in the floor. The wind would blow so hard, it would toss rocks around."

When everything looked grim, Toyo Miyatake, a renowned photographer who captured poignant scenes at Manzanar with his contraband homemade camera, "would always point out the beauty around us," Lazo said. In 1944, Lazo was elected class president of Manzanar High School, even though he graduated at the bottom of a class of 150. "I didn't mind being at the bottom of that group," he told The Times.  Government officials finally realized Lazo was not Japanese-American when he was drafted in August 1944. The U.S. Department of the Interior's War Relocation Authority touted the fact with a news release: "America's only non-Japanese evacuee, Ralph Lazo In fact, there were other non-Japanese at internment camps -- spouses of Japanese Americans and Japanese citizens.

Army Staff Sgt. Lazo served in the South Pacific during the campaign for the liberation of the Philippines. "The American G.I. couldn't tell the difference between a Japanese and a Filipino. That's why they assigned me." Soldiers "were killing the Filipinos and letting the Japanese go," he told The Times. He was awarded a Bronze Star for heroism in combat. After the war, Lazo graduated from UCLA and earned a master's degree from Cal State Northridge. He became a teacher and joined the struggle to win reparations for Japanese Americans, helping raise funds for a threatened class-action lawsuit. In 1988, Congress passed a law to award each surviving internee $20,000.

Lazo taught at San Fernando Junior High School, then at Grant and Monroe high schools before becoming a counselor at Valley College in 1970. There, he also mentored students who were disabled and worked to persuade more Latino parents to encourage their children to go to college and register to vote.


Dolores Huerta: Activist

Thursday, July 6, 2017

“Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.”
—Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta has worked to improve social and economic conditions for farm workers and to fight discrimination. To further her cause, she created the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) in 1960 and co-founded what would become the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta stepped down from the UFW in 1999, but she continues her efforts to improve the lives of workers, immigrants and women.

Early Life 

Activist and labor leader Dolores Fernández, better known as Dolores Huerta, was born April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, the second child of Juan and Alicia (Chavez) Fernandez. The young family struggled, and by the time Dolores was three, her parents divorced and her mother moved Dolores and her two brothers to Stockton, California. Dolores maintained a relationship with her father, who later became a union activist and a New Mexico state assemblyman. Juan’s own political and labor activism later proved inspirational to Dolores.

Migrant Workers in Stockton, CA
When the family first arrived in Stockton, a farming community in the San Joaquin Valley, Alicia worked two jobs to provide for the family. Dolores’s grandfather, Herculano Chavez, took care of the children, serving as the children’s adult male figure. Dolores admired her mother, who was always encouraged her children to get involved in youth activities and become something. Alicia worked hard to provide music lessons and extracurricular activities for Dolores and her brothers. Dolores played violin and piano and took dance lessons. A good student, she was also a Girl Scout up until she turned 18, and she won second place in a national essay contest.

Despite her achievements, Dolores experienced the racism many Mexicans and Mexican Americans suffered from, especially those who were farm workers. At school she was sometimes treated with suspicion and scorn. She was once accused by a teacher of stealing another student’s work because the teacher was convinced that Dolores was incapable, due to her ethnic origin. However, with time, her family’s economic conditions improved. During World War II, Alicia ran a restaurant and then purchased a hotel in Stockton with her second husband, James Richards. The businesses served the farm workers and day laborers, offering affordable rates and welcoming the diversity of the area.

Dolores with her husband, Ventura
After graduating from Stockton High School, in 1947, Dolores Fernandez went through a marriage, the birth to two children and a divorce. After a series of unsatisfying jobs, she returned to school and eventually completed a teaching degree at Stockton College, part of the University of the Pacific. She briefly worked as an elementary school teacher, but resigned because she was so distraught over the poor living conditions of her students, many of them children of farm workers. Determined to help, in 1955, she and Fred Ross started the Stockton chapter of the Community Services Organization (CSO), a grassroots group that worked to end segregation, discrimination and police brutality and improve social and economic conditions of farm workers. During this time, Dolores married Ventura Huerta, another labor activist. The couple would go on to have five children.

A Life of Activism

Cesar Chavez
In 1960, Dolores Huerta started the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA). She set up voter registration drives and lobbied politicians to allow non–U.S. citizen migrant workers to receive public assistance and pensions and provide Spanish-language voting ballots and driver's tests. During this time, Dolores met Cesar Chavez, a fellow CSO official, who had become its director. In 1962, both Huerta and Chavez lobbied to have the CSO expand its efforts to help farm workers, but the organization was focused on urban issues and couldn’t move in that direction. Frustrated, they both left the organization and, with Gilbert Padilla, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). The two made a great team. Chavez was the dynamic leader and speaker; and Huerta the skilled organizer and tough negotiator.

In 1965, the AWA and the NFWA combined to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (later, simply the United Farm Workers). That year, the union took on the Coachella Valley grape growers, with Chavez organizing a strike of all farm workers and Huerta negotiating contracts. After five hard years, the United Farm Workers (now affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) signed an historic agreement with 26 grape growers that improved working conditions for farm workers, including reducing the use of harmful pesticides and initiating unemployment and healthcare benefits. In the 1970s, Huerta coordinated a national lettuce boycott and helped create the political climate for the passage of the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first law to recognize the rights of farm workers to bargain collectively.

During the 1980s, Dolores Huerta served as vice president of the UFW and co-founded the UFW’s radio station. She continued to speak for a variety of causes, advocating for a comprehensive immigration policy and better health conditions for farm workers. In 1988, she nearly lost her life when she was beaten by San Francisco police at a rally protesting the policies of then-presidential candidate George H. W. Bush. She suffered six broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.

Later Life

Dolores Huerta has been honored for her work as a fierce advocate for farm workers, immigration and women. She received the Ellis Island Medal of Freedom Award and was inducted in the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993. That year proved bitter-sweet for her as she also experienced the passing of her beloved friend Cesar Chavez. In 1998, she received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award, a year before she stepped down from her position at the United Farm Workers. In 2002, she received the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. The $100,000 award provided her the means to create the Dolores Huerta Foundation, whose purpose is to bring organizing and training skills to low-income communities. Huerta continues to lecture and speak out on a variety of social issues involving immigration, income inequality and the rights of women and Latinos.  

Resource: www.biography.com


In 2006, Dolores Huerta visits Tucson High School and makes a speech. Within the speech, she states "Republicans Hate Latinos." In 2010, Arizona Attorney Tom Horne and other politicians used these words as their rationale for passing HB-2281-The Ethnic Studies Ban. In this interview, Dolores Huerta discusses the statement and its affect. 

more about Latino History: rudyacuna.net

Women Prisoners of War at Castle Thunder: Civil War

Friday, May 5, 2017

By Rebecca Beatrice Brooks

Castle Thunder at the fall of Richmond, 1865
Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia, was one of the few Confederate prisons that held not only male prisoners of war but women prisoners as well. Located along Tobacco row, near Libby prison, Castle Thunder held around 100 women prisoners for various crimes, such as prostitution, spying and smuggling, although most of them were political prisoners. A few of these women were also female soldiers whose true identity had been discovered. An article published in the New York Times in July of 1863, states that some of the female prisoners were also wives and children of Union soldiers who were captured after the Union defeat at the second battle of Winchester. These women and children didn’t remain long at Castle Thunder as they were quickly transferred to the United States Hotel in Washington D.C. Women and African-American prisoners were kept in a separate building at the prison while male Confederate deserters and male political prisoners were held in another.

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, 1863
Conditions at the prison were deplorable. Castle Thunder was filthy, overcrowded, disease-ridden and lacked adequate food and medical supplies for the prisoners. Executions of Confederate deserters took place in full view of the other prisoners and a notoriously brutal captain, George W. Alexander, patrolled the prison daily accompanied by his aggressive black dog, Nero, both whom taunted and terrorized the prisoners. The most famous of Castle Thunder’s women prisoners was Dr. Mary Edwards Walker. Walker was an army doctor for the 52nd Ohio Infantry who was taken prisoner after she encountered a group of Confederate soldiers at Tunnel Hill in Georgia. Due to her unconventional profession as well as her trademark military uniform, a pair of trousers worn under her skirt, a military jacket and a gypsy hat, Walker attracted a lot of attention from the press and locals in Richmond.

The Richmond Sentinel published the following account of her capture on April 22, 1864:

“The female Yankee surgeon captured by our pickets a short time since, in the neighborhood of the army of Tennessee, was received in this city yesterday evening, and sent to the Castle in charge of a detective. Her appearance on the street in full male costume, with the exception of a gipsey hat, created quite an excitement amongst the idle negroes and boys who followed and surrounded her. She gave her name as Dr. Mary E. Walker, and declared that she had been captured on neutral ground. She was dressed in black pants and black or dark talma or paletot. She was consigned to the female ward of Castle Thunder, there being no accommodations at the Libby for prisoners of her sex. We must not omit to add that she is ugly and skinny, and apparently above thirty years of age.”

Mary Bell, Confederate spy
Walker spent six months at the jail, during which she wrote numerous letters to the press describing the horrible conditions at the prison. She complained that her mattress was infested with insects, rats ran throughout the prison at night and food rations were meager and inedible. According to the book Dr Mary Edwards Walker, later in her life Walker once even complained of a guard who had fired at her while she stood in the doorway to her cell, just narrowly missing her head. On August 12th, prison officials finally released Walker in an attempt to avoid anymore negative press. For the rest of her life, Walker suffered from health problems caused by her malnutrition and exposure to disease at the prison. Other famous prisoners included two cousins, Mary and Mollie Bell. The Bells were secret soldiers who had disguised themselves as men in order to fight for the Confederacy. They fought for two years, under the command of General Jubal A. Early, and took part in a number of key battles, including the Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle of Chancellorsville, before their true identities were discovered after a fellow soldier reported them.

Upon discovery, the Bells were sent to Castle Thunder in October of 1864 and held for three weeks. With no official crime to charge them with, prison officials finally released the cousins and sent them home to Pulaski County, Virginia. Castle Thunder remained an active Confederate prison until the fall of Richmond in April of 1865. Shortly before the city fell to the Union army, the prisoners were evacuated and sent to Danville, Virginia. The Union army later took control of the prison and used it for similar purposes. After the war ended, Castle Thunder was returned to its original owners but was destroyed in a large fire in 1879.

11 surprising facts about marriage in the old days

Saturday, April 1, 2017


Biblically, a traditional marriage has been defined by “a state instituted and ordained by God for the lifelong relationship between one man as husband and one woman as wife.” However, your ancestors hoped for in a “traditional marriage” isn’t quite the roses and white picket fence that they believe it to be. Even though the definition of marriage as “an agreement between two people” has never changed, if you take a look into history it seems as though the idea of traditional marriage has.


BY 


1. People didn’t marry for love.

In “traditional marriage," love was considered a childish notion that had no place in a marriage. A conservative once predicted that marrying for love would destroy the institution. In ancient Rome it was believed to be inappropriate for husbands and wives to be in love; Seneca, the philosopher, said that there was nothing more impure than a man loving his wife like a mistress. The advice in the 1700s was to get married to someone you could tolerate—progress! But it wasn’t until the 1920s that people started marrying for love en masse, coining the term “love marriage."

2. People weren’t happy to get married.

Loving, blissful commitment wasn’t exactly synonymous with the true traditional marriage our ancient ancestors experienced. Why? Marriage was an arrangement that many were forced into. Four thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, marriage was equivalent to slavery; in the year 400 A.D. many church officials actually opposed marriage describing it as “bondage.”

3. People didn’t get married to have babies.

People got married for so many reasons! Because they were lonely, because their family needed a goat, because their parents couldn’t afford to feed them any longer, because they needed to strengthen their political position, or because a brother’s wife died and he needed a new one. Procreation was often a consequence of being married but it’s been proven that it often wasn’t the main goal, especially for families that weren't of the noble classes, who had large inheritances to think about.


4. The women didn’t have a say.

A blissful, traditional marriage is depicted as the husband and wife discussing issues and forming to decisions together for the good of their family. In a "traditional marriage,” this was not so. During American colonial times, William Blackstone stated that the “very existence of a woman is suspended during a marriage” and that she ceased to exist as a person without thought or voice. Basically, once she married, the woman’s job was to obey, cater to, and heed the word of her husband. Let's hope nobody's aiming for that in marriage these days, religious or not.

5. The woman didn’t have any rights.

In a “traditional marriage”, not only did a woman not have a say in family decisions, she didn’t have any rights either. After centuries of prejudice, finally in 1971, Ruth Bader Ginsberg fought for a woman’s rights within a marriage; this led to the abolishment of the existing law that during a dispute, males must be preferred to females. Furthermore, it was only in 1979 when head and master laws were abolished in most states, which stated that a husband could do whatever he wanted with his house, his family, and his wife and her possessions.

6. People didn’t have sex (and babies) with only their spouses.

In Biblical times, not only was polygamy not illegal, it was considered a man’s right to have multiple wives and mistresses. For example, Abraham had two wives and a concubine, Khaleb had five, Moses a mere two, but King Solomon had over 1,000 (though 300 were considered to be concubines)! Monogamy is actually a relatively new, Western invention.

7. It was hardly a bed of roses.

The loving visions of a man serving and caring for his wife just weren’t reality centuries ago. Women were seen as property and meant for specific purposes. hroughout time though, some mercy was shown to wives, as shown by Bernard of Siena in the 15th century, who instructed men to be kind and have as much compassion for their wives as they would a chicken or a pig. Talk about a low bar. Since a wife was considered her husband’s possession, he could do what he saw fit with her. This often involved “keeping her in line” through physical means. In his Corpus Jurius, Emperor Justinian suggested that it may not be right to beat your wife, but if you happened to see a reason to do it, you would just have to pay her afterwards. No biggie, right? Thankfully, by the late 1800s, this practice became more outdated; South Carolina was the first state to disallow the beating of wives. In 1920, it was outlawed nationwide. Now if only those crimes would be properly prosecuted and women were rightfully protected from their abusers.

8. It wasn’t always an agreement between two people in love.

It was only in the 13th century that Pope Alexander IV changed the laws and made marriage a sacrament between two people by taking it out of the hands of parents and putting it into the hands of the two participating (and—mostly—willing) parties. Before this, families viewed marriage as a bargaining tool to get what they needed, disregarding the feelings or desires of the individuals who were going to be married. In 500 A.D., Emperor Justinian passed a law allowing fathers to give away their daughters as young as 7 years old, thereby ensuring the family that their needs would be met early on. Arranged marriages weren’t the only third-party agreements that were made, sadly. Many women women found themselves in unique instances in which it would be required for them to be married. If a woman was raped, she would often have to marry her rapist; if her sister’s husband was left a widow, she would have to marry her late sister’s husband. The illusion of choice is hardly new for women.


9. Women didn’t necessarily choose to be intimate with their husbands.

In a traditional marriage, it could rightly be assumed that a wife would have the choice to be intimate with her husband. Not so! In 1736, Jurist Sir Mathew Hale declared that a wife couldn’t be raped, because in marriage, a woman gave up all rights to her body. Her husband could do whatever he wanted with it. Shockingly, as recent as 1993, the last states finally passed laws disallowing a man to force himself on his wife. Of course, it still happens all the time, and it's quite hard to prosecute.

10. You weren’t allowed to hold hands and show you loved each other.

In your mom’s view of traditional marriage, hugging and holding hands would be acceptable public displays of affection. However, in true traditional times, these were considered vile and severely frowned upon. In fact, Plutar called it disgraceful when a Roman senator was caught kissing his wife in public—it was such a scandal that the senator was forced to back down from his position.

11. People didn’t stay together forever.

Although the church tried really hard to keep people together by making it truly hard to divorce, people have been getting out of their unhappy arrangements for hundreds of years. In early Mesopotamia, Hammurabi's code gave husbands alternate options by stating instances in which they could get a refund on their spouse if they were unhappy. Both the Greeks and the Romans allowed divorce as well. Thanks to Henry VIII breaking from the Catholic church and founding his own church, just to marry Anne Boleyn, the people of Britain were forced to be okay with it. That rule often only applied to him and his (six!) marriages, though—convenient, huh?

Morning Olympian December 1908
By the 1800s, divorce was so common in the U.S. that the government opened an investigation into the matter and by the early 1900s, society was sure that marriage would soon be obsolete. Though the divorce rate increased throughout the 20th century, it's started to decline, with 2016 having the lowest American divorces on record since 1980.

10 Things You May Not Know About Andrew Jackson

Thursday, March 16, 2017

tennessean.com/story Historical reputations rise and fall; Jackson isn’t unique in this regard. But his case is peculiar in the extent of the fall and for what it says about historical memory. Oddly, Jackson’s reputation was the victim of his success. His sins were remembered because his achievements were so profound.
 

President Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson called himself a Jeffersonian Democrat, while Thomas Jefferson called Jackson a dangerous man. Find out more about this "hero of the common man."

The first Irish-American president? The answer may surprise you. While John F. Kennedy was the first Irish-Catholic president, Andrew Jackson was the first chief executive with roots in the Emerald Isle. Check out that and nine other surprising facts about “Old Hickory.”




Jackson’s parents emigrated from Ireland.

Both of Jackson’s parents, Andrew and Elizabeth, were born in Ireland’s Country Antrim (in present-day Northern Ireland), and in 1765 they set sail with their two sons, Hugh and Robert, from the port town of Carrickfergus for America. The Jacksons settled with fellow Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in the Waxhaws region that straddled North and South Carolina.

Both North Carolina and South Carolina claim to be his birthplace.

The seventh president was born on March 15, 1767, but exactly where is disputed. The Waxhaws wilderness was so remote that the precise border between North and South Carolina had yet to be surveyed. In an 1824 letter, Jackson wrote that he had been told that he had been born in his uncle’s South Carolina home, but dueling historic markers in both states still claim to be the true locations of Jackson’s birthplace.


Jackson killed a man in a duel.

The fiery Jackson had a propensity to respond to aspersions cast on his honor with pistols. Historians estimate that “Old Hickory” may have participated in anywhere between 5 and 100 duels. When a man named Charles Dickinson called Jackson “a worthless scoundrel, a paltroon and a coward” in a local newspaper in 1806, the future president challenged his accuser to a duel. At the command, Dickinson fired and hit Jackson in the chest. The bullet missed Jackson’s heart by barely more than an inch. In spite of the serious wound, Jackson stood his ground, raised his pistol and fired a shot that struck his foe dead. Jackson would carry around the bullet in his chest as well as another from a subsequent duel for the rest of his life.

He won the popular vote for president three times.

Jackson captured nearly 56% of the popular vote in winning the presidency in 1828, and he nearly matched that figure four years later in his reelection. “Old Hickory” also won the most popular votes, although not a majority, in his first presidential run in 1824. Since no candidate won a majority of electoral votes, the 1824 election was thrown into the House of Representatives, which selected John Quincy Adams in what Jackson’s supporters claimed was a “corrupt bargain” with Speaker of the House Henry Clay, who was named secretary of state by Adams. In his annual messages to Congress, Jackson repeatedly lobbied for the abolition of the Electoral College.

He was the target of the first attempted presidential assassination.
As Jackson was leaving the U.S. Capitol on January 30, 1835, following a memorial service for a congressman, a deranged house painter named Richard Lawrence fired a pistol at the president from just feet away. When Lawrence’s gun misfired, he pulled out a second weapon and squeezed the trigger. That pistol also misfired. An enraged Jackson charged Lawrence with his cane as the shooter was subdued. A subsequent investigation found the pistols to be in perfect working order. The odds of both guns misfiring were found to be 125,000 to 1.

Unbeknownst to Jackson, he married his wife before she had been legally divorced from her first husband.

After moving to Nashville, Tennessee, in the 1780s, Jackson fell in love with the unhappily married Rachel Donelson Robards. After she separated from her husband and believing that she was granted a legal divorce, Robards wed Jackson. In fact, however, the divorce had not yet been finalized, and her first husband accused her of adultery. Jackson legally remarried Robards in 1794, but the episode resurfaced in the nasty 1828 presidential campaign when Jackson’s political opponents spread the gossip about his wife’s alleged adultery. After Rachel Jackson died just weeks after her husband’s election, the grieving president-elect believed the anguish caused by the slander hastened her demise.

He was the only president to have been a former prisoner of war.

During the Revolutionary War, the 13-year-old Jackson joined the Continental Army as a courier. In April 1781, he was taken prisoner along with his brother Robert. When a British officer ordered Jackson to polish his boots, the future president refused. The infuriated Redcoat drew his sword and slashed Jackson’s left hand to the bone and gashed his head, which left a permanent scar. The British released the brothers after two weeks of ill treatment in captivity, and within days Robert died from an illness contracted during his confinement.

He adopted two Native American boys.

Although he led campaigns against the Creeks and Seminoles during his military career and signed the Indian Removal Act as president, Jackson also adopted a pair of Native American infants during the Creek War in 1813 and 1814. Orphaned himself at age 14, Jackson sent back to Rachel an infant orphan named Theodore, who died early in 1814, and a child named Lyncoya, who was found in his dead mother’s arms on a battlefield. “He is a savage that fortune has thrown in my hands,” Jackson wrote to his wife about the boy. Lyncoya died of tuberculosis in 1828, months before Jackson’s election.

He was a notorious gambler.

Jackson had a taste for wagering—on dice, on cards and even on cockfights. As a teenager, he gambled away all of his grandfather’s inheritance on a trip to Charleston, South Carolina. Jackson’s passion in life was racing and wagering on horses.

Jackson’s portrait appears on the $20 bill although he detested paper money.

Chastened by a financial hit he once took from devalued paper notes, Jackson was opposed to the issuance of paper money by state and national banks. He only trusted gold and silver as currency and shut down the Second Bank of the United States in part because of its ability to manipulate paper money. It’s ironic that Jackson not only appears on the $20 bill, but his portrait in the past has also appeared on $5, $10, $50 and $10,000 denominations in addition to the Confederate $1,000 bill.

REFERENCE: history.com/news