Unknown secret about the first woman printed on the $20 bill

The fact that Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill is significant for many reasons.

Slave owner Jackson was pushed to the back of the bill by a former slave; Tubman, who led more than 300 slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad, would replace a president who drove 16,000 Cherokees (and thousands of others from other Native tribes) from their homeland on the Trail of Tears.

Mrs. Harriet Tubman. (Source: MSN).

But even if Tubman doesn't replace Jackson, the $20 bill is still the most appropriate bill to honor her, because $20 played an important role in her life on two separate occasions.

First, $20 was the amount she received as a monthly pension after the American Civil War, in which she assisted the Union as a scout and spy.

The amount is still less than the $25 a month paid to soldiers, but it is the result of a long legal battle to receive her benefits.

Vox's Phil Edwards wrote about this last year, when the social media campaign to put Tubman or another woman on the $20 bill was in full swing.

But even before that, as the Atlantic's Yoni Appelbaum pointed out on Twitter, the $20 played a big role in Tubman's efforts to free her own father from slavery.

According to MSN.com, in Tubman's first biography, the book 'Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman' published in 1869, author Sarah Hopkins Bradford told the story of Tubman's efforts to free her parents, as an example of how Tubman rarely asked for anything from others.

"Although she thought very modestly of herself," Bradford writes, "she was bold enough to speak for the desires of her race"—and unafraid to embarrass those in power, if necessary.

"I'm not leaving until I get my $20."

In this story, Bradford writes, Tubman believed she was "directed" by God to ask for funds to rescue her parents from "a gentleman in New York," whom Appelbaum identifies as Oliver Johnson, a prominent member of the abolitionist movement.

As she left a friend's house to go there, she said, "I'm going to your office, and I won't leave, I won't eat or drink until I get enough money to help my father."

She went to this gentleman's office.

“What do you want, Harriet?” was the first greeting she received.

"I would like some money, sir."

"Really? How much do you want?"

"I would like $20, sir."

"20 USD? Who told you to come here to get 20 USD?"

"God spoke to me, sir."

"So I think God was wrong this time."

"I think he's not wrong, sir. Anyway, I'll sit here until I get the money."

So she sat down and slept. She sat there all morning and afternoon, sleeping and waking, sometimes finding the office full of people, sometimes finding no one but herself.

During that time many refugees were passing through New York, and those who came into the office assumed that she was one of them, feeling tired and wanting to rest. Sometimes she was woken up, "Come, Harriet, you'd better go. There's no money here for you." "No, sir. "I won't go until I get my twenty dollars."

Tubman eventually got her $20—but there was more. Bradford writes that after waking up in her office, Tubman found $60 in her pocket. But the money wasn’t from Johnson; it was donated to her by former slave “refugees” who passed through the office. They had raised a large sum of money to help Tubman free another slave.

Tubman used the money to save her father—who was on trial for helping slaves escape—and take him all the way to Canada, where he could not be forced back into slavery.

Admittedly, the $20 bill can’t do as much today as it did in Tubman’s day. But with her face on the new $20 bill, she will be part of every transaction involving money that even a key abolitionist wouldn’t give her to free her father. And for those who know her story, it’s a reminder of how much $20 can do for those less fortunate than you.

According to VOV