Hamilton, History, and the Importance of Process

This week I’d like to try something a little different.

Some time ago in this series – never mind how long – I admitted a fondness for the exceedingly successful Broadway musical Hamilton, conceived of and starring the brilliant Lin-Manuel Miranda. As I stated at the time, the abundance of praise the production was garnering left me feeling both enthused and uneasy, and led me to an examination of the first piece of political writing the titular Hamilton ever drafted. Feeling reasonably satisfied that I had added, in my own way, to the conversation then ongoing about the legacy of the 1^st Secretary of the Treasury, I then laid aside my proverbial pen and moved on. Having listened, in the interim, to the original cast recording of Hamilton many, many more times, however, I find that my concerns have not been exorcised. I still find the show to be of inestimable artistic value, and take a very strange, very specific pleasure in hearing talented men and woman like Daveed Diggs and Rene Goldsberry sing about Paine’s Common Sense or the political prowess of “Southern Mother-Fu**ing Democratic-Republicans.” What I have discovered, however, is that my prior apprehensions about Miranda’s fiddling with detail and chronology for the sake of narrative are perhaps not as pedantic as I might have thought. To that end, what follows will be an editorial by which I hope to explore one particularly troubling way I feel Hamilton fails to responsibly communicate the history that is its bread-and-butter.

To the great credit of Mr. Miranda, Hamilton does appear to takes its subject matter very seriously in spite of its somewhat unconventional premise as a rap/hip-hop retelling of the life of an American Founding Father. It is very dense, owing both to its subject matter and the innate lyrical character of rap music, but succeeds admirably in communicating a great deal about who the Founders were, how they helped give rise to the United States, and the ways they perceived themselves and each other. As Miranda has said in interviews with news outlets and media personalities, part of what attracted him to the subject matter was the realization that in spite of their monumental talents and accomplishments the Founders were human beings. Their endeavors, he elaborated, can be very effectively viewed through the lens of personality and ego and emotion, thus grounding them for a contemporary audience that maybe doesn’t care so much about banking but enjoys a juicy sex scandal now and then. I will not argue with this rationale. The Founders were, fundamentally, people. Their intelligence and ingenuity and vision are worthy of admiration, but the significance of what they accomplished would be meaningless if we didn’t also understand that the United States of American was created by individuals as broken and as flawed as any one of us. Where I find fault with Hamilton rather concerns its usual position as both a piece of wildly popular entertainment and an example of public history. More specifically, I am troubled by Mr. Miranda’s evident disregard for the importance of historical process.            

History, contrary to the way we often like to think about it, isn’t really about moments. The signing of the Declaration of Independence is a moment. The Battle of Hastings is a moment. Ghandi’s Salt March is a moment. Moments stand out in our memory, bright, and indelible, and practically vibrating with significance. But the truth of it is, none of these moments, or the many like them that human beings the world over so love to commemorate, are all that helpful to understanding how we got to where we are, and why, unless we also understand the processes that set them in motion. Without understanding the origins of the American Revolution, what is the singing of Thomas Jefferson’s declaration but a gathering of powdered wig enthusiasts? Absent the context of Britain’s historical presence in India, Ghandi’s evolution as a civil rights activist, and the rationale of taxing Indian salt production, what was the Salt March but a walk on the beach? These moments were preceded by sequences of events – processes, if you like – whose order and timing are as important to grasping their significance as the end results themselves. Paying heed to these processes helps us understand why specific events happened when they did, why they did, and how they did, permitting us to grasp all of what history has to offer rather than just the factoids and trivia answers.

In spite of its evident fixation on specific moments, Hamilton would appear to be a narrative of process. When the show begins, its star is a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant from the Caribbean looking to make a name for himself in New York City and when it ends he is a battered, slightly world-weary former statesmen prepared to stake his life on what remains of his professional dignity. From here to there, a great deal occurs; Hamilton fights in a war, meets a girl, becomes a father, helps forge a country, and destroys his own reputation. These events are presented in a what appears to be a chronological order – Hamilton’s first meeting with Washington takes place before he meets his wife Eliza, which takes place before the birth of his son, which takes place before he becomes Secretary of the Treasury, etc. Along the way, the audience watches relationships form, rivalries take root, and the nation we know as the United States of America coalesce. Certain historical details have been altered by Miranda to suit the needs of the narrative, but I would submit that few of these changes are terribly problematic. Even if Hamilton is the only source of information about the American Founding for the thousands of people who have attended performances and the millions more who have listened to the original cast recording, it’s probably okay if a large portion of them think that the 1^st Secretary of the Treasury may have had a romantic relationship with his sister-in-law.

Choices made by Miranda become harder to dismiss, however, when they misrepresent the nature and importance of the American Revolution and the roles played by certain prominent individuals. This is because the goals of Hamilton as a piece of entertainment are somewhat at odds with its role as a piece of public history. As a dramatist, I think it’s fair to speculate that Mr. Miranda wanted his show to be as impactful and as emotionally resonant as possible. And if interviews are any indication, he was also concerned with communicating something important to his audience about the nation they all share, how it was created, and who did the creating. While I dare say he has succeeded on both fronts, I feel he has perhaps neglected the latter inclination in favor of the former. Hamilton is still history, in spite of the distinctly popular form it takes. People enjoy watching and listening because the show is so exceedingly well-written and well-performed, but by all accounts they also come away feeling as though they have learned something real and true. And because what they feel they have learned is true, some of them no doubt feel they have licence to act on it. “Hamilton showed me that we’ve been fighting about the same things for two hundred years, so I’m going to try to be less pessimistic about the political disagreements I see around me,” an audience member might think to themselves. I make no objection to anyone drawing this kind of conclusion. It seems a healthy one, and perfectly in keeping with what I understand to be the significance of the American Founding. What rather worries me is that, in pursuit of a stronger narrative, changes made by Mr. Miranda to the story of Alexander Hamilton’s life will lead people to exactly the wrong conclusions about how and why the Revolution is important to modern American life.    

 Consider, in this vein, the show’s first act, running approximately from the opening number (“Alexander Hamilton”) to the events surrounding the Battle of Yorktown (“The World Turned Upside Down”). This introductory sequence deals to varying degrees with the origins of the show’s main character, his understanding of the world in which he lives and moves, and the nature of the conflict (the Revolution) he chooses to play a role in. Within this twenty song sequence, there are four in particular whose presentation of certain facts combine to create a rather confusing and potentially misleading portrayal of the some of the early events of the American Revolution. They are, in the order that they occur, “Aaron Burr, Sir,” “My Shot,” “The Schuyler Sisters,” and “Farmer Refuted.”

In “Aaron Burr, Sir,” Hamilton is presented as having met the titular Burr, tailor and spy Hercules Mulligan, South Carolina soldier and radical John Laurens, and French émigré the Marquis de Lafayette shortly after his arrival in America. Mulligan, Laurens, and Lafayette are presented as a trio of close friends who take to the impetuous Hamilton, and the three of them take turns proclaiming their sexual and martial prowess while Burr looks on chagrined. Because Hamilton began his tenure at Kings College in the autumn of 1773, and “Aaron Burr, Sir,” has him asking Burr for advice on how to get into the College of New Jersey (a venture which ultimately failed), it would logically follow that his initial meeting with Mulligan, Laurens, and Lafayette was meant to take place sometime between his arrival in America in late 1772 and the end of 1773. As history records it, however, Laurens joined the Continental Army in 1777 and met Hamilton for the first time while they were both aides-de-camp to George Washington. Lafayette was another of the general’s young adjutants Hamilton encountered during his war service; he had departed France for America, also in 1777, after having been inspired by the colonist’s struggle.

Mulligan is the only one of the three men Hamilton could have encountered at the early period in his life the show seems to intimate “Aaron Burr, Sir” takes place. Hamilton stayed with the Mulligan family, who were acquainted with his former employers in the West Indies, during his early residence in New York City, and it may have been Mulligan’s own radicalism – he had been a member of the New York Sons of Liberty since the 1760s – that set young Hamilton on the path to supporting the Revolution when it arrived in force after 1775. Rather than represent the process by which Hamilton met this trio of companions, however, Miranda chose to collapse their disparate encounters down to a single moment. While this may seem like a simple matter of narrative expedience, choices made in subsequent numbers compound the issue – a disregard for process – that “Aaron Burr, Sir” introduces.

Burr’s disdain for the juvenile antics of Mulligan, Laurens, and Lafayette is met by Hamilton’s rebuttal in “My Shot.” During this spirited number, Hamilton lays out his view of the conflict between Britain and it American colonies (“Essentially, they tax us relentlessly/Then King George turns around, runs a spending spree”) and its inevitable result (“So there will be a revolution in this century”). Combined with the disregard for chronology found in “Aaron Burr, Sir,” these specific lyrics in “My Shot” oversimplify the actual causes of the Revolution while simultaneously making it seem as though it was already underway when Hamilton arrived in America. Hamilton’s claim that Britain was taxing its colonies “endlessly” at the same time George III was running “a spending spree” is particularly vague and misleading. British taxes on sugar, tea, stamped paper, and other imported goods were not in themselves what so alarmed large portions of the colonial population, as Hamilton himself stated in A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress (1774). The disagreement between Parliament and the colonies was not over “three pence per pound on East India tea,” he asserted, but rather concerned Britain’s claimed right to tax the colonies without providing for their representation in the House of Commons. As to the “spending spree” George III was supposedly guilty of, Miranda may have intended to refer to the costs Britain had accrued during its defence of its American possessions during the recent Seven Years War (1754-1763). This would hardly seem to accord with the sense of irresponsibility Hamilton plainly intended to convey with the lyric, however, nor with the impression of British culpability audiences are seemingly meant to imbibe upon hearing it.  

Indeed, it seems that Hamilton isn’t terribly interested in helping its viewers/listeners understand why the Revolution happened, or why certain people came to support it. Mulligan, Laurens, and Lafayette are presented as already being in favor of a revolt against British authority when they first meet Hamilton, and he drives forward their narrative of rebellion by claiming that insurrection is inevitable (“There will be a revolution in this century”), asking the world at large, “When are these colonies gonna rise up?” None of them convey uncertainty, need convincing, or portray the conflict they are so eager to take part in as anything more than a black and white, right or wrong dichotomy. Britain, in the world of Hamilton, is wasteful and corrupt while America is, in the words of its protagonist, “Young, scrappy, and hungry.” The quartet strongly reflect this rather transparent characterization; their individual reasons for supporting the Revolution, beyond seeking an opportunity to prove how dangerous, manly, or generally awesome they are, are either left mysterious or painfully oversimplified. As Miranda paints Hamilton and his friends, they are little more than young men being young, and gung-ho, and getting caught up in the moment. The process by which the Revolution was set in motion goes unmentioned, and one is seemingly left to conclude that this is so because it is unimportant. 

The two numbers that follow “My Shot” maintain Hamilton’s chronological tomfoolery and disregard for historical progression by further portraying the Revolution as a spontaneous “moment” rather than the culmination of a lengthy process. In “The Schuyler Sisters,” presented shortly after “My Shot,” the audience is introduced to Eliza, Angelica, and Peggy Schuyler while they walk the streets of New York City. Burr intercepts them, expresses his interest in Angelica in particular, and the sisters respond with a spirited affirmation of their positive feelings toward the cause of the Revolution. Angelica takes the lead during this number, and through various statements makes it clear to the audience that she is both intelligent and well-read. “I’ve been reading Common Sense by Thomas Paine,” she proclaims, followed by a recitation of the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and a promise that when she meets its author, Thomas Jefferson, “I’m ‘a compel him to include women in the sequel!” Though there is generally little to object to in the way in introduces of two of the Hamilton’s principle characters, “The Schuyler Sisters” is worth drawing attention to because of where it seems to place the events it portrays on the timeline of the Revolution. If Angelica’s name dropping is any indication, audiences are meant to conclude that Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy’s promenade through Manhattan takes place after Thomas Paine’s inflammatory pamphlet was published in January, 1776 and after the United States declared its independence in July of the same year.

“Farmer Refuted,” however, calls this placement into question by presenting events that took place before 1776 as though they occurred after the Revolution was well under way. The number in question depicts Hamilton offering his response to the pro-British sentiments of one Samuel Seabury, accompanied by his cohorts Mulligan, Laurens, and Lafayette. Hamilton and Seabury trade lyrics back and forth, in the manner of a debate, before Hamilton eventually overpowers his comparatively meek opponent. During his introductory verses, Seabury pleads with his fellow colonists to, “Heed not the rabble that scream revolution/They have not your interests at heart,” and further warns that, “Chaos and bloodshed are not a solution.” Hamilton replies that, “Chaos and bloodshed already haunt us,” asks “Why should a tiny island across the sea regulate the price of tea?” and throws in a hearty call of, “For the revolution!” Because “Famer Refuted” follows “The Schuyler Sisters,” audiences have every reason to believe that this spirited back-and-forth takes place after war with Britain had commenced and after the United States had declared its independence. 

In point of fact, however, this was not the case. Seabury and Hamilton engaged in their rhetorical sparring match – each publishing two pamphlets – between November, 1774 and February, 1775. At that time, the Revolution had yet to boil over into armed conflict, colonial independence was not yet considered a series proposition, and the discussion between supporters of Britain and supporters of the First Continental Congress were still centered on issues of trade, political representation, and legal precedent. For this reason it seems rather strange for Seabury to open his remarks by cautioning against a resort to “chaos and bloodshed,” and for Hamilton to respond that “chaos and bloodshed already haunt us.” Every word the two men exchanged was published before the start of the Revolutionary War in April, 1775. Shots had not yet been fired, and blood had not yet been spilled. In fact, one of the first major acts of the Second Continental Congress – convened for the first time in May, 1775 – was the issuance of the so-called “Olive Branch Petition” whose intended purpose was to make a final attempt at avoiding armed conflict between Britain and the American colonies. In spite of this fact, however, Hamilton has its lead joining in a chant of “For the Revolution” at a time when revolution was actively being avoided.  

Miranda’s use – or misuse, as it were – of Hamilton and Seabury’s war of words is made particularly troubling by the fact that the publication of A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress (1774) and The Farmer Refuted (1775) represent an extremely important period of political awakening in the young immigrant’s life. Through drafting these early polemics, Hamilton transitioned from viewing the conflict between Britain and the American colonies with a kind of pragmatic neutrality to fully supporting the Continental Congress and taking up arms in defense of American liberty. Considering the essential role Hamilton went on to play in the post-Revolutionary consolidation of the United States, a “conversion experience” of this kind would seem especially significant. In another attempt to collapse a process down into a moment, however, Hamilton’s “The Farmer Refuted” makes no attempt to represent this conversion. Instead, it’s young, upstart protagonist presents himself as already convinced of the truth of the revolutionary cause. As “Aaron Burr, Sir,” and “My Shot” likewise fail to clue the audience in to how and why Hamilton became a supporter of the Revolution – beyond the inferred psychological premise that he’s compensating for his own social and material insignificance – viewers/listeners are once more left to conclude that context and process matter less than results.

As a historian, this idea pains me. Because, Hamilton didn’t become a supporter of the Revolution out of caprice, and independence entered the American political conversation slowly. Events preceded events, which preceded other events, which set developments in motion, which created the results we know and commemorate. Hamilton does an amazing job of breathing life into these results, these moments that defined the destiny of a nation. But without understanding what caused them to occur and why, their significance can become dangerously skewed. Over the course of its first act, for instance, the show would have its audience believe that rebellion was in the air when its protagonist first arrived in America, that he identified with the prospect of social upheaval out of a sense of bravado, youthful vigor, and a desire to improve his station, and that he become an early supporter of the Revolution as a result. Dramatically, this narrative works. Historically, it is exceedingly problematic. By throwing Hamilton into an existing climate of rebellion and then jumbling the timeline of the early 1770s, an audience otherwise unacquainted with the history of the American Founding is left with few explanations as to why the larger events the major players are actively participating in are happening at all. It’s made clear enough that Hamilton and his friends are in favor of the Revolution and that ultimately Britain was defeated, but the causes of the conflict and the reasons for Hamilton’s participation are rendered hazily at best.

Across the first act numbers “Aaron Burr, Sir,” “My Shot,” “The Schuyler Sisters,” and “Farmer Refuted,” the early events of the Revolution all seem to happen at once. Britain and its colonies are at odds for some reason (probably taxes), and Hamilton and his brash young friends are squarely in favor of rebellion for some reason (probably not taxes). Moments picked out in the midst of it all are rendered vividly, skillfully, and powerfully, to the credit of all involved. But without any context to explain why people are doing what they’re doing – why some are willing to die for their cause while others are inclined to throw themselves on the mercy of a higher power – what meaning is a person supposed to take away? Hamilton, Burr, Angelica Schuyler, and Thomas Jefferson – these characters are rendered as emotionally vibrant, flawed, and compelling individuals, and their various travails form the core of Hamilton’s dramatic presence. But Hamilton is more than just drama. Hamilton is history – or, more importantly, it is public history.

The global audience of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s latest show is already easily in the millions, and the impact it may wrought on a generation of theatre-goers, students, and public officials is at this stage incalculable. The power of art to change the way a person thinks should never be underestimated, and Hamilton may yet prove, as a consequence of its subject matter, to indelibly alter the way Americans understand their country, its identity, and the nature of its public life. For this reason, I find myself especially concerned that American audiences of Hamilton will end up walking away from the show imagining that they understand something about the origins of their nation. This is a good thing, in theory, but I fear that the knowledge they will have gained is somewhat at odds with reality. And when I consider the percentage of this audience who are likely to check what the show has brought to their attention against the facts as they have been recorded, I feel a knot develop in the pit of my stomach. The American Revolution was a long, drawn-out process that developed slowly from protest to petition to armed insurrection. The show does not reflect this. Alexander Hamilton was an ardent pragmatist, often to the chagrin of his colleagues and rivals, and his development as a revolutionary was the result of thought and debate and personal reflection. The show does not reflect this. It reflects outcomes, results and moments spectacularly, colorfully and engagingly, but chiefly in isolation from the larger processes that made them possible. This is a problem.

I would not, for a moment, suggest as a solution that Mr. Miranda or his collaborators rework the show in order to better reflect the larger context of the moments they have chosen to present. The historian shall not tell the dramatists how to do their job. Rather, I would simply enjoin any and all who have found themselves captivated by the story that Hamilton so skillfully relates to refrain from understanding what they have seen as pure and simple fact. Hamilton is not the last word on the American Revolution. Rather, it is an inspiration and an exhortation to seek out the truth for oneself.