essays against slavery hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton’s Complicated Relationship to Slavery

By: Christopher Klein

Updated: October 16, 2020 | Original: July 8, 2020

Hamilton's Early Life: Surrounded by Enslavement

Alexander Hamilton abhorred slavery and at a few points in his life worked to help limit it. But any moral objections he held were tempered by his social and political ambitions. Throughout his life, like so many leaders of the time, he allowed or used slavery to advance his fortunes—both indirectly and through compromises he chose to make.

From the moment he was born out of wedlock near a Caribbean waterfront frequented by ships transporting captives from Africa, Hamilton’s life was entwined with slavery. Growing up on the island of Nevis, young Alexander walked past slave auction blocks and the crowds who gathered in the public square to witness enslaved people being whipped. Amid an island of such natural beauty, there was no avoidance of slavery’s grotesque cruelty.

Shortly before Hamilton’s father abandoned his family, he moved them in 1765 to St. Croix, where 22,000 of the island’s 24,000 residents were held in captivity to cultivate the “white gold” produced on sugar plantations. Even though Hamilton’s family had few riches, his mother at one time owned five enslaved people, whom she hired out to supplement her income, as well as four boys who served as her house servants. She bequeathed one of the boys, Ajax, to Alexander, but after her death in 1768, a court denied the inheritance because of Hamilton’s illegitimate birth and granted ownership of Ajax to his half-brother instead.

Hamilton spent his teenage years working as a clerk with the St. Croix trading firm Beekman and Cruger, which imported everything needed for a plantation economy—including enslaved people from West Africa. Hamilton watched hundreds upon hundreds of captives come ashore after making the Middle Passage and would have helped inspect and price those who were to be auctioned. A 1772 letter in Hamilton’s handwriting sought the acquisition of “two or three poor boys” for plantation work and asked they be “bound in the most reasonable manner you can.”

Hamilton Opposed Slavery, But Made Compromises

Using wealth built on the backs of enslaved laborers, a group of St. Croix businessmen, impressed with Hamilton’s potential, paid for him to be educated in the American colonies. After attending New Jersey’s Elizabethtown Academy, Hamilton matriculated at New York City’s King’s College, where 16 slave merchants served as trustees, and students such as George Washington ’s stepson Jacky brought enslaved servants with them to school.

In his ambition to rise above his humble beginnings, Hamilton appeared to have frequently swallowed his anti-slavery sentiments as he pushed for acceptance into America’s colonial elite—most of whom enslaved people. Notably, while serving as George Washington’s trusted aide de camp during the Revolution, Hamilton was loath to broach the topic with the general, who enslaved more than 100 people at his Mount Vernon plantation.

Nonetheless, Hamilton held more progressive views than most of the Founding Fathers in regard to the equality of races. In 1774, he published his first major political essay, “A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Congress,” which drew direct comparisons between enslaved people and colonists oppressed by the British. And in 1779, he championed a plan proposed by his friend John Laurens to arm and enlist enslaved people in the Continental Army—and reward them with their freedom in return. (Washington himself had opposed the idea until the British dangled just such a lure.) “The dictates of humanity and true policy equally interest me in favor of this unfortunate class of men,” Hamilton wrote in an appeal on behalf of Laurens to the Continental Congress . “I have not the least doubt, that the negroes will make very excellent soldiers, with proper management,” Hamilton continued, adding that “their natural faculties are probably as good as ours.” His lobbying, however, failed to win support and Laurens' plan was abandoned.

Whatever distaste of slavery Hamilton may have had, he proved capable of overlooking it for love and country. In 1780, he married into the wealthy, slaveholding Schuyler family. General Philip Schuyler—father of Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth—enslaved as many as 27 people who toiled in his Albany, New York, mansion and on a nearby farm in Saratoga.

As a New York delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention , Hamilton saw the need for compromise in order to establish a new, strong federal government, so he supported the so-called "three-fifths" clause, which counted each enslaved worker as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of determining state population. “Without this indulgence, no union could have possibly been formed,” Hamilton told the New York Ratifying Convention.

Two years earlier, Hamilton had been among the founders of the New York Manumission Society, which sought the gradual emancipation of enslaved people in the state. Hamilton served as the secretary of the organization, which established the New York African Free School and aided in the passage of a 1799 state law that freed the children of enslaved people. In spite of the society’s stated goals, more than half of its members owned humans. Hamilton helped devise a specific timetable for the society’s members to free their own enslaved workers—an initiative that went nowhere.

Did Hamilton Own Enslaved People Himself?

In the course of handling his in-law’s finances, the future U.S. treasury secretary was involved in the purchase and sale of enslaved servants for the Schuylers. In 1784, he attempted to help his sister-in-law Angelica reacquire one of her formerly enslaved people. Historians differ, however, on whether Hamilton's financial records refer to enslaved household workers owned by his in-laws—or by the Hamiltons themselves. A 1796  cash book entry recorded Hamilton’s payment of $250 to his father-in-law for “2 Negro servants purchased by him for me.” However, a ledger entry the following year noted the deduction of $225 from the account of Angelica’s husband, John Barker Church, for the purchase of a “negro woman & child,” suggesting the transaction could have been on their behalf.

Although there is no definitive proof, Hamilton’s grandson, Allan McLane Hamilton, claimed that those transactions had been for his grandfather himself. “It has been stated that Hamilton never owned a negro slave, but this is untrue,” Hamilton’s grandson wrote in a biography of his grandfather, originally published in 1910. “We find that in his books there are entries showing that he purchased them for himself and for others.”

While the historical record remains unclear on this point, it reflects the gap between Hamilton’s words and deeds. For such a voluminous writer, Hamilton left sparse notes about the issue of slavery. However, in his 1774 political treatise A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress , Hamilton wrote that “all men have one common origin: they participate in one common nature, and consequently have one common right.” While hardly approaching the extreme paradox of Thomas Jefferson’s espousal of independence while enslaving hundreds of people, Hamilton’s relationship to slavery came with its own complex contradictions.

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Hamilton despised slavery but didn’t confront George Washington or other slaveholders

A young Alexander Hamilton arrived in New York City at King’s College, today’s Columbia University, during a time of fervor and unrest that sounds a lot like today.

In 1773, Bostonians had just chucked their tea into the harbor. Even New York, a more crown-friendly town, crackled with talk of revolution. Eighteen-year-old Hamilton ditched his plans to study medicine and threw himself into reading Enlightenment philosophers, arguing with friends and hustling to rallies in the city.

It’s this environment that launches “Hamilton,” the musical, and casts the central character as a fresh kind of Founding Father — immigrant, outsider, activist. The Broadway show’s debut on TV for the July 4 weekend — streaming on Disney Plus, beginning Friday — puts a new lens on the most patriotic holiday at a time when American values are under painful scrutiny.

As ‘Hamilton’ becomes a movie, suddenly we’re all in the room where it happens

With Black Lives Matter rising and statues of white slave owners falling , it might feel good to watch “Hamilton” and think of an ethnically diverse, hip-hop past. The reality, of course, was way more complicated.

Slavery was “a system in which every character in our show is complicit in some way or another,” creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda told NPR’s Terry Gross this week. “Hamilton — although he voiced anti-slavery beliefs — remained complicit in the system.”

Hamilton doesn’t appear to have ever directly owned any enslaved people. He grew up working-class on the Caribbean islands of Nevis and St. Croix, where black people outnumbered white people more than 10 to 1. His mother died when he was no more than 13 (his date of birth is uncertain, 1755 or 1757) and left him and his brother two enslaved workers. But because the boys were born out of wedlock, they received no property.

When he arrived at King’s College, Hamilton had only been in America for a year, sent by island businessmen who took up a collection for him after being impressed by his intelligence and drive.

In New York he was surrounded by posh classmates — including a nephew of George Washington — whose families owned slaves or who brought enslaved servants along with them. Hamilton was known to despise slavery, but he also really liked having influential friends.

When he invoked the topic in his fiery early writings, it was to slam British loyalists as “enemies to the natural rights of mankind … because they wish to see one part of their species enslaved by another.” Meaning, the colonists were treated in the worst possible way — like slaves.

Hamilton left school before graduating to join the upstart Continental Army. There the charismatic networker made his ultimate connection, becoming aide and surrogate son to Washington. That alone required Hamilton to set aside his feelings about slavery, because Washington owned more than 100 people back home in Virginia.

As plantations talk more honestly about slavery, some visitors are pushing back

But when the British began offering freedom to any enslaved people who would join the royal cause, Hamilton saw an opportunity. He urged Washington to let black soldiers fight for freedom. Hamilton touted the idea in an extraordinary letter to John Jay in 1779.

“I have not the least doubt, that the negroes will make very excellent soldiers, with proper management,” he wrote. Some say black people are inferior, he continued, but “their natural faculties are probably as good as ours.” And he stressed that “an essential part of the plan is to give them their freedom with their muskets. This will secure their fidelity, animate their courage, and I believe will have a good influence upon those who remain, by opening a door to their emancipation.”

It was a strikingly progressive stance for the time. The line about “natural faculties” is often compared to the views of his political rival, Thomas Jefferson , who denigrated black intelligence in his “Notes on the State of Virginia.”

Annette Gordon-Reed, a historian who has written extensively about Jefferson and his relationship with the enslaved Sally Hemings, has argued that it’s not entirely fair to paint Hamilton as the good guy on the question of race. Hamilton, she noted in a Harvard interview in 2016, managed slave sales for his wife’s family. When he was very young, he also kept the books for a Caribbean trading company that engaged in the slave trade.

“He was not an abolitionist,” she told the Harvard Gazette. “Opposing slavery was never at the forefront of his agenda.”

No, climbing the ladder was always at the top of Hamilton’s agenda. His relationship with Washington, his marriage into the wealthy Schuyler family, his slaveholding friends — all advanced him socially while requiring him to turn his head from the toughest issue of the day.

When war turned to statecraft, Hamilton compromised his views on slavery in favor of two other priorities: property rights, which the formerly impoverished orphan held sacrosanct, and the need to build a unified country. Hamilton accepted the notion of counting black people as three-fifths of a person in the new Constitution to ensure Southern states would join the Union.

But author Ankeet Ball, writing for the “Columbia University & Slavery” online project , detects a change once Hamilton followed Washington into the new government.

“Though Hamilton had spent the latter part of his life conceding on the issue of slavery in order to further his personal ambitions and the interests of the early American republic, his work as the eventual Treasury Secretary of the United States allowed him to lay the foundations of an American economy independent of slavery,” Ball wrote.

In his influential “Report on the Subject of Manufactures,” Hamilton laid out a vision for an economy built on manufacturing, with trade tariffs and federal subsidies designed to encourage growth and attract immigrants. His economic plan was a “blueprint devoid of slavery,” Ball wrote.

It was in the final years of his cut-short life — after Washington left office — that Hamilton finally began working directly on the issue. He devoted his time to the New York Manumission Society, which he and several friends had founded shortly after the Revolution but had let languish. Now Hamilton pushed a New York emancipation law, which passed in 1799, and advocated for the revolution in Haiti that saw black people throw off French rule and form their own democracy.

Jefferson’s powerful last public letter reminds us what Independence Day is all about

Jefferson agreed with Hamilton that slavery should end, and that it belittled the slaveholder as much as the enslaved. But even though he penned the words of freedom that continue to inspire every Fourth of July, Jefferson left the hard work for future generations. He predicted that when black people did get their freedom, they could never live alongside white people without the two races killing each other.

Hamilton believed they should just become fellow Americans.

“Of all the differences between Hamilton and Jefferson, perhaps their assumptions about the racial future of America were most telling,” historian James Oliver Horton wrote in the New York Journal of American History . “For a man who had grown up in a black society in the West Indies, a multiracial New York or a multiracial America was not unimaginable.”

And in that sense, at least, Hamilton the man lives up to “Hamilton” the show.

Read more Retropolis:

Aaron Burr — villain of ‘Hamilton’ — had a secret family of color, new research shows

The creator of Mount Rushmore’s forgotten ties to white supremacy

Everyone loved George Washington, until he became president

The Statue of Liberty was created to celebrate freed slaves, not immigrants, its new museum recounts

What Alexander Hamilton’s deep connections to slavery reveal about the need for reparations today

History professor Nicole S. Maskiell writes for The Conversation about how Colonial-era figures like Hamilton fit into America’s long history of enslavement, and how slavery fueled networks of power that have lasted through the ages.

Alexander Hamilton has received a resurgence of interest in recent years on the back of the smash Broadway musical bearing his name.

But alongside tales of his role in the Revolutionary War and in forging the early United States, the spotlight has also fallen on a less savory aspect of his life: his apparent complicity in the institution of slavery. Despite being a founding member of the New York Manumission Society, which sought gradual emancipation of New York’s enslaved population, Hamilton benefited from slavery – both personally and by association.

As a historian of early America and Northern slavery , I study how Colonial-era figures like Hamilton fit into America’s long history of enslavement, and how slavery fueled networks of power that have lasted through the ages.

A life entwined with slavery

By Hamilton’s time in pre-revolutionary America, wealthy Northerners like him not only benefited from and propagated slavery, but enjoyed centuries of generational wealth built on the labor and lives of enslaved people.

Hamilton’s father-in-law had among the largest slaveholdings in the North . His mother-in-law was the daughter of Johannes Van Rensselaer and Angelica Livingston , both members of two of the largest slaveholding families in the North.

Hamilton’s early years in the Caribbean were also marked by slavery. He was born on the British West Indies island of Nevis in the 1750s into a household that held slaves . By age 11, he was working as a clerk for Beekman & Cruger, a firm based in New York that traded enslaved people and other commodities – like food products and wood for shipbuilding – that fed the slave economies.

After Hamilton moved to New York in 1773, he remained closely tied to slaveholding elites. His sister-in-law’s house, where he was married , was served and maintained by enslaved people. The house where he died , belonging to his close friend William Bayard Jr., was also staffed by enslaved people .

Views on reparations

Today’s debate about reparations for slavery dates back to Hamilton’s era. Except in the past, reparations were actively sought out by the owners of enslaved people .

Some Loyalists – those who opposed the American Revolution – received compensation from England for losses during the war.

The “Book of Negroes” was a register of over 3,000 escaped enslaved people who were evacuated from New York by the British as part of wartime commitments of freedom for service. It was compiled by British Commander Sir Guy Carleton as a safeguard against compensation claims by former slaveholders for the loss of what they considered their property.

Northern elite slaveholders sought and sometimes received reparations for losses they experienced during the Revolutionary War . Reparations ranged from restitution for the loss of enslaved people who escaped and gained freedom behind British lines to compensation for the expense of maintaining property (which included enslaved people) that were commandeered by Revolutionary forces .

Hamilton himself represented at least 44 Loyalists in lawsuits related to seizure or use of property, which sometimes included enslaved people , during the war. However, he objected to the return of runaways to their former enslavers .

Those on the Patriot side – who supported the Revolution – also received restitution for enslaved people they lost during the war. The Rhode Island General Assembly passed an act in 1778 that said since enslaved people were “deemed the Property of their Owners … Compensation ought to be made to the Owners for the Loss of their Service.”

What is owed?

But what of compensation to the descendants of formerly enslaved people for their ancestors’ free labor?

Since the mid-20th century, in Western Europe and the U.S., reparations to oppressed people have taken several forms : on an individual basis, within an institution or across an entire country. They’ve taken monetary and nonmonetary approaches, and pertained either to slavery alone or to slavery and its aftereffects.

Some of these modern reparations have historical precedent as well, such as when Britain compensated some Black Loyalists in the 1780s for unpaid labor provided during the war.

There is also the American Civil War’s Field Order No. 15 issued by Union Gen. William Sherman in 1865. It is popularly remembered as promising “ 40 acres and a mule ” to formerly enslaved people freed along the coast of Georgia – though it was quickly overturned and did not originally include a mule .

In recent years, universities and other institutions with ties to slavery have undertaken initiatives to uncover past atrocities, or established scholarships for descendants of enslaved people and other underrepresented groups.

Some cities, including Evanston, Illinois , and Asheville and Durham in North Carolina, are establishing their own approaches to reparations, and are working to define guidelines for the use and distribution of funds.

Reparations through representation

While numerous organizations and government bodies debate how reparations should take place in the modern era, “Hamilton” the musical provided real opportunities for actors of color to advance in a historically underrepresented field.

Yet the show is not without its critics, specifically as it relates to the exclusion of historical people of color who populated the world of Alexander Hamilton. These include noted spies Cato and James Fayette , Black brigade fighter Col. Tye and antislavery activist William Hamilton, purported to have been Alexander’s son with a free Black woman.

Historical and contemporary representation in popular tales like “Hamilton” is increasingly being used as a step toward correcting the imbalances from slavery’s legacy. And the key questions posed within the musical’s “ Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story ” number are some of the same questions being asked within the reparations movement today.

Banner image photo credit: Alexander Hamilton publicly opposed slavery, but research reveals he was also complicit in it.  Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

Topics: COVID-19 , College of Arts and Sciences , The Conversation

New Research Suggests Alexander Hamilton Was a Slave Owner

Often portrayed as an abolitionist, Hamilton may have enslaved people in his own household

David Kindy

Correspondent

For Jessie Serfilippi, it was an eye-opening moment. As she worked at her computer, she had to keep checking to make sure what she was seeing was real: irrefutable evidence that Alexander Hamilton —the founding father depicted by many historians and even on Broadway as an abolitionist—enslaved other humans.

“I went over that thing so many times, I just had to be sure,” recalls Serfilippi, adding, “I went in to this with the intention of learning about Hamilton’s connection to slavery. Would I find instances of him enslaving people? I did.”

In a recently published paper, “‘ As Odious and Immoral a Thing’: Alexander Hamilton’s Hidden History as an Enslaver ,” the young researcher details her findings gleaned from primary source materials. One of those documents includes Hamilton’s own cashbook, which is available online at the Library of Congress .

In it, several line items indicate that Hamilton purchased enslaved labor for his own household. While antithetical to the popular image of the founding father, that reference has reinforced the view held by a growing cadre of historians that Hamilton did actively engage in enslaving people.

“I didn’t expect to find what I did at all,” Serfilippi says. “Part of me wondered if I was even wasting my time because I thought other historians would have found this already. Some had said he owned slaves but there was never any real proof.”

One who is not surprised by the revelation is author William Hogeland , who has written about Hamilton and is working on a book about his impact on American capitalism.

“Serfilippi’s research is super exciting,” he says. “Her research confirms what we have suspected, and it takes the whole discussion to a new place. She’s found some actual evidence of enslavement on the part of Hamilton that is just more thoroughgoing and more clearly documented than anything we’ve had before.”

Hamilton’s connection to slavery is as complex as his personality. Brilliant but argumentative, he was a member of the New York Manumission Society, which advocated for the emancipation of the enslaved. However, he often acted as legal arbiter for others in the transactions of people in bondage.

Serfilippi points out that by conducting these deals for others, Hamilton was in effect a slave trader—a fact overlooked by some historians.

“We can’t get into his head and know what he was thinking,” she says. “Hamilton may have seen enslavement of others as a step up for a white man. That’s the way many white people saw it in that time period.”

Serfilippi works as an interpreter at the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site in Albany, New York, the home of Hamilton’s father-in-law Philip Schuyler , a Revolutionary War general and U.S. senator. Her paper came about as part of her research on the many African Americans enslaved by Schuyler. According to the mansion, Schuyler enslaved as many as 30 laborers between his two properties in Albany and Saratoga, New York. Sefilippi initially looked at Schuyler’s children, including Eliza, who married Hamilton in 1780, and as she examined the founding father’s cashbook, the evidence jumped out at her in several places.

One line item, dated June 28, 1798, shows that Hamilton received a $100 payment for the “term” of a “negro boy.” He had leased the boy to someone else and accepted cash for his use.

“He sent the child to work for another enslaver and then collected the money that child made,” Serfilippi says. “He could only do that if he enslaved that child.”

The smoking gun was at the end of the cashbook, where an anonymous hand is settling Hamilton’s estate following his death. That person wrote down the value of various items, including servants. It was a confirming moment for Serfilippi.

“You can only ascribe monetary value to a person you are enslaving,” she says. “There were free white servants who he hired but they were not included there.”

She adds, “Once you see it in his own handwriting, to me there’s really no question.”

In late-18th century New York, according to historian Leslie Harris , the words “servant” and “slave” were often used interchangeably—especially in New York, where enslaved workers were likely to be members of the household staff. Harris, a professor of African American studies at Northwestern University , points out it is an important distinction in understanding the many guises of slavery in 18th-century America.

“In casual usage, enslavers used the term ‘servant’ to refer to people they enslaved, especially if they were referring to those who worked in the household—the idea of a 'domestic servant' could be inclusive of enslaved, indentured or free laborers,” she says. “So in reading documents that refer to people as servants, we have to be careful to find other evidence of their actual legal status."

Harris is impressed by the research in Serfilippi’s paper and how it is reshaping the way we view the founding father. “It’s clear that Hamilton was deeply embedded in slavery,” she adds. “We have to think more carefully about this [idea of Hamilton as] anti-slavery.”

Hamilton played an important role in the establishment of the American government and creation of many of its economic institutions, including Wall Street and a central bank. The illegitimate son of a Scot, he was born and raised in the Caribbean, attended college in New York and then joined the Continental Army at the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775. He eventually became aide-de-camp to General George Washington and saw action at the Battle of Yorktown.

Largely self-taught and self-made, Hamilton found success as a lawyer and served in Congress. He wrote many of the Federalist Papers that helped shape the Constitution . He served as the first Secretary of the Treasury when Washington became president in 1789 and was famously killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr in 1804.

Despite being on the $10 bill, Hamilton remained generally ignored by the public until the publication of Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography Alexander Hamilton . The bestseller was read by Lin-Manuel Miranda , who turned it into a watershed Broadway hit in 2015, winning 11 Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize.

For the most part, Chernow and Miranda hewed to the accepted dogma that Hamilton was an abolitionist and only reluctantly participated in the sale of humans as a legal go-between for relatives and friends. Though Chernow states Hamilton may have owned slaves, the notion that he was ardently against the institution pervades his book—and not without some support. The belief is rooted in a biography written 150 years ago by Hamilton’s son, John Church Hamilton , who stated his father never owned slaves.

That idea was later refuted by Hamilton’s grandson, Allan McLane Hamilton , who said his grandfather did indeed own them and his own papers proved it. “It has been stated that Hamilton never owned a negro slave, but this is untrue,” he wrote. “We find that in his books there are entries showing that he purchased them for himself and for others.” However, that admission was generally ignored by many historians since it didn’t fit the established narrative.

“I think it’s fair to say Hamilton opposed the institution of slavery,” Hogeland says. “But, as with many others who did in his time, that opposition was in conflict with widespread practice on involvement in the institution.”

In an e-mail, Chernow applauds Serfilippi’s “real contribution to the scholarly literature” but expresses dismay over what he sees as her one-sided approach to Hamilton’s biography. “Whether Hamilton’s involvement with slavery was exemplary or atrocious, it was only one aspect of his identity, however important,” he writes. “There is, inevitably, some distortion of vising by viewing Hamilton’s large and varied life through this single lens.”

In her paper, Serfilippi cites the work of other historians who have similarly investigated Hamilton’s past as enslaver, including John C. Miller , Nathan Schachner and Sylvan Joseph Muldoon . Hogeland also cites a 2010 article by Michelle DuRoss, then a postgraduate student at the University at Albany, State University of New York , who claims Hamilton was likely a slave owner.

“Scholars are aware of this paper,” Hogeland says. “It’s gotten around. It predates Serfilippi’s work and doesn’t have the same documentation, but she makes the argument that Hamilton’s abolitionism is a bit of a fantasy.”

Chernow, however, holds steadfast on his reading of Hamilton. “While Hamilton was Treasury Secretary, his anti-slavery activities did lapse, but he resumed them after he returned to New York and went back into private law practice, working again with the New York Manumission Society,” he writes. “Elected one of its four legal advisers, he helped to defend free blacks when slave masters from out of state brandished bills of sale and tried to snatch them off the New York streets. Does this sound like a man invested in the perpetuation of slavery?”

For her part, Serfilippi is taking the attention she is receiving from historians in stride. At 27, she is part of a new breed of researchers who are reviewing now-digitized collections of historical documents to take a fresh look at what happened in the past. She is pleased her discovery is shedding new light on a familiar figure and adding insight into his character.

More importantly, she hopes it will help deepen our understanding of the difficult issue of slavery in the nation’s history and its impact on individuals—the slavers and the enslaved. The driving force for Serfilippi was to get to know and remember the people held in bondage by the founding father. She recounts one correspondence between Philip Schuler and his daughter and the potent impact of learning the name of one of Hamilton’s slaves.

“Schuyler, just in letters to other people, will casually mention enslavement,” she says. “In one letter he writes to Eliza in 1798, ‘the death of one of your servants by yellow fever has deeply affected my feelings.’ He goes on to identify the servant, a boy by the name of Dick.

“That was a shocking moment for me. This is the first and only name of somebody Hamilton enslaved that I’ve come across. It’s something I’ve never stopped thinking about.”

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David Kindy is a former daily correspondent for  Smithsonian . He is also a journalist, freelance writer and book reviewer who lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He writes about history, culture and other topics for Air & Space , Military History , World War II , Vietnam , Aviation History , Providence Journal and other publications and websites.

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Research sheds light on Alexander Hamilton as slave owner

FILE - In this Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020, file photo, pedestrians pass a statue of Alexander Hamilton at the City Museum of New York. A new research paper takes a swipe at the popular image of Alexander Hamilton as the abolitionist founding father, citing evidence that he was a slave trader and owner himself. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)

FILE - In this Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020, file photo, a statue of Alexander Hamilton stands in Central Park in New York. A new research paper takes a swipe at the popular image of Alexander Hamilton as the abolitionist founding father, citing evidence that he was a slave trader and owner himself. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)

Pedestrians pass a statue of Alexander Hamilton in Central Park Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A new research paper takes a swipe at the popular image of Alexander Hamilton as the abolitionist founding father, citing evidence he was a slave trader and owner himself.

“Not only did Alexander Hamilton enslave people, but his involvement in the institution of slavery was essential to his identity, both personally and professionally,” Jessie Serfilippi, an interpreter at a New York state historic site, wrote in a paper published last month.

Hamilton is almost universally depicted as an abolitionist in popular modern works, from Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography, “Hamilton,” to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning show, “Hamilton: An American Musical.”

But after poring over ledgers and correspondence of Hamilton and his wife, Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, Serfilippi, who works at the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site in Albany, concluded that image falls short.

“It is vital that the myth of Hamilton as ‘the Abolitionist Founding Father’ end,” Serfilippi writes in the paper, entitled, “‘As Odious and Immoral a Thing’: Alexander Hamilton’s Hidden History as an Enslaver.” Her research was published on the New York state park system website.

The paper adds to a concern voiced by many academics that the fictitious Hamilton of the musical, who attacks slavery in a rap battle with Thomas Jefferson, is just that: fictitious.

“Fascinating article,” tweeted Harvard Law professor and historian Annette Gordon-Reed, who has criticized the Broadway show in the past. “Reminds of the ubiquitous nature of slavery in the colonial period and the early American republic. Alexander Hamilton as an enslaver broadens the discussion.”

Chernow called the paper a “terrific research job that broadens our sense of Hamilton’s involvement in slavery in a number of ways.” But he questioned her claim that slavery was “essential to his identity,” and said Serfilippi omitted information that would contradict her conclusions.

For example, Chernow noted Hamilton’s work with the Manumission Society to abolish slavery in New York and defend free Blacks when slave masters from out of state tried to snatch them off New York streets.

“Had she tried to reconcile these important new findings with a full and fair statement of Hamilton’s anti-slavery activities, we would have gotten a large and complex view of the man and her paper would have been far more persuasive,” Chernow said via email.

Miranda declined to comment through his publicist. In past interviews, he’s said he welcomes discussion of both Hamilton’s role in slavery and criticism of his show’s handling of that part of his life.

When Hamilton married into the powerful Schuyler family in 1780, slavery was common among New York state’s elite. More than 40 people were enslaved at the Schuyler family’s Albany mansion and another estate over the years. The historic site has done extensive research into the family’s so-called “servants” and incorporates it into its tours.

Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan ordered the removal of the Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler statue earlier this year in part because he was “reportedly the largest owner of enslaved people in Albany during his time,” according to the mayor’s office.

Serfilippi challenges the often repeated claim that Hamilton’s exposure to the brutalities of slavery during his childhood on St. Croix instilled a hatred of slavery. She said “no primary sources have been found to corroborate” that.

Biographers have noted that Hamilton helped legal clients and family members buy and sell slaves, but they’ve been less clear on whether he enslaved people himself. Serfilippi said notations in his cash books and in family letters clearly show he did.

For example, Hamilton’s cash books record a payment of $250 to Philip Schuyler in 1796 for “2 Negro servants purchased by him for me.” Another entry records receiving $100 for lending a “Negro boy” to another person. And Serfilippi notes an inventory made of Hamilton’s property to settle his affairs after his death in the duel with Aaron Burr in 1804 includes “servants” valued at 400 pounds.

Joanne Freeman, Yale history professor and editor of the Library of America edition of Hamilton’s writings, said via email that, “It’s fitting that we are reckoning with Hamilton’s status as an enslaver at a time that is driving home how vital it is for white Americans to reckon — seriously reckon — with the structural legacies of slavery in America.”

Serfilippi said her research interest goes beyond debunking myths about Hamilton.

“The truth revealed in Hamilton’s cash books and letters must be acknowledged in order to honor the people he enslaved,” she writes. “Through understanding and accepting Hamilton’s status as an enslaver, the stories of the people he enslaved can finally take their rightful place in history.”

Den of Geek

What Hamilton Doesn’t Say About His Real History with Slavery

We dive into Alexander Hamilton’s real thoughts on slavery, and whether he personally ever owned human beings as property.

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It was mid-October 1796 when Alexander Hamilton released the first in a string of scathing essays about political opponent Thomas Jefferson. By this point in early United States history, George Washington had announced his retirement, refusing to seek a third term as president, and the race of self-styled great men hoping to take his place was on… with none more loathsome to Hamilton than Jefferson, the loquacious, if remote, thinker on a hill in Virginia.

In this first of 25 essays, Hamilton wrote under the nom de plume of Phocion about the many hypocrisies of Jefferson, depicting the supposed philosopher as a moral and intellectual fraud, and something worse: a slave owner who knew slavery was evil but still took advantage, perhaps even of a sexual nature, of the Black people he kept in bondage.

It is moments of moral standing like this, even if Hamilton hid his name under a pseudonym, that Lin-Manuel Miranda ’s musical Hamilton hangs its hat on. While the actual incident does not technically occur in the musical’s dizzying amount of narrative events, the tour de force work of art still uses its trenchant blending of historical fact and hip hop melodies to convey much the same idea: Jefferson was a demonstrable hypocrite on the issue of slavery. Despite  being one of the United States’ brightest thinkers about the rights of men, Jefferson failed time and again throughout his life to truly fight to end slavery—or free the hundreds of people he kept as possessions at Monticello. Even on his deathbed, Jefferson freed just five slaves, relatives all to his “mistress” (if such a word is fair), Sally Hemings.

Hamilton leans into this fact when Alexander Hamilton, played in the new Disney+ movie by Miranda himself, mocks Jefferson (Daveed Diggs) for his hypocrisies in a rap battle.

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“A civics lesson from a slaver,” Hamilton seethes in the show. “Hey neighbor, your debts are paid because you don’t pay for labor. ‘We plant seeds in the South, we create?’ Keep ranting, we know who’s really doing the planting.” 

It’s one of the many flashy moments where Hamilton brandishes the anti-slavery sentiments of its title character, going so far as to suggest if he hadn’t died in a duel in 1804 he could’ve done more to end slavery. Throughout the show, he’s depicted as standing shoulder to shoulder with John Laurens (Anthony Ramos), who preaches “We won’t be free until we end slavery” during the American Revolution, and is even introduced as a young man horrified in his childhood on St. Croix as he watches “slaves were being slaughtered and carted away.” It was a satisfying message when the musical opened in 2015 with its color-blind casting, and it plays even more satisfying now.

However, like much else in regards to Alexander Hamilton’s life, the contradictions and shortcomings the man displayed toward slavery were thoroughly glossed over. Despite being an immigrant with a rags to riches story, Hamilton was also an elitist with those riches, favoring big banks and commercialism to the supposed agrarian utopia Jefferson imagined. Even the night before his fateful duel with Aaron Burr, Hamilton lamented to a friend that New England Federalists were fools if they really wanted to secede from the Union. Seceding would provide no “relief to our real disease, which is democracy,” Hamilton wrote, hinting at his disdain for popular rule.

The thornier side of Hamilton’s relationship to slavery is similarly overlooked. This is a fact Miranda is now publicly commenting on ahead of the Disney+ release.

In a recent interview with NPR , Miranda said, “[Slavery] is the third line of our show. It’s a system in which every character in our show is complicit in some way or another… Hamilton – although he voiced anti-slavery beliefs – remained complicit in the system. And other than calling out Jefferson on his hypocrisy with regards to slavery in Act 2, doesn’t really say much else over the course of Act 2. And I think that’s actually pretty honest.”

So what were Hamilton’s actual views on slavery? Well, as Ron Chernow notes in his biography, Alexander Hamilton , which the Hamilton musical is based on, “Few, if any, other founding fathers opposed slavery more consistently or toiled harder to eradicate it than Hamilton.” This is probably true, but it speaks more to how little that generation did to confront what became their new nation’s original sin than it necessarily speaks to Hamilton’s trailblazing abolitionist advocacy.

Born on the Caribbean island of Nevis in 1757, Hamilton grew up in a part of the world where slavery was an everyday aspect of life. Indeed, one of the primary reasons the Caribbean islands under British rule balked at the North American colonies’ calls for independence is they relied on the British Army and Navy to keep the local slave populations from uprising. There were eight times as many Black slaves as white colonists on these islands, a far higher ratio than the white colonists outnumbering Black slaves four-to-one in the North American colonies.

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Hamilton saw this in his everyday life. After his father walked out on him, he went with his mother and older brother to stay with their in-laws, the Lyton family. Yet the Lytons were sugar planters who owned a vast amount of slaves, and one of the reasons they soon turned the Hamiltons out is because a relative stole 22 of their slaves and ran off to start a new life in the Carolinas—keeping those with dark skin in bondage, of course.

During this period in his life, Hamilton developed a strong distaste for slavery, which he considered barbarous. He even developed rather progressive opinions for an 18th century white man in the Caribbean, noticing there were no genetic differences in mental or physical ability between Black and white men. His ability to express vocal outrage over slavery impressed merchants early in his career, who eventually helped fund his education toward the mainland.

But what did he do with this knowledge? As Manuel said in 2020, clearly not enough. Upon reaching New York and quickly asserting himself as a brash intellectual leader in the Revolutionary generation, Hamilton supported anti-slavery causes, but they were never a high-priority. His dear friend John Laurens did speak out against slavery and even radically attempted to free 3,000 slaves if they fought for the Continental Army, beginning with the 40 slaves he stood to inherit from his father Henry Laurens, President of the Continental Congress. But while Laurens won approval for the plan in the Continental Congress, when he arrived in South Carolina to emancipate the said 3,000 slaves, he faced extreme opposition. Even as a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, Laurens failed three times by overwhelming margins between 1779 and 1782 to emancipate 3,000 Black lives from chains.

Hamilton supported his friend Laurens’ cause, but he was personally busier with his responsibilities as George Washington’s aides-de-camp (a secretary). He was also working his way into intentionally marrying into a wealthy family like the Schuylers… a family that’s wealth was partially predicated on owning slaves.

In a fact completely ignored in Hamilton , New York was very much a slave colony and then state during the 18th century. While the smaller northern farms never reached the economic needs for chained Black bodies on an industrial scale, it still was a common, even fashionable practice to own a slave. Before becoming a late-in-life abolitionist, Benjamin Franklin owned several house slaves in his youth. And in New York City during the 1790s, one in five white homes owned at least one domestic slave for household chores. It was a status symbol.

For the Schuylers it was more than just one slave too. At his height of wealth, Philip Schuyler—the father of Angelica, Peggy, and Eliza—owned 27 slaves, tending to his mansion in Albany and his mills in Saratoga. And while Eliza herself became a staunch abolitionist in her old age after Alexander died, in her youth, she told her grandson, she was her mother’s chief assistant in running the domestic affairs and slaves of the house.

All of this is expunged in the Hamilton musical that depicts two of the Schuyler sisters as free thinkers. In reality, Angelica long maintained the practice of slaveholding after leaving her parents’ home… as might have Eliza.

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There are several ambiguous documents that would seem to suggest early in their marriage, Alexander and Eliza either bought, rented, or at least provided financial support in others’ purchase of slaves. After his wedding to Eliza, Alexander wrote Gov. George Clinton that “I expect by Col. Hay’s return to receive a sufficient sum to pay the value of the woman Mrs. H had of Mrs. Clinton.” Biographer Forrest McDonald argued that this was too small a sum of money to buy a slave and rather it was the salary for a domestic servant, however others have speculated it was essentially for the renting of a slave.

Later in 1795, Philip Schuyler wrote to his son-in-law that “the Negro boy & woman are engaged for you” at the sum of $250. Hamilton even noted the transaction in his cashbook as “for 2 Negro servants purchased by him for me.” Biographer Ron Chernow argues that this purchase was possibly a reluctant service Hamilton did for his brother and sister-in-law, John and Angelica Church. But the best thing to hang on that is Angelica writing, regretfully, to Eliza that she and Alexander have no slaves to help host a large party. Yet to say there is an uncomfortable ambiguity there is an understatement.

To Hamilton’s credit, he was an early member of the New York Manumission Society, which fought against slaveholders kidnapping fugitive slaves and Freed Black people off the streets of Manhattan and selling them into bondage. The group petitioned the state’s General Assembly to pass a law that would phase out slavery in New York—a policy championed by Burr (before he reversed his abolitionist tendencies when he became a political ally of Democratic-Republicans and remained a slaveholder his entire life). And as the leader of the Society’s Ways and Means Committee, Hamilton drafted proposals that members of the group who owned slaves, including chairman John Jay, free all slaves over the age of 45 immediately; those younger than 28 by the time they’re 35; and those between 28 and 38 within seven years of the proposal’s writing. But even these potentially decade-spanning deadlines were considered too radical by the slaveholders of this anti-slavery society… they were roundly rejected and Hamilton’s committee was disbanded.

Still, Hamilton remained part of the group’s standing committee and even petitioned the state legislature of New York to ban trading slaves from anywhere else in the world, saying exporting Black people “like cattle and other commerce to the West Indies and the southern states” was a monstrous affair.

Nevertheless, all of these stands were made before Hamilton had actual political power inside of the government, as opposed to writing to it. So what did he do when he actually was in the room where it happens? Largely nothing other than treating it as a bargaining chip. During the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton spoke passionately about the need for allowing easy immigration and U.S. citizenry to anyone who wanted it—and argued that senators should have lifetime appointments—but on the issue of slavery, and the infamous “Three-Fifths Compromise” that occurred there, Hamilton gloomily surmised, “No union could possibly be formed” without it.

And what of his visceral admonishment of Jefferson’s hypocrisies in 1796? It was vividly fair. Jefferson, ever the proud renaissance man, was aware that slavery was evil. He attempted to blame the institution on King George III in the Declaration of Independence before Southern states forced him to take it out, and in the early 1780s he published Notes on the State of Virginia , which among other things argued that slavery could be ended in the state by 1784 with emancipated slaves moving into the interior North American continent. Of course none of that happened, and between his many impressive positions in government, from ambassador to France to Secretary of State, to vice president, and finally President of the United States, he never actually acted on these goals… or freed the hundreds of Black men and women he kept toiling at Monticello.

In fact, Hamilton used the hypocrisy and blatant racism within Notes on the State of Virginia against Jefferson, noting the document’s paternal bigotry where Jefferson offered pseudoscientific explanations to suggest in the natural hierarchy, whites were above Blacks, in the way Blacks were above orangutans. “[He’d have them] exported to some less friendly region where they might all be murdered or reduced to a more wretched state of slavery,” Hamilton wrote as Phocoin about Jefferson’s unrealized emancipation plan. But his most damning indictment was insinuating that the well-noticed light skinned slaves called Black in Monticello might have a complicated heritage.

“At one moment he is anxious to emancipate the blacks to vindicate the liberty of the human race. At another he discovers that the blacks are of a different race from the human race and therefore, when emancipated, they must be instantly removed beyond the reach of mixture lest he (or she) should stain the blood of his (or her) master, not recollecting what from his situation and other circumstances he ought to have recollected—that this mixture may take place while the negro remains in slavery. He must have seen all around him sufficient marks of this staining of blood to have been convinced that retaining them in slavery would not prevent it.” – Alexander Hamilton

Biographer Chernow even believes this hints at Hamilton having knowledge about Jefferson’s affair with the light-skinned Sally Hemings, as Angelica Schuyler Church was a friend of Jefferson’s during his time in Paris when he possibly began that, um, relationship. Hemings was 14 at the time.

Sadly, lest you think Hamilton was simply using the cloak of anonymity to call out the blatant hypocrisy of Southern planters, the uglier truth is that Hamilton was using this potential knowledge as a cudgel against Jefferson in the South. Writing in support of his Federalist compatriot John Adams, Hamilton rather cynically ends the essay by saying, “For my own part, were I a Southern planter, owning negroes, I should be ten thousand times more alarmed at Mr. Jefferson’s ardent wish for emancipation than at Mr. Adams’ system of checks and balances.”

So even in his most full-throated denunciation of slavery, the racism it’s founded on, and the hypocrisy of slave owners, Hamilton was still posturing it for political gain… among slave plantation owners.

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For this reason, some historians, and even more activists, hold a wary cynicism toward Hamilton . Author and playwright Ishmael Reed even wrote a full-length lecture of a play called The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda , in which he depicts Miranda as a hapless dupe manipulated by Chernow into spreading manipulative lies about America’s founders, whom Reed compares to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.

This kind of broad portrait of these historic figures—or Miranda and Chernow for that matter—may be just as sweeping and reductive as the centuries of deification the founders and other “great white men” received before recent decades’ attempts by historians and universities to be more inclusive and objective about the historical record.

The truth about Hamilton, like most men, is a lot more complicated, including how Miranda’s impressive work of art presents him. Hamilton was a forward-thinker ahead of his time who understood slavery, and the basic tenets of racism that white society used to rationalize it, was insidious. “ Odious ” and “ immoral ” (complete with italicizations) were his favorite words to describe it. He made some nominal effort to fight it, but like a lot of white men throughout history, and even today, he ultimately placed it low among his priorities and often on the backburner… allowing it to linger to the next generation and the next century, and to the point where it nearly tore his beloved Union asunder in a civil war that claimed more than half a million lives.

Perhaps it’s best to remember, beyond musical stage glory, Hamilton was a man who did good and bad, and maybe cruelty by simply not doing enough when he had the power to do more. But instead of glorifying or vilifying those shortcomings, it’s best to learn from them and see how much (or little) we are doing today to overcome the legacy of slavery. It’s wishful thinking on the part of Miranda and Phillipa Soo’s Eliza at the end of the musical to say if Hamilton hadn’t died in 1804 “you could have done so much more” about slavery. When Burr shot him, his time in power had honestly passed. Ours has not.

David Crow | @DCrowsNest

David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…

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Hamilton and Slavery

Somewhere in between: alexander hamilton and slavery.

All Hammed Up: How Hamilton: An American Musical Addresses Post-Racial Beliefs

Kylie umehira.

Read the instructor’s introduction Read the writer’s comments and bio Download this essay

Abstract: Hamilton: An American Musical , the Broadway sensation that chronicles the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, has received critical acclaim for its comprehensive plotline as well as its predominantly African-American and Latino cast, a deliberate choice made by the show’s composer and lyricist, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Both the show itself and the cast of Hamilton evolved into a political statement of equality, unity, and an alleged indicator of a post-racial society. However, American society is far from post-racial, and most literature on Hamilton does not acknowledge the faults of Hamilton, specifically the public’s perception of the show’s content and casting. Though the racial representation in the Hamilton cast is positive and worthy of critical praise, my research will analyze the racial disparities within the casting of the musical and the story within the show itself to understand and disprove the belief that Hamilton signifies a post-racial society. I will examine reviews and current scholarship on Hamilton to explore public perception of the musical to further understand how representation of minorities in art benefit marginalized populations more broadly in America as well as develop a façade of overcoming racial barriers.

Keywords: Non-white casting, post-racial society, racial representations, diversity, minorities in art

On August 6, 2015, Hamilton: An American Musical , which tells the life story of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, premiered on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. Theater critics, journalists, and civilians alike held a practically unanimous opinion about Hamilton : that it is one of the best pieces of musical theater in this generation. It was praised not only for its well-crafted songs, relevant political rhymes, and unprecedented artistry, but also for its intentional non-white casting. Most of the actors in Hamilton are African-American, Hispanic, and Latinx, causing the actors in the musical and the musical itself to receive lots of media attention. This praise influenced many journalists and reviewers to make broader claims about the current state of American society. Hamilton sparked a national dialogue about race in America. Its positive representation of minority actors led many to believe Hamilton marked the end of a whitewashed American media, supporting the post-racial 1 narrative that many attribute to President Barack Obama’s election and re-election. Hamilton has even been called a sign of the “twilight of white America” (Walsh 457). Despite these claims, the myth of a post-racial America is exactly that: a myth, which current scholarship about Hamilton fails to address. Through analysis of reviews, existing literature about Hamilton , and music from the show itself, I will disprove the claim that Hamilton indicates that American society is post-racial. Overall, I will analyze Hamilton: An American Musical and current scholarship about the production to provide insight into why Americans continue to pursue the post-racial narrative, the internal and external effects that representations of minorities in art can have on larger political conversations, and the importance of inspiring the “Hamiltons” of tomorrow in American media today.

The era of President Obama did generate larger, unprecedented opportunities for racial representation in American media. Television shows like Black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat, Empire, and Jane the Virgin emerged during Obama’s presidency, all appearing on major networks. This kind of representation is fairly new in America, especially with its history of mainly showcasing white talent in film, television, theater, and other media. Author and playwright Warren Hoffman found that classic Broadway musicals like 42 nd Street and The Music Man exemplify white history and privilege in America (5). There are also musicals like Anything Goes that have racist elements in their plotlines. For many Americans, this pattern remained until recently. Broadway has been dubbed “The Great White Way,” and though the term’s genesis had nothing to do with race, scholars have given it a second meaning, as Broadway was largely considered an activity for the wealthier sector of American society because of its high price point. Due to systemic socioeconomic restraints, that second meaning inherently labels Broadway as a white pastime, as only the most affluent in society can afford to enjoy the expensive world of theatre. In the United States, the opportunities to reach that level of wealth are mainly afforded to white people, both directly and indirectly. Though this trend has historic roots, it also continues today. The Broadway League found that 77% of all tickets sold in the 2015–2016 season––of which Hamilton is a part––were purchased by Caucasians (“The Demographics”).

Though Caucasians continue to comprise most of the Broadway audience, Broadway and American media at large have increased minority representation onstage. The 2015–2016 Broadway season boasted more minorities than seasons past (Lee and Rooney). On Your Feet! shows the life of Latina singer Gloria Estefan, while Allegiance casted a significant number of Asian-Americans with an all Asian-American crew. These musicals, alongside Hamilton, made many, including associate professor of theater at Tufts University Monica White Ndounou, claim the 2015–2016 season the “most diverse yet.” Before this season, musicals like Dreamgirls and The Color Purple made waves on Broadway as well. Deviating greatly from the white stories of musicals past, both musicals revolve around African-Americans telling the stories of other African-Americans, which is where Hamilton strays from the pack.

Figure 1: Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton

The musical’s creator and writer, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also played the title role in the original Broadway cast, calls Hamilton “the story of America then, told by America now” (Paulson). Miranda wrote the roles to be played by non-white actors specifically, so in Hamilton , non-white actors are playing white characters. In the original cast, Leslie Odom, Jr., Daveed Diggs, and Christopher Jackson are all African-American actors who played Aaron Burr, the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, respectively. Philippa Soo, an Asian-American woman, starred as Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth “Eliza” Schuyler Hamilton, while Anthony Ramos originated the roles of John Laurens and Phillip Hamilton alongside Miranda as Alexander Hamilton; both Ramos and Miranda are of Puerto-Rican descent ( Hamilton ). These roles translated to Hamilton ’s other adaptations, as its current Broadway cast and casts in its Chicago, London’s West End, and national touring productions have adhered to the non-white casting method. When questioned about this method, Jeffrey Seller, one of the producers of Hamilton , stated that despite public backlash after a Hamilton casting call sought “non-white performers,” producers will “continue to cast the show with the same multicultural diversity 2 that [they] have employed thus far” (Viagas).

These representations of minorities contribute to the overwhelming support Hamilton has garnered. Diggs stated it is important for him and many others to see people of color taking part in a typically all-white historical narrative through the show’s main musical styling, rap, or “the voice of the people of [his] generation, and of people of color” (Mead). As an African-American himself, Diggs provides insight into the significance these representations have in the lives of racial minorities. From his statements, I derive that seeing people of color claiming and identifying with a story they have long been excluded from is important, and makes history an inclusive narrative all people can be a part of. I argue that the actual history that is told, however, is also significant, and can impact how people of color perceive the message of that historical narrative, which, in this case, is the story within Hamilton .

Though Hamilton’s insistence in casting non-white actors is admirable, the show itself does have some problematic elements. I have found that in Hamilton ’s retelling of American history, the musical adheres to the typical whitewashed history many Americans are familiar with. Though most of the actors in Hamilton are people of color, all of the characters portrayed in the musical are white; there are no people of color featured as characters. I believe this deficit is only underscored by Hamilton’s privileges as a white man. Miranda, in the documentary Hamilton’s America , stated that Hamilton is able to “write his way out of his circumstances.” Hamilton literally says this in the song “Hurricane,” where he describes writing a letter about the hurricane that devastated his hometown in the Caribbean, and how his letter inspired community members to raise money for him to leave and get an education in the North American colonies. He reflects on writing for George Washington during the Revolution, crafting love letters to his future wife Eliza, and writing the Federalist Papers and various pieces of legislation outlining his plans for the American financial and banking systems.

Though Hamilton was a gifted writer, I maintain that his ability to “write his way out” also came with a fair amount of both privilege and luck. Many people, both in Hamilton’s time and today, are not afforded the privileges that come with quickly being recognized for their talents. This is not to undermine Hamilton’s hard work, determination, and subsequent success. But I argue that Hamilton still benefitted from the system of white privilege that existed in the late 1700s and persists today. Racial, socioeconomic, and other political and cultural factors can prevent someone just as talented, if not more talented, than Hamilton from becoming successful in many professional industries, including politics. This reality is well-known for people of color, who face obstacles in personal, professional, and political spheres. The endurance and withstanding of these barriers over time clearly go against the post-racial belief that barriers no longer exist for people of color.

But the differences between the livelihoods of white people and people of color go beyond Hamilton’s white privilege. One of the most prominent issues that Hamilton fails to address is slavery. Hamilton is portrayed as a staunch abolitionist throughout the show, which is not completely accurate. I found this portrayal evident when Hamilton criticizes Thomas Jefferson in the song “Cabinet Battle #1,” a cabinet meeting rearranged into a rap battle, in which Hamilton and Jefferson debate Hamilton’s proposal to allow the federal government to assume state’s debts. Hamilton criticizes him: “A civics lesson from a slaver, hey neighbor / Your debts are paid ‘cause you don’t pay for labor / ‘We plant seeds in the South, we create’ / Then keep ranting, we know who’s really doing the planting” (Miranda). University of Richmond professor Patricia Herrera analyzed another example of this portrayal in the song “Stay Alive,” when John Laurens describes his new role in the American Revolution: “I stay at work with Hamilton / We write essays against slavery / And every day’s a test of our camaraderie and bravery” (Miranda). These lyrics paint Hamilton as an aggressive opponent of slavery, though in reality, this was not the case (Herrera). Despite the confusion and misinterpretation of his political and personal relationships with slavery, I found that Hamilton’s personal records indicate he did purchase, own, and trade slaves (Hamilton 268). Though he did work closely with John Laurens, who supported enlisting and freeing black soldiers during the Revolution, Hamilton’s motivations to support abolition were overshadowed by his own desire to climb the social ladder, according to Professor Michelle DuRoss from the University at Albany (“Somewhere in Between”). She contests that Hamilton’s desperation to enter the upper tier of American society was accomplished by marrying into the wealthy, slaveholding Schuyler family, causing him to overlook his own public stance on slavery as to assimilate into the opulent slaveholding world he was so desperate to join.

Both Hamilton and Aaron Burr––Hamilton’s fellow politician and main antagonist––gloss over slavery in the show, erasing the significance of the existence of slaves during their time. In “The Room Where It Happens,” Burr expresses his anger and desire to be in the “big old room” of important political decision-making, specifically the room where Jefferson, James Madison, and Hamilton decide the locations of the United States Capitol and the country’s main financial center. Burr, played by Leslie Odom Jr., says that besides the “two Virginians and the immigrant,” “[n]o one else was in the room where it happened.” Lyra Monteiro found that this statement erases the role of slaves in the lives of these men, as there undoubtedly would be slaves serving and preparing the dinner that occurred in “The Room Where It Happens,” hosted by Jefferson, who claims he “arranged the menu, the venue, the seating” (94). The character’s dialogue on slavery––or lack thereof––removes slaves and slavery from the historical narrative presented in the musical. The absence of slave characters in Hamilton once again excludes people of color from this narrative, reinforcing the Anglo-centric history often taught in classrooms across the United States. The lack of characters of color in Hamilton perpetuates the idea that people of color do not have stories to be told, or rather, there was no place in American history for people of color then, and there is no place for people of color in America now.

Despite not mentioning slavery, Hamilton does often mention Hamilton’s status as an immigrant, which empowers immigrants exposed to Hamilton in a political climate routinely hostile towards them. Born in Saint Kitts in the West Indies, Hamilton immigrated to the United States seeking an education. Miranda, hailing from an immigrant family himself, emphasized this part of Hamilton’s identity, calling Hamilton the “quintessential immigrant story” (“Hamilton’s America”) about “having to work twice as hard to get half as far” (Ball and Reed). One of the standout lines in the show comes during the song “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down),” when the Marquis de Lafayette and Hamilton reflect on their accomplishments, stating “Immigrants / We get the job done” (Miranda). Frank Lechner, a professor of sociology at Emory University, found that Hamilton tells a comprehensive immigrant success story that says even immigrants can achieve the American Dream (123), combatting current inflammatory rhetoric against immigrants and Latinos around the country.

Miranda’s telling of Hamilton’s immigrant story creates a powerful, layered representation for Latinos, which has positive effects. In her review of Hamilton , Ariana Quiñónez described the significance of seeing a Latino man playing an immigrant on Broadway. For the first time, she saw herself in a Broadway musical and related to American history in a way that many minorities did not until Hamilton (“The cultural significance”). Patricia Herrera also examined the importance of this representation and its effects on her Hispanic and Latinx students. One of her students said that as an African and Hispanic-American, watching Hamilton and Miranda’s first musical, In the Heights ––the story of a Hispanic storeowner, Usnavi, and his life in one of the predominantly Latinx neighborhoods of Manhattan, Washington Heights––was particularly important to them and their family because that was the first time they ever saw themselves represented on stage (“ Hamilton, Democracy”). Positive responses like these lead many to believe the post-racial myth. However, the amount of white representation versus representation of people of color is disproportionate.

Hamilton ’s representations of people of color have turned the musical into a powerful political statement that reached beyond Broadway. The most prominent incident that faced the musical occurred when Vice President Mike Pence attended a performance of Hamilton . Actor Brandon Victor Dixon, who played Aaron Burr that night, read a statement from the cast addressed to Pence, stating the cast of Hamilton is the “diverse America” that is nervous and apprehensive about Donald Trump’s administration (Healey and Mele). Though many supported the cast for making a statement in the wake of President Trump’s election, many Trump supporters––and even Trump himself––expressed disdain toward this act on social media. The cast’s statement emphasized their fears as people of color, which ultimately faced public backlash. In a post-racial society, the anxiety expressed by the cast of Hamilton would not exist to begin with, let alone be subjected to racist public criticism.

This backlash is reflective of Broadway now, as the theater will not remain the “diverse America” it was in 2015 and 2016. The next two years on Broadway will make way for more shows slated to have very white casts, including Titanic and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Miranda himself called the diversity in the 2015–2016 Broadway season an “accident of timing” (Seymour). Broadway will remain “The Great White Way,” at least for now, despite the success people of color had along the Way. Though 2016 seemed like a success for minorities in the entertainment industry, there was not a significant change in minority representation and recognition in media compared to past years. Over 95% of all nominees in Tony Awards history are white, only slightly behind the percentage of all Oscar nominees (Seymour). There are only a handful of new television programs, films, and musicals that employ a significant amount of minority talent. Just because there is some representation for minorities in media does not mean that racial barriers have suddenly dissolved—they are just changing and being interrogated more than years past.

Clearly Hamilton and the buzz it created stood out from other works of visual art in the media, and the exceptionalism and sensationalism that comes with minorities in art translates to American media as a whole. Often times, art created by or featuring a significant number of minorities––whether it be through film, theatre, paintings, or other forms of visual media––becomes inherently “othered” 3 by media at large. Once a merited piece of art, like Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton , is labeled as “diverse” or “groundbreaking for minorities,” that piece is often praised heavily for that label alone. French philosopher Michel Foucault theorizes that any label exclusively used to describe something that deviates from a social norm immediately enters this category of “other” (41). Foucault’s theory clearly explains why Hamilton has become a post-racial paragon in American media culture today.

Art created by minorities is often labeled as such. Essayist Erica Hunt asserts that most people have never identified a piece of art by the artist’s race if the artist is white, but that reality is much different for non-white artists (171). Miranda, a Puerto-Rican man, created Hamilton as a piece of art meant to showcase the racial diversity he grew up with from his own personal experience as a Latino. Therefore, Miranda, his fellow non-white performers, and the show itself fit what the media labels “diverse.” Hamilton’s “otherness” means that Hamilton cannot stand without its status as a “diverse” show. Though that label is not necessarily malicious or bad, that label proves why Hamilton is not indicative of an American post-racial society. In a post-racial society, such a label would not exist. The “diversity” praised today would be considered normal, not “other.” In theory, a post-racial society would not acknowledge “diversity” at all, as the “diversity” label would not be necessary.

Overall, the discrepancies between Hamilton ’s unparalleled achievements as a positive, inclusive racial representation and its problematic regurgitation of whitewashed American history shed light on the importance of diversity on Broadway and in American media as a whole. The musical exemplifies the importance of racial representation for people of color who often find themselves excluded from historical narratives. But the disparities and issues within both the content and casting of the musical, as well as the public’s perception of it, defy beliefs that Hamilton is the paragon of post-racial achievement. Despite its accolades and success, much of which is well deserved, to say that Hamilton symbolizes the United States’ alleged overcoming of racial tension is undoubtedly false. Statements about Hamilton ’s reflection of a post-racial America diminish the experiences, injustices, and systemic issues that people of color continue to face today. Beyond feeding into the post-racial myth, Hamilton is an example of how more “Hamiltons ” should exist, and that the stories of people of color deserve to be told just as much as the stories of America’s Founding Fathers. The history of all people must be shared if the United States ever wants to achieve the post-racial society many have dreamt of, and though Hamilton is a historic stepping-stone on that journey, the end goal has yet to be achieved.

1. Throughout this paper, I will be using the term “post-racial” consistently as part of the backbone of my main argument. “Post-racial” is defined as “[d]enoting or relating to a period in or society in which racial prejudice and discrimination no longer exist” by the Oxford English Dictionary (“Post-racial”). The general conclusion about the origins of the post-racial narrative in America is attributed to the election of President Barack Obama as the first African-American president. Because Obama’s election was conclusively historic, many interpreted his election as an overcoming of racial tensions and barriers, that because a black man was elected to the highest office in the country, race is no longer an issue preventing people of color from becoming successful. However, many political, social, economic, and cultural factors counter this belief, including facets of the current American media landscape.

2. The term “diversity” is often used throughout this paper, sometimes within quotation marks and sometimes not. I use the word “diversity” in its typical definition in regards to race, meaning a mix of multiple races. When I use the word “diversity” in quotations, however, that signals the idea of diversity conjured by the media, essentially meaning non-white. “Diversity” in quotation marks also implies a negative connotation, because I find the media’s definition of diversity often misused as a way to make people, companies, or other entities seem progressive or inclusive, when in actuality, using the word “diversity” creates a façade that goes against those perceptions.

3. The use of the word “other” as a verb means to stray away from what is normal. When something has been “othered” by society, that concept or item or belief is presented as something abnormal or unusual, for better or for worse.

Works Cited

Ball, Don, and Josephine Reed. “Lin-Manuel Miranda: Immigrant Songs.” NEA Arts Magazine , no. 1, 2016, www.arts.gov/NEARTS/2016v1-telling-all-our-stories-arts-and-diversity/lin-manuel-miranda.

“The Demographics of the Broadway Audience: 2015–2016 Season.” Broadway League, Nov. 2016, www.broadwayleague.com/research/research-reports/.

DuRoss, Michelle. “Somewhere in Between: Alexander Hamilton and Slavery.” Early America Review, vol. 15, no. 1, 2011, www.varsitytutors.com/earlyamerica/early-america-review/volume-15/hamilton-and-slavery.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1. Translated by Robert Hurley, Pantheon Books, 1978.

“Hamilton’s America.” Great Performances , featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda, PBS, 21 Oct. 2016, www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/hamiltonfullfilm/5801/.

Hamilton, Allan McLane. The Intimate Life of Alexander Hamilton. Scribner’s Sons, 1910.

Hamilton. Playbill , 2015, www.playbill.com/show/detail/whos_who/14104/61366/Hamilton.

Healey, Patrick, and Christopher Mele. “‘Hamilton’ Had Some Unscripted Lines for Pence. Trump Wasn’t Happy.” New York Times, 19 Nov. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/us/mike-pence-hamilton.html?_r=0.

Herrera, Patricia. “ Hamilton , Democracy, and Theatre in America.” HowlRound, 13 May 2016, www.howlround.com/hamilton-democracy-and-theatre-in-america.

Hoffman, Warren. The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical , Rutgers University Press, 2014.

Hunt, Erica. “The Anti-Heroic in a Post Racial (Art) World.” Black Renaissance , vol. 9, no. 2, 2010, pp. 170–173.

Lechner, Frank, J. “‘No Business Like Show Business’: The American Media Exception.” The American Exception , vol. 2, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 122–124.

Lee, Ashley, and David Rooney. “Broadway’s 2015–16 Season: Revived Classics and Bold New Works.” Hollywood Reporter, 2015 Dec. 8, www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/broadway-season-2015-2016-revived-845242/item/broadway-season-2015-16-shuffle-845300.

Mead, Rebecca. “All About the Hamiltons.” New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2015, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/hamiltons.

Miranda, Lin-Manuel. Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording), Atlantic Records, 2015.

Monteiro, Lyra. “Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton .” Review of Hamilton: An American Musical , directed by Thomas Kail, The Public Historian, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 88–98. Google Scholar, doi:10.1525/tph.2016.38.1.89.

Ndounou, Monica White. “Were this year’s Tony Awards only a superficial nod to diversity?” The Conversation, 2016 Jun. 13, www.theconversation.com/were-this-years-tony-awards-only-a-superficial-nod-to-diversity-60773.

Paulson, Michael. “‘Hamilton’ Heads to Broadway in a Hip-Hop Retelling.” New York Times, 12 Jul. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/theater/hamilton-heads-to-broadway-in-a-hip-hop-retelling.html.

Photograph of the Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. 2016. Getty Images, Town and Country Magazine, www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/news/a6439/hamilton-cast-gives-back/.

“Post-racial.” The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press. OxfordDictionaries.com, www.en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/post-racial .

Quiñónez, Ariana. “The cultural significance of ‘Hamilton’s’ diverse cast.” Hypable , 10 Oct. 2015, www.hypable.com/hamilton-diverse-cast/.

Seymour, Lee. “The Tony’s Are Just As White As The Oscars—Here Are The #TonysSoWhite Statistics.” Forbes, 4 Apr. 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/leeseymour/2016/04/04/the-tonys-are-just-as-white-as-the-oscars-here-are-the-tonyssowhite-statistics/#77032c1f50a4.

Viagas, Robert. “ Hamilton Producers Respond to Casting Criticism.” Playbill, 30 Mar. 2016, www.playbill.com/article/hamilton-producers-respond-to-casting-criticism.

Walsh, Shannon. Review of Hamilton: An American Musical , directed by Thomas Kail, Theatre Journal, vol. 68, no. 3, 2016, pp. 457–459. Project MUSE , doi:10.1353/tj.2016.0081.

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Honors Theses

Alexander hamilton: slavery, politics, and class status.

Sara Weyenberg , Western Michigan University Follow

Date of Defense

Date of graduation, first advisor.

David Benac

Second Advisor

Sally Hadden

Though slavery is often connected with the Civil War, it was also a topic of great interest during the Revolutionary period. Many people had strong opinions on the morality of slavery, and they were not afraid to voice them. There are countless writings that, if nothing else, at least touch on the subject briefly. As one might imagine, there were people on both sides of the fence – those who took offense and those who did not. A new country was about to be born, and slavery provided just one of the tensions that was in existence at the time. When so many other issues were at hand, slavery was often placed on the back burner and ignored by many people.

At this same time in history, a young Alexander Hamilton was just cutting his teeth in the political world. Hamilton is perhaps best known for having had his face on the ten dollar bill, as the first Secretary of the Treasury, and his close proximity to George Washington. Hamilton represented the well-known ‘rags to riches’ life story, providing himself with a successful career in the military, politics, and law. Having met an early end in a duel with Aaron Burr, Hamilton’s life was in no way lacking accomplishments.

A lesser discussed area of Hamilton’s life was his personal stance on slavery in the American colonies. His upbringing on the Caribbean islands of Nevis and St. Kitts deeply influenced his reasoning about slavery. His childhood put him into close quarters with the truths of slavery and the slave trade which followed him into his adult life and helped him to develop his opinions against slavery. His opinions were both shared and countered by other citizens during the Revolutionary period and there were countless discussions and writings regarding the topic. In any event, historian John Smith observed that

Hamilton achieved his success by the profound influence which he exerted on the public mind. No statesman in our history has ever swayed so many of the leading men among his contemporaries as Hamilton, and at the same time he appealed by his pen to the largest popular audience of any man of his time. [1]

This means that Hamilton had to be very conscious of what he said because of the influence he had among his contemporaries. It is most likely that he was also aware that he held such an influence, meaning that he could have used it to his advantage, both in terms of slavery and in general. How Hamilton manipulated his influence could determine entire policies, as his reach was so great at the time. But did he do this to push his agenda with slavery? Were his views commonplace during the Revolutionary era? How many others shared his opinion? To what extent did his childhood influence his position on slavery? Was his class status more important to him than his morals were?

The accepted view of Hamilton’s opinion of slavery is that he was an abolitionist and in opposition to slavery. This viewpoint helps to further elevate his somewhat saintly position as one of America’s founding fathers. After all, the founding fathers are exalted for their sense of justice and beliefs in freedom for all. Hamilton warned that “The page of history is replete with instances that loudly warn us to beware of slavery” [2] . The question begs to be answered of if Hamilton’s contemporaries were willing to heed this warning or if they would sweep it under the rug. Historian Michelle DuRoss argues, however, that not only was Hamilton not openly against slavery, but that it would have stifled his personal agenda. It is, of course, possible that portions of both of these opinions are true and that while Hamilton may have had personal qualms about slavery, he probably was not always openly declaring it in the public sector. An evaluation of DuRoss’s claims and a closer examination of Hamilton’s writings as well as behavior may resolve this mystery. Understanding Hamilton’s opinions about slavery would help to clarify the reputation and character of one of America’s beloved founding fathers. In order to understand Hamilton’s thoughts on slavery, however, one must also understand the views and actions of the common population in order to provide some context, and possibly reveal some of the influences upon Hamilton’s opinions. While his opinions are the focus, a lot of insight can be shed by looking at the overwhelming view of the populace.

In the years leading up to and including the American Revolution, words such as ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ were commonly spoken and written. The colonists were seeking freedom from taxation and from what they believed to be the oppression of the mother country, England. How could a group of people so sensitive to the concept of liberty be able and willing to hold about twenty percent of their population in slavery? The answer is not so different than in the years leading up to the Civil War. Most of the southern colonies, especially the Deep South like South Carolina and Georgia, relied heavily upon slavery for the economy to remain stable and profitable. Slavery provided cheap and efficient work on the many plantations that were spread across the land. It is to be noted that “it was … the political problem with the deepest social and economic roots in the new nation, so that removing it threatened to disrupt the fragile union just as it was congealing.” [3] Many in the North were opposed to slavery and wanted to see it abolished, but there was far more concern for solidifying the ties between colonies than there was ending slavery. The abolition of slavery threatened to turn all hopes of a new country on its head by upsetting the balance that existed between the North and the South and producing new tensions that were not really necessary at the time, in a practical sense.

This is not to say that nobody was speaking about slavery in personal correspondence and in casual encounters. Though many found it to be a touchy subject politically and professionally, they were often willing to openly discuss their views with the people they were closest to. For instance, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, “I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in this province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me — to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.” [4] What Adams wrote mirrored the feelings of many people during the years leading up to and during the American Revolution, especially in the northern colonies.

Both Adams and Hamilton were politically active individuals, both often associated with the anti-slavery movement. It is generally accepted that Alexander Hamilton was in opposition to slavery and led the life of an abolitionist. While his actions may not have always reflected this, his writings often did. In writing to John Jay, Hamilton recognized that “The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience.” [5] Hamilton openly acknowledged, as many did, that the beliefs that society had about African-Americans were not based on anything that had actually happened and were, in fact, not even validated by any sort of logical process. Many scholars agree that this was the common view which Hamilton held. However, Michelle DuRoss [6] argues just the opposite of many scholars, and with compelling evidence. Her arguments rely on the workings of social classes during the years around and including the American Revolution and how Hamilton may have manipulated his beliefs in order to establish himself in social circles. An evaluation of her views, along with independent research on the subject, will permit a more careful evaluation of Hamilton’s views on the topic of slavery.

[1] Henry Cabot Lodge, “Preface” in The Works of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Henry Cabot Lodge Federal Edition, 12 volumes. (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), Vol. 1.

[2] Alexander Hamilton, “A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress” In Ibid, Vol. 1.

[3] Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Vintage Books 2000).

[4] Abigail Adams, Abigail Adams to John Adams, September 24, 1774.

[5] Alexander Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton to John Jay, March 14, 1779.

[6] More on DuRoss’ studies will follow in later paragraphs where more attention can be paid to the details.

Recommended Citation

Weyenberg, Sara, "Alexander Hamilton: Slavery, Politics, and Class Status" (2014). Honors Theses . 2471. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/honors_theses/2471

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Hamilton in Context

Learn about the people, places, and cultural references in the award-winning musical.

“So Much Work to Do”: The Legacy of South Pacific in Hamilton

Cultural Reference: “You’ve got to be carefully taught” (Act 1: 27)

Jeff Storms (Spring 2018)

Part I ~ Introduction

On May 27, 2016, Lin Manuel Miranda wrote (in faux-exasperation) to a fan with a question about a subtle reference in Hamilton : “WHEN ARE Y’ALL GONNA REALIZE I’M PLAYIN CHESS, NOT CHECKERS” (Miranda 2016). “Chess, not checkers” is Miranda’s way of saying that his references throughout the show are made intentionally; they work both to draw meaning from what is referenced and to transform this imported meaning to fit the work. Miranda’s reference to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific in “My Shot” works in precisely this way.  Aaron Burr’s invocation of “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” to “Laurens and the boys” is meant to draw audience ideas of historical and contemporary American racial tensions to the fore, to weave together the narratives of the early American struggle against British tyranny and current minority American struggles to flourish. In bringing this lens of racial struggle into the play’s wider narrative and performance, Miranda posits social engagement and activism as the just response to those who restrict the freedoms of others.

Part II ~ Historical Background

Miranda and his creative team wrote Hamilton at a critical time in American racial history, informed by the presence of a contemporary, highly public flare in racial tensions. It’s no coincidence, then, that Hamilton and South Pacific dovetail in the narrative moment that Miranda draws it into his play; Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote South Pacific in a moment of American racial history that is in many ways similar to the moment that birthed Hamilton. South Pacific was released in 1958, about a decade after World War II, meaning that this show emerged from a time of rapid social change in the United States. Philip Beidler writes that “World War II had turned Americans into globetrotters scrawling ‘Kilroy Was Here’ on everything from cathedral walls to coconuts” (219); the war had exposed a significant portion of a generation of American men and women to the world across the oceans, both in the Pacific and European theaters. The fight for “freedom and opportunity for all nations” (Lovensheimer, quoting Wilkie 227) across the globe brought inequities of the US society into painful clarity, particularly those that ran along racial lines.

In the aftermath of the war, during what would prove to be a fatal series of assaults against the Jim Crow power structure, issues of race relations took the national stage. The 1896 U. S. Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson , which “upheld segregation and endorsed the concept of ‘separate but equal’ for blacks and whites” (Most 317), wasn’t overturned until the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board , which came in 1954, officially ruling the unconstitutionality of segregation. The Montgomery Bus Boycott followed a year later, with photos of police dogs attacking Alabaman demonstrators a year after that. In 1957 came the integration of Little Rock High School (Beidler 218), which (not unintentionally) became the hometown of Nellie Forbush, the lead female character of South Pacific .

Because South Pacific was born in the aftermath of the war, with increasingly urgent cries for racial justice in its ears, Rodgers and Hammerstein wasted no time in meeting the crises of the day through their work. They wrote into South Pacific ’s narrative two dilemmas of racial prejudice: that of Nellie Forbush, who struggles with what she believes to be inborn feelings of racial prejudice, and that of Joe Cable, who realizes partway through the show that he harbors inborn racial prejudices without even realizing their existence. When confronted with the reality of his negative racial beliefs, he sings “as if figuring this whole question out for the first time” (Hammerstein and Logan 140) shooting for the heart of the issue of whether racial prejudice is inborn or not, and whether it can be overcome.  The song he sings, “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” (Hammerstein and Logan 140), “pulls together the two plots of Nellie and…Cable and…is a sharp and perfect expression of the show’s philosophy” (Maslon 162). The song captures the ideas at the heart of the show; Cable “implies that if prejudice is learned, it can also be unlearned” (Most 312). This seems to convey a message that even though American racism is prolific, it does not have to hold ultimate sway over the hearts and minds of the people, and can combated by intentional decision not to buy into racist ideals.

This message certainly didn’t go unheard by South Pacific ’s critics. In the postwar world, “expressions of any…sentiment that challenged the status quo, racial or otherwise, had to be spoken in carefully chosen words” (Lovensheimer 228), lest they fall under accusation of being Communist propaganda, aimed at disrupting American society (Maslon 163). South Pacific as a whole was treated as such by some, most famously by two Georgia legislators who venomously denounced the play as having “an underlying philosophy of Moscow” (Maslon 163), referring specifically to “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught,” which they interpreted to be aimed at normalizing and justifying interracial marriage. Consequently, they attempted to introduce “legislature that would regulate theatrical presentations in Georgia” (Maslon 163).  The song was met by “heavy pressure…to eliminate the controversial number,” for fear of a drop in ticket sales once word of the musical’s content got out (Maslon 162). Upon receiving news of this, Hammerstein wrote to the press in response: “I meant every word in that song” (Maslon 163, emphasis mine).

Part III ~ The Scene Where It Happens

The story of this song and its words, however, didn’t end when South Pacific faded from the national spotlight. It didn’t even end with South Pacific . “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” appears in “My Shot,” in an intentional “shout out” (Miranda and McCarter 27) to South Pacific . In this song, Alexander Hamilton lays out vision of ascending from outsider/foreigner status to power in a new nation, “A place where orphan immigrants can leave their fingerprints” (Miranda and McCarter 273).  His friends chime in, each articulating their own visions of a country where they’re no longer crushed under the yoke of tyranny, though John Laurens points out that “we’ll never be truly free/until those in bondage have the same rights as you and me” (Miranda and McCarter 27). Burr responds “with some cold reality,” saying: “I’m with you, but the situation is fraught./ You’ve got to be carefully taught :/If you talk, you’re gonna get shot” (Miranda and McCarter 27, emphasis mine).

This reference to South Pacific works to do a few things simultaneously. It imports the message of the Rodgers and Hammerstein number, with its theme of struggling against deep-seated racial prejudice that can be unlearned, into this moment of Hamilton . At the same time, this phrase loaded with these initial meanings is linked to the struggle against British tyranny, bridging protagonists’ navigating the fight against Britain with the implicit fraught-ness of the struggle of navigating the realities of American racial prejudice. Burr’s pronouncement that “if you talk”—in other words, if you speak/act against the established social order—then “you’re gonna get shot” (Miranda 27) brings to audience awareness the gravity of the situation in which the characters find themselves in this moment. The possibility of failure to achieve social change is quite real, in the sense of both the moment in the narrative and in the racial sense. Revolutionary failure would result in death for those involved. But alongside the possibility of failure is the possibility of success, a nation where all are “truly free” and “those in bondage have the same rights as you and me.” In this case “me” is a white John Laurens hoping to secure the freedom the black men, women, and children he saw held captive as slaves, whose person is being represented by a man of Puerto Rican descent, highlighting the double-consciousness (of racial issues as well as the narrative action) with which we are to understand this moment.

Part IV ~ Thematic Connections

The revolutionaries of Hamilton respond to the injustices they encounter, both racial and political, by engaging in a spirit of activism rather than passively allow injustice to be perpetrated. This engagement happens, at one level, in the world of the mind and emotions. Hamilton works to demolish the intellectual foundations of the Royalist cause (see “Farmer Refuted”) through advocacy for the rights of American citizens. Similarly, Laurens and Hamilton “write essays against slavery” (Miranda & McCarter 97), leveraging their newfound influence and their intellectual abilities to advocate for the rights of slaves over and against the rights of slaveholders to own them.

The characters of Hamilton also actively engage the world around them by working not just to change hearts and minds, but to alter the circumstances around them to favor those on the receiving end of injustice. Hamilton leverages his influence, due to his “proximity to power,”  in another instance: he uses this influence to gather the resources needed to effectively resist the British (see “Right Hand Man”). Laurens also uses his position of prominence, earned by rising through the ranks of the revolutionaries, to effect change in a way that blends the cause of fighting British injustice with combating racial injustice. Over the course of the war he travels to South Carolina to emancipate and recruit “3,000 black men for the first all-black military regiment” (Miranda and McCarter 131), a venture which costs him his life.

Hamilton ’s activist approach isn’t confined to the actions of its characters. Miranda and his team built activist social engagement into the play’s performance. This can be seen in the intentional casting of actors of color, perhaps one of the show’s most notable features. Shannon Walsh writes that Hamilton: An American Musical “reframes both the ‘American’ and the ‘musical’ of its title by giving voice and fully realized life to artists of color that have been historically excluded from, and representationally ridiculed on, American stages.” It puts bodies of color into a place of honor they were too often pushed out from, and what’s more, elevating them to the highest positions in American. Miranda and McCarter, writing about Chris Jackson’s role as George Washington, says that “Chris knows that plenty of people in America are uncomfortable with a black president. He also knows the symbolic power of Hamilton having three of them” (Miranda and McCarter 208).

The cast and creators’ activist approach to Hamilton can also be seen in the ways that those who are a part of the show engage with the culture around them. Benjamin Carp writes about the social context in which Hamilton was written:

In  February  2015, The New Yorker reported that Miranda and his creative team  had  been  paying  attention  to  two  deaths involving  police  in  2014:  Eric Garner  in  Staten  Island  on  July  14,  and Michael  Brown  in  Ferguson,  Missouri,  on  August  9. The fact that the cast members are people of color allows Miranda to connect the eighteenth-century Revolution to contemporary activism against police  brutality.  The show calls for an end to the “cycle of vengeance and death with no defendants,” possibly referring to the non-indictment of police officers in these two cases and others.

The circumstances that led to the emergence of #BlackLivesMatter (and similar movements) were clearly present in the minds of many involved in producing the show. On Saturday, July 9, 2016, Leslie Odom, Jr. took the Broadway stage as Aaron Burr for the last time. In the hours leading up to his performance, he wrote: “For me, today is for Alton, & his children, & the struggle. For Orlando, & Philando, & the slain officers in Dallas…#BlackLivesMatter” (White, quoting Odom, Jr. 2016). In November 2016, Brandon Victor Dixon (who played Aaron Burr that night), famously addressed vice-president elect Mike Pence, who was in attendance at a performance of Hamilton , calling him to remember that “we, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us… defend us and uphold our inalienable rights…we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us” (Mele and Healy 2016). With this sort of engagement, as well as other similar engagements by cast members of Hamilton, those involved in the production of this show demonstrate the same kind of activism as was written into their characters.

Part V ~ Concluding Thoughts

Both South Pacific and Hamilton function to draw audiences into reflection about both the nature of real-life issues, particularly issues of racial tensions in the US, as well as the just response to issues of social injustice. As part of a legacy of works dealing with these open wounds in American society, Hamilton looks back to and draws from South Pacific , with its spirit of initial confrontation of the problem of racial prejudice in America. More than that, though, Hamilton casts a vision of a more equitable America, one shaped by social activism and honest engagement with the culture around us, where further racial reconciliation is possible if we have eyes to see and the will to work toward it.

Beidler, Philip D. “South Pacific and American Remembering: Or, ‘Josh, We’re Going to Buy This Son of a Bitch!”. Journal of American Studies , vol. 27, 1993, p. 207.

Carp, Benjamin. “World Wide Enough: Historiography, Imagination, and Stagecraft”. Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 37, no. 2, 2017, pp. 289-294.

Healy, Patrick and Christopher Mele. “’Hamilton’ Had Some Unscripted Lines for Pence. Trump Wasn’t Happy.” Nytimes.com, 19 Nov. 2016. Accessed 19 April 2018.

@Lin_Manuel. “WHEN ARE Y’ALL GONNA REALIZE I’M PLAYIN CHESS, NOT CHECKERS.” Twitter , 27 May 2016, 9:57 AM. Accessed 4 April 2018.

Lovensheimer, James. “The Musico-Dramatic Evolution of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. ” 2003. Ohio State University, PhD dissertation.

Maslon, Laurence. The South Pacific Companion . Simon & Schuster, 2008.

McCarter, Jeremy and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Hamilton: The Revolution . Hachette Book Group, 2016.

Most, Andrea. “‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’: The Politics of Race in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific.” Theatre Journal , Volume 52, Number 3, Oct. 2000, pp. 307-337.

Rodgers, Richard, et al. South Pacific: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical . Applause Theater and Cinema Books, 2014.

White, Jessica. “Leslie Odom Jr. Dedicates Last Performance to #BlackLivesMatter.”    Broadwayblack.com , 11 Jul. 2016. Accessed 5 April 2018.

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Guest Essay

The Deep, Tangled Roots of American Illiberalism

By Steven Hahn

Dr. Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at New York University and the author, most recently, of “Illiberal America: a History.”

In a recent interview with Time, Donald Trump promised a second term of authoritarian power grabs, administrative cronyism, mass deportations of the undocumented, harassment of women over abortion, trade wars and vengeance brought upon his rivals and enemies, including President Biden. “If they said that a president doesn’t get immunity,” Mr. Trump told Time, “then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.”

Further evidence, it seems, of Mr. Trump’s efforts to construct a political world like no other in American history. But how unprecedented is it, really? That Mr. Trump continues to lead in polls should make plain that he and his MAGA movement are more than noxious weeds in otherwise liberal democratic soil.

Many of us have not wanted to see it that way. “This is not who we are as a nation,” one journalist exclaimed in what was a common response to the violence on Jan. 6, “and we must not let ourselves or others believe otherwise.” Mr. Biden has said much the same thing.

While it’s true that Mr. Trump was the first president to lose an election and attempt to stay in power, observers have come to recognize the need for a lengthier view of Trumpism. Even so, they are prone to imagining that there was a time not all that long ago when political “normalcy” prevailed. What they have failed to grasp is that American illiberalism is deeply rooted in our past and fed by practices, relationships and sensibilities that have been close to the surface, even when they haven’t exploded into view.

Illiberalism is generally seen as a backlash against modern liberal and progressive ideas and policies, especially those meant to protect the rights and advance the aspirations of groups long pushed to the margins of American political life. But in the United States, illiberalism is better understood as coherent sets of ideas that are related but also change over time.

This illiberalism celebrates hierarchies of gender, race and nationality; cultural homogeneity; Christian religious faith; the marking of internal as well as external enemies; patriarchal families; heterosexuality; the will of the community over the rule of law; and the use of political violence to achieve or maintain power. This illiberalism sank roots from the time of European settlement and spread out from villages and towns to the highest levels of government. In one form or another, it has shaped much of our history. Illiberalism has frequently been a stalking horse, if not in the winner’s circle. Hardly ever has it been roundly defeated.

A few examples may be illustrative. Although European colonization of North America has often been imagined as a sharp break from the ways of home countries, neo-feudal dreams inspired the making of Euro-American societies from the Carolinas up through the Hudson Valley, based as they were on landed estates and coerced labor, while the Puritan towns of New England, with their own hierarchies, demanded submission to the faith and harshly policed their members and potential intruders alike. The backcountry began to fill up with land-hungry settlers who generally formed ethnicity-based enclaves, eyed outsiders with suspicion and, with rare exceptions, hoped to rid their territory of Native peoples. Most of those who arrived in North America between the early 17th century and the time of the American Revolution were either enslaved or in servitude, and master-servant jurisprudence shaped labor relations well after slavery was abolished, a phenomenon that has been described as “belated feudalism.”

The anti-colonialism of the American Revolution was accompanied not only by warfare against Native peoples and rewards for enslavers, but also by a deeply ingrained anti-Catholicism, and hostility to Catholics remained a potent political force well into the 20th century. Monarchist solutions were bruited about during the writing of the Constitution and the first decade of the American Republic: John Adams thought that the country would move in such a direction and other leaders at the time, including Washington, Madison and Hamilton, wondered privately if a king would be necessary in the event a “republican remedy” failed.

The 1830s, commonly seen as the height of Jacksonian democracy, were racked by violent expulsions of Catholics , Mormons and abolitionists of both races, along with thousands of Native peoples dispossessed of their homelands and sent to “Indian Territory” west of the Mississippi.

The new democratic politics of the time was often marked by Election Day violence after campaigns suffused with military cadences, while elected officials usually required the support of elite patrons to guarantee the bonds they had to post. Even in state legislatures and Congress, weapons could be brandished and duels arranged; “bullies” enforced the wills of their allies.

When enslavers in the Southern states resorted to secession rather than risk their system under a Lincoln administration, they made clear that their Confederacy was built on the cornerstone of slavery and white supremacy. And although their crushing defeat brought abolition, the establishment of birthright citizenship (except for Native peoples), the political exclusion of Confederates, and the extension of voting rights to Black men — the results of one of the world’s great revolutions — it was not long before the revolution went into reverse.

The federal government soon allowed former Confederates and their white supporters to return to power, destroy Black political activism and, accompanied by lynchings (expressing the “will” of white communities), build the edifice of Jim Crow: segregation, political disfranchisement and a harsh labor regime. Already previewed in the pre-Civil War North, Jim Crow received the imprimatur of the Supreme Court and the administration of Woodrow Wilson .

Few Progressives of the early 20th century had much trouble with this. Segregation seemed a modern way to choreograph “race relations,” and disfranchisement resonated with their disenchantment with popular politics, whether it was powered by Black voters in the South or European immigrants in the North. Many Progressives were devotees of eugenics and other forms of social engineering, and they generally favored overseas imperialism; some began to envision the scaffolding of a corporate state — all anticipating the dark turns in Europe over the next decades.

The 1920s, in fact, saw fascist pulses coming from a number of directions in the United States and, as in Europe, targeting political radicals. Benito Mussolini won accolades in many American quarters. The lab where Josef Mengele worked received support from the Rockefeller Foundation. White Protestant fundamentalism reigned in towns and the countryside. And the Immigration Act of 1924 set limits on the number of newcomers, especially those from Southern and Eastern Europe, who were thought to be politically and culturally unassimilable.

Most worrisome, the Ku Klux Klan, energized by anti-Catholicism and antisemitism as well as anti-Black racism, marched brazenly in cities great and small. The Klan became a mass movement and wielded significant political power; it was crucial, for example , to the enforcement of Prohibition. Once the organization unraveled in the late 1920s, many Klansmen and women found their way to new fascist groups and the radical right more generally.

Sidelined by the Great Depression and New Deal, the illiberal right regained traction in the late 1930s, and during the 1950s won grass-roots support through vehement anti-Communism and opposition to the civil rights movement. As early as 1964, in a run for the Democratic presidential nomination, Gov. George Wallace of Alabama began to hone a rhetoric of white grievance and racial hostility that had appeal in the Midwest and Middle Atlantic, and Barry Goldwater’s campaign that year, despite its failure, put winds in the sails of the John Birch Society and Young Americans for Freedom.

Four years later, Wallace mobilized enough support as a third-party candidate to win five states. And in 1972, once again as a Democrat, Wallace racked up primary wins in both the North and the South before an assassination attempt forced him out of the race. Growing backlashes against school desegregation and feminism added further fuel to the fire on the right, paving the way for the conservative ascendancy of the 1980s.

By the early 1990s, the neo-Nazi and Klansman David Duke had won a seat in the Louisiana Legislature and nearly three-fifths of the white vote in campaigns for governor and senator. Pat Buchanan, seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 1992, called for “America First,” the fortification of the border (a “Buchanan fence”), and a culture war for the “soul” of America, while the National Rifle Association became a powerful force on the right and in the Republican Party.

When Mr. Trump questioned Barack Obama’s legitimacy to serve as president, a project that quickly became known as “birtherism,” he made use of a Reconstruction-era racist trope that rejected the legitimacy of Black political rights and power. In so doing, Mr. Trump began to cement a coalition of aggrieved white voters. They were ready to push back against the nation’s growing cultural diversity — embodied by Mr. Obama — and the challenges they saw to traditional hierarchies of family, gender and race. They had much on which to build.

Back in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, in “Democracy in America,” glimpsed the illiberal currents that already entangled the country’s politics. While he marveled at the “equality of conditions,” the fluidity of social life and the strength of republican institutions, he also worried about the “omnipotence of the majority.”

“What I find most repulsive in America is not the extreme freedom reigning there,” Tocqueville wrote, “but the shortage of guarantees against tyranny.” He pointed to communities “taking justice into their own hands,” and warned that “associations of plain citizens can compose very rich, influential, and powerful bodies, in other words, aristocratic bodies.” Lamenting their intellectual conformity, Tocqueville believed that if Americans ever gave up republican government, “they will pass rapidly on to despotism,” restricting “the sphere of political rights, taking some of them away in order to entrust them to a single man.”

The slide toward despotism that Tocqueville feared may be well underway, whatever the election’s outcome. Even if they try to fool themselves into thinking that Mr. Trump won’t follow through, millions of voters seem ready to entrust their rights to “a single man” who has announced his intent to use autocratic powers for retribution, repression, expulsion and misogyny.

Only by recognizing what we’re up against can we mount an effective campaign to protect our democracy, leaning on the important political struggles — abolitionism, antimonopoly, social democracy, human rights, civil rights, feminism — that have challenged illiberalism in the past and offer the vision and political pathways to guide us in the future.

Our biggest mistake would be to believe that we’re watching an exceptional departure in the country’s history. Because from the first, Mr. Trump has tapped into deep and ever-expanding illiberal roots. Illiberalism’s history is America’s history.

Steven Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at New York University and the author, most recently, of “ Illiberal America: a History .”

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