A $20 bill with Ross and Jackson would set a pattern for other bills. Each denomination should feature two different people who together tell a story, illustrating our democratic experience.

Lincoln could share the $5 bill with Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who prodded him to move faster to end slavery. Ulysses S. Grant could share the $50 bill with Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose antislavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did as much to start the Civil War as Grant’s armies did to end it.

Pairings can even clear space for new stories. Four of today’s seven bills feature founding fathers. Pair the founders on two bills — Washington and Franklin, Hamilton and Jefferson. (The latter pair clashed viciously over federal versus state power, a conflict that still animates our politics.) Two bills will then be available for more recent figures. Imagine a civil rights-era bill with Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez.