Alexander Hamilton.
Did you just start singing a song from the musical? Or is that just me, as most of my friends are theatre kids? Whether you did or didn’t, I’m sure you’re still extremely aware of the musical Hamilton because it’s such a cultural phenom. While the America 250 celebrations have started to mellow as the year winds down, the musical has been on my mind because it was inspirational for so many, capturing the fervor and excitement of starting a new country with all its potential. Though the glamorization of the United States' founding has earworm tunes, if I've learned anything from decades of movies “inspired by historical events,” it's that sometimes it’s literally just the names of people that are the same. So how exactly accurate IS Hamilton? Let’s dive in.
Conception
Lin-Manuel Miranda was inspired to write the musical while reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. (Score one for books, amirite?!) While Miranda ultimately took artistic license with some events, the musical is well researched and even pulls direct quotes from historical sources. The song, “One Last Time,” in which George Washington says he will not seek re-election, pulls lines directly from Washington’s Farewell Address:
The hope
That my country will
View them with indulgence;
And that
After forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal
The faults of incompetent abilities will be
Consigned to oblivion, as I myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.
Accurate vs. Inaccurate
Accurate vs. inaccurate is unfortunately not so cut and dried, I say, as the person researching and writing this blog. This could spiral into a conversation about how history is preserved, how it is interpreted, and who gets to tell their story and who doesn’t (which is even in the lyrics of the musical's finale!), but that’s not really my goal. I think those are important questions and should be kept in mind when discussing any media based on real moments and people. They are especially pertinent to the storyline of The Reynolds Pamphlet (I discuss this a little more below). That said, Miranda does appear to have done a vast amount of research when mounting this musical and stayed fairly true to the real events. It seems he really only embellished when something needed a little panache. For instance, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton really didn’t like each other; that part is true. However, Jefferson was noted for being quiet and reserved and not quite as boisterous as he is depicted in the musical. I imagine watching a musical about political rivals where one calmly considers before reacting isn’t so interesting, though. Other little details, like Hamilton punching the bursar and meeting Hercules Mulligan before the war, aren't found in any historical record, but could have happened. Mulligan went to the same university as Hamilton, and Hamilton could have punched a bursar somewhere, maybe, I guess? It sounded good in the song!
The Reynolds Pamphlet
Probably the most significant artistic license Miranda takes regards the Reynolds Pamphlet. If you haven’t seen the musical or don’t know the history, the Reynolds Pamphlet came about after an illicit affair Hamilton had with a woman named Maria Reynolds. Her husband found out and blackmailed Hamilton, who paid him $1300 (a little over $45k today). What came next happened over a series of years, with James Reynolds being arrested and using his knowledge of Hamilton’s sex life (who, at the time of the affair, was the Secretary of the Treasury) to leverage his way out of trouble. This led James Monroe, Abraham Venable, and Frederick Muhlenberg to confront Hamilton about possible corruption. To clear his name, Hamilton turned over the letters he had exchanged with Maria, revealing the affair to them. They were convinced of Hamilton’s innocence of fiscal corruption.
It would have ended there, except Monroe told Thomas Jefferson all about it, and as you may recall, Jefferson and Hamilton did not get along. Jefferson used the information to start rumors about Hamilton, so to clear his name of political wrongdoing, Hamilton wrote a 95-page pamphlet, “Observations on Certain Documents,” or as it was called later, the “Reynolds Pamphlet,” in which Hamilton cleared his name of fiscal corruption, but fully, publicly, admitted to having an affair.
Artistic License
So why did I call that artistic license? Even though those events happened in real life and are portrayed in the musical, there are some sizable changes. In the musical, it is not Monroe, Venable, and Muhlenberg who confront Hamilton. It is instead Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. This is presumably because Burr, Jefferson, and Madison are characters we’re already introduced to and know, musical-wise, whereas Monroe, Venable, and Muhlenberg do not appear in the musical at all.
Narratively speaking, this makes a lot of sense. Oversaturating the stage with more and more people can leave the audience a little lost and re-working who said or did what streamline the story. Quite frankly, it makes the story more interesting by highlighting the compelling drama of an actual while getting the details a little wrong.
Miranda is not the first person to twist the minutiae for the stage. William Shakespeare wrote ten plays based on historical events and every single one of them has some thing changed somewhere. In the Richard II, the character of the Queen is unnamed because she is a mashup of both of Richard’s wives. Richard’s first wife, Anne of Bohemia, died from the plague. At the time of Richard’s deposition, which is what the play is about, his second wife, Isabella of Valois. was a six-year-old girl. I imagine Shakespeare sagely recognized that showing a loving adult wife instead of a six-year-old child made for a better theatrical experience, but it was also easier to have one Queen instead of the rigmarole of having two different queens just to be historically accurate.
Eliza Hamilton
But let’s not forget about Eliza Hamilton (unlike her husband did when he decided to clear his name!). She and Hamilton wrote letters to each other, but the majority of those letters were never found or catalogued. In the musical, it’s posited by Miranda that Eliza burned them herself and did so because of the embarrassment and hurt she suffered from the affair. She sings, “Let future historians wonder how Eliza reacted when you broke her heart,” but the truth is, we don’t know how Eliza reacted to the affair really and we don’t know if the letters were burned. She sings that she’s taking back control of the narrative, and burning the letters after a public heartbreak is a likely scenario, but the truth is that we will never know what happened to those letters or what truly transpired between Eliza and Alexander Hamilton after the pamphlet. Maybe they’re buried in a shoebox under someone’s house and two years from now someone will find them!
My verdict is Hamilton is a good musical and a good launching pad for learning about the founding fathers, but you shouldn’t stop there. Learn actual facts about Alexander Hamilton and the founding or our country with these options below!
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