Margie Clayman

I still remember the first time a friend alerted me to the existence of Hamilton the musical. “You should check out this soundtrack. It’s right up your alley.” “What, is it a podcast?” I asked. Friends are always recommending podcasts to me. This is how my friendship with Alexander Hamilton started.

When this pandemic hit Ohio starting in March, I had realized that I was grossly undedicated as a history scholar for not having seen Hamilton. Not only is it a musical based on history (HELLO!), but it was history-making, too. George Washington played by a Black man? Hamilton played by a man from Puerto Rico? What? I was hoping that there might be a version released on YouTube, much like Benedict Cumberbatch’s Frankenstein and the special showing of Phantom. I did find a bootlegged version and I watched the whole thing. Even with no clear facial features, I fell in love. Hard. But, alas, no way to watch.

Then the announcement came out that Disney+ would be releasing “Hamilfilm.” My chance had come at last. Now…how to prepare? It being a quarantine-style pandemic, I did what any naturally crazy person would do. I decided to read the book that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to create the musical, Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton.

Confessions

OK, so, I didn’t READ the book, per se. I listened to the book via one of my other great loves, Audible. All 35 hours of it. There are a LOT of details in this book, my friends. If you want to know every single product that Hamilton may have seen in his clerk days in the West Indies, this IS the book for you. Still, I think I absorbed it as well as if I had done the reading myself.

My other confession is that I pretty much bawled through the last two chapters. Spoiler: the hero of the story dies.

Conclusions and Musings

Somehow, I had never learned about all of the amazing things Alexander Hamilton did. My only real knowledge of him was from the HBO John Adams series, where he is portrayed as rather sniveling compared to Adams and the broody Jefferson. The series presents Hamilton as a man who pretty much only cares about pretty uniforms and writing mean things about Adams in various newspapers. Now, Hamilton did like himself a pretty uniform, but that’s not the point. From defending the Constitution to creating the first National Bank, Alexander Hamilton may actually have done more to make this country what it is today then Washington. I know, it seems like heresy, but Chernow makes a good case for it.

So why don’t we learn more about Hamilton? Why is it always Washington/Franklin/Madison/Jefferson/Adams? Well, here is another good case Chernow makes. Hamilton even during his own times was often dismissed because he was born in the West Indies. Even though he came to the US as a young man. Even though from almost the time he touched feet to earth he fought for American independence. Even though he did all of the things I mentioned above. Even though all of that, he still was not “one of us.” Add to that his illegitimate birth and you have a bifurcated rationale for dismissal that he was never able to overcome. Even after everything he did, when he was close to 50 years old, he had to deal with people coming up to him and saying, “Oh…President Adams is always calling you the bastard.”

Talk about a lack of support. I think it may have been this underdog sensibility that most inspired Miranda. “Thanks for everything you’ve done for us but um, if it’s cool we’re going to kind of write you out of history because you’re a foreign bastard. Bye!”

Now here is where I disagree with Chernow. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Chernow repeatedly disavows the idea that Hamilton went to his duel with Burr as a suicidal mission. Even though we have Hamilton’s written word that he was going to throw away his shot, Chernow insists that Hamilton was too ebullient in his last days to contemplate suicide. I am not convinced, and it’s for the reason I mentioned above. Many people who should attain greatness but who are denied because of some meaningless facet of their lives cannot handle the injustice. Hamilton’s life was a steady (and I mean steady) trial of defending his honor, either on account of his lineage or on account of his foreign standing, or sometimes both. I think he got exhausted. At 49 I think it was becoming clear to him that he was never going to be given the nod that was given to his rivals. His finances were a mess, ironically.

I hypothesize that Hamilton thought, “Look, very few people like me, but if Burr kills me, even fewer people will like him, and his political days will be over. I can take him down with me. My family will get sympathy from far and wide, which will give them economical support too. And I will finally get some peace.”

I rewatched the HBO Adams series as I was finishing up this book, and while Chernow is most certainly biased in favor of his subject, it is quite interesting to see how so much in the series sweeps over what REALLY happened with Hamilton. Now, of course, I understand that the series is historical fiction (no, really, I do). However…it seems to lend credibility to the idea that Hamilton is still an outsider. Posthumously, he continues to fight for his place in American history.

Excitement

So, now, I am a day away from being able to finally watch Hamilfilm, and I have a historical context to boot. If you are a fan of the musical and if you even kind of like history, I think you should at least check out Chernow’s work. It is long and at times laborious, but you also get to see a fully realized tale of Alexander Hamilton, complete with music in your head.

Let em know what you think of it if you read it, or if you have read it.

I’ve been pondering how exactly to review this book because, honestly, I am still pondering whether I enjoyed it or not. Part of the problem is that this book was written to be current, but it was published in 2007. That doesn’t seem like an eternity ago, per se, but a lot has changed in 13 years, obviously! Given the time that has passed, it’s hard to know if all of the experiences narrated in the book are really meaningful at this point, or if things have gotten better or worse.

But let’s back up a little. What is this book meant to convey? The story is really a trip for the author to see if he can get back his love for Lincoln, or to figure out why he lost it. He was a total Lincoln nut when he was a kid, and his family went to Springfield and Kentucky and all of the key Lincoln landmarks. But then around college the author encountered people who told him that Lincoln wasn’t really worth liking that much. Meanwhile, the southern view of Lincoln started to get more attention. “Hey, this guy okayed the destruction of our property and our way of life. What gives?”

So, Ferguson starts traveling to different Lincolnesque places and sites to see if he can unravel the man behind the legend, and along the way get his Lincoln nuttiness back.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

I have mentioned that this book was written close to two decades ago, but the first chapter, which is about a big fight that erupted over putting a Lincoln statue at the site of the Tredegar Iron Works, turned out to be quite timely indeed. As I read the history of how Monument Avenue was put together, some of those very statues were being pulled down by BLM protestors. The author attended a pro-Lincoln convention and an anti-Lincoln convention in Richmond and found that both groups had their talking points, but no one seemed entirely, authentically enthused.

A Sprinkle of Hypocrisy

Ferguson travels all over the place in this book. He goes to a business workshop in Pennsylvania to see how these two gurus use Lincoln’s 19th century sensibilities to help 21st century business pros. He goes to Santa Claus, Indiana, where there is a mixture of Lincolns and Santa Clauses. He goes to the Lincoln museum in Chicago that he used to love as a kid and he talks about how Disney has been doing a lot of behind the scenes work to help kids get interested in history.

Wherever the author goes though, he seems to have a deprecating thing to say about the Lincoln lovers he encounters. People who love Lincoln seem childish and worth deriding. That’s all well and good. Making money off of a 19th-century icon can garner differing opinions. But there’s one little problem with the constant mockery. The author has written and published a book all about Lincoln. To me at least, the constant poking at everyone he encounters gets old fast. You’re making money off of those folks and what they do, soooo…maybe tone it down a little.

Lincoln’s Footsteps

The last two chapters were my favorites because the author takes his family on a Lincoln pilgrimage, following Lincoln backwards through his life story. They start in Springfield, head over to New Salem, go through the wilds of Indiana (now near Decatur), then they make their way into Kentucky, where they visit the temple housing the alleged Lincoln cabin along with Sinking Spring Farm.

Even here though, the book is darned depressing. Every single site gets criticized. The Lincoln home in Springfield is no longer interactive. There is a mat that marks the path you have to take. The neighborhood that once surrounded the home is gone, and to the author, Springfield seemed like another dying Midwest town. In Decatur the place that marks where the Lincolns lived is barely visible. Etc etc.

My mom and I had the great fortune of visiting Springfield a few years after this book was published. Now, you have to understand that Lincoln is a man I admire greatly despite his many imperfections, and you also have to understand that when I see amazing historical things, I cry. Ergo, I cried through most of my time in Springfield and my mom tried to distance herself from me as much as was seemly. It’s embarrassing traveling with a bawling 30-something, apparently. But I did not see all that much to complain about. Sure, the ranger didn’t know that Lincoln was born on February 12, but nobody is perfect.

It’s true that history is not being preserved here in the US. Mary Lincoln’s childhood home was a car garage for awhile before it was rescued. The Paul Revere home in Boston has a few slabs of original wall left. But you still know you’re standing where these people stood, and with a little imagination, you can transport yourself if you really want to. That’s a big if, I guess.

In short, there were some interesting and funny little snippets in this book, but overall, I think the mission got a little lost, so the reading experience was not entirely enjoyable.

If you’ve read it, let me know what you think!