I never imagined I’d live to see a rap battle about the National Bank, but that’s 2020 for you. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is fun, exciting, and, true to the man himself: ambitious, not just in its rhymes, but in its agenda:
- Lifting up the story of an immigrant Founder;
- Trying to change the founding from “white history” to shared American history; and
- Renewing interest in the general public about what seems to be long-dead history.
Far the largest applause line was “Immigrants—we get the job done” from the song “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down).” It’s not hard to see why. The play premiered in 2015, a particularly fraught time for immigrants in this country. Throughout the last several years, Hamilton has rapped on as DACA has been debated, the Muslim travel ban has been formulated, and our nation has wrestled with questions of “merit-based” immigration. During one particularly memorable and tense performance, then-Vice President-elect Mike Pence attended and received a stern admonition from his forebear, the nation’s third Vice President Aaron Burr—or rather the man who played him, Brandon Victor Dixon.
On this score, Alexander Hamilton seems an inspiring witness. He was born on the island of Nevis, educated himself, and was brought to this country as a teenager almost entirely on the back of his literary skill in describing a hurricane—as rapped in the first few minutes of the play. As with many immigrants, he had to fight for everything that he got. This is truly an “Only in America” story. “Immigrants—we get the job done.”
I wish I could say that this was the end of the story. And as far as the play is concerned on that count, it is. This is largely because it bypasses the John Adams administration,[1] which remains the only unabashedly Federalist administration in the history of the country. Hamilton, as the nation’s most unabashed Federalist, is deeply involved (implicated?) in this administration, often attempting to play Adams’s puppet-master, until he cuts the strings entirely and dooms the whole Federalist Party in the election of 1800–not to mention setting the stage for his lethal duel with Aaron Burr. It didn’t pan out as planned.
But the worst thing Hamilton does is during the French Revolution. War is breaking out between anti-monarchist France and monarchist Great Britain. The Democratic-Republican Party, led by Thomas Jefferson is largely sympathetic to France. Hamilton correctly understands that to declare war on world-power Britain would be a Marty Mornhinweg-esque level of self-defeat, but the American people are largely on the side of France, and thus Jefferson. What do Hamilton and the Federalists do? They pass some of the most infamous pieces of legislation in American history:
The Alien and Sedition Acts. The Sedition Act criminalizes dissent against the Adams administration, a blatant violation of the First Amendment. But more to the point for viewers of Hamilton, “the Alien Enemies Act permitted the government to arrest and deport all male citizens of an enemy nation in the event of war, while the Alien Friends Act allowed the president to deport any non-citizen suspected of plotting against the government, even in peacetime.”[2] The Alien Acts especially were passed at the urging of one Alexander Hamilton who accused the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans of “being more Frenchmen than Americans.” Immigrants—they get the job done, unless Hamilton and the Federalists deport them first.
The second goal of changing “white history” to shared American history I struggle to comment on. For a white American such as myself, the history of people such as Alexander Hamilton has never seemed foreign to my experience, other than what a manifestly superior writer he was. Reading Hamilton’s Federalist Papers in college for me was a pure joy, even when I disagreed with the point he was trying to make. As the play describes it, Hamilton writes “like he’s running out of time,” churning out essays like our politicians today churn out tweets, and unlike the boring-ness you might expect from ancient history, it comes alive with sharp turns of phrase, and every page has what amounts to a highly elevated 18th century schoolyard taunt of one of his opponents.
Does Miranda’s mostly Black casting of Hamilton bring Hamilton alive to people who have historically been left out of America’s founding narrative? That’s not for me to decide. I will say that Hamilton and antislavery is more complicated than the play argues. One must not mistake his antislavery views for abolitionism. Hamilton was a fierce political fighter and went to the mat on many occasions: for the American Revolution, the passage of the Constitution, the assumption of the state debts, the National Bank, and even undermining a president from his own party(!). Whatever his personal views on slavery, to his shame, he never fought hard on this issue, instead forging alliances with people who were directly complicit or looked the other way.
Finally, I can’t overstate the third point: People are talking about Alexander Hamilton in 2020. Whether it’s people who love the play, or even people who raise profound critiques of Miranda’s narrative, we are having a national conversation about one of our Founders. In an era in which history is often ignored or made into a duel (see what I did there?) between Good Guys versus Bad Guys, wrestling with a deeply complicated character such as Alexander Hamilton is a good thing for our own historical and moral self-understanding.
I’ve seen some say that Hamilton feels like an especially bad fit for this tense moment in our national history. I couldn’t disagree more. Hamilton, not just in spite of Miranda’s controversial choices in terms of narrative and casting, but precisely because of them is asking us to wrestle with questions: “What are this nation’s founding values?” “Who does our history belong to?” “Who are we?” Watch the play, read Hamilton’s writings, come to your own conclusions, and, in the Hamiltonian spirit, share and defend them.
James E. Smith is a pastor serving at Trinity Episcopal and St. John’s Lutheran Churches. For comments, questions, or rebuttals, fire off an e-mail at [email protected]. Prosit!
[1] Although it frankly was hilarious and not inaccurate when the play summed it up by Hamilton detonating a huge package of papers and walking away.
[2] https://www.history.com/topics/early-us/alien-and-sedition-acts
Any views or opinions expressed in “Gutenberg” are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Watershed Voice staff or its board of directors.
