I’ve been working my way through Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton (very, very slowly). It’s terribly dry and if you aren’t used to reading historical biographies, I definitely don’t recommend it. But there are a lot of things in the biography that I assumed Lin-Manuel Miranda was exaggerating when he wrote “Hamilton.” Uh……… He wasn’t.
“He talks for six hours
The convention is listless”
Not an exaggeration. Hamilton literally went to the constitutional convention and made a SIX HOUR SPEECH regarding the importance of a true democracy versus a representative republic, why the government should be centralized, and how best to turn the Union into a world power on par with England’s status. Six. Fucking. Hours. Guys were falling asleep and Hamilton just kept fucking talking. He did not give a single fuck; people were going to listen to him.
“Laughing at my sister ‘cause she wants to start a harem”
“I’m just saying, if you really loved me, you would share him”
NOT AN EXAGGERATION. Angelica Schuyler had the hots for Hamilton from day one and made absolutely no secret of that fact. Eliza knew it and teased Angelica mercilessly (but in good humor), and Peggy’s sarcasm was so well-known that she and Hamilton would regularly have verbal sparring matches.
“Martha Washington named her feral tomcat after him”
“That’s true”
Not only is it true, but Hamilton banged almost every woman of society on the eastern seaboard. Women talked about his looks in their knitting circles and probably compared sexy stories. Like, the guy was so charming and attractive, women flocked to him.
“…they join forces to write a series of articles defending the new United States constitution entitle ‘The Federalist Papers.’ The plan was to write a total of 25 essays, the work divided evenly among the three men. In the end, they wrote 85 essays over the span of six months. John Jay got sick after writing five. James Madison wrote 29. Hamilton wrote the other 51!”
Not shitting you. He wrote tens of thousands of pages over his lifetime. TENS OF THOUSANDS. The man really was nonstop.
“Angelica, tell this man John Adams spends the summer with his family”
“Angelica, tell my wife John Adams doesn’t have a real job anyway”
Despite the fact that they had essentially the same beliefs on how best to organize the government, Hamilton despised Adams and thought he was lazy and unwilling to get any real work done. He also saw Adams as short-sighted, cowardly, and gluttonous, and was very vocal about his thoughts that Adams had no clue what he was doing.
“Adams fires Hamilton, privately calls him ‘creole bastard’ in his taunts. Hamilton publishes his response”
“Sit down, John, you FAT MOTHERFUCKER”
Adams didn’t think Hamilton had any place in the US government because Hamilton wasn’t from the mainland. And Adams’ hatred for Hamilton’s birth status was no secret. Oh, and Hamilton DID publish his response:
“But this did not hinder me from making careful observations upon his several communications, and endeavoring to derive from them an accurate idea of his talents and character. This scrutiny enhanced my esteem in the main for his moral qualifications, but lessened my respect for his intellectual endowments. I then adopted an opinion, which all my subsequent experience has confirmed, that he is a man of an imagination sublimated and eccentric; propitious neither to the regular display of sound judgment, nor to steady perseverance in a systematic plan of conduct; and I began to perceive what has been since too manifest, that to this defect are added the unfortunate foibles of a vanity without bounds, and a jealousy capable of discoloring every object.”
TL;DR: Hamilton publicly called Adams a stupid, jealous, self-centered douchebag who had no business attempting to run the country.
So yeah. There are parts of the musical that embellish - of course there are. But for the most part? Hamilton really, truly never stopped working and writing and thinking until the day he died.
