Alexander Hamilton (Chernow)
Feb. 5th, 2016 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn(Uh, yeah, surprising no one, this is a bunch of words not solely about the Chernow bio, but a rather a lot of opinions on how Chernow's bio relates to the musical.)
4/5. I FINALLY finished the Chernow biography of Alexander Hamilton, not just so I could write this post on it, but I could easily have taken another month otherwise. It's a very good and readable book, but it's also a very chewy book — it's not dense, I didn't have to read things twice or wait until I was in a super cognitive mood, like I did for Hild, but it's definitely the kind of book where I could read a couple of pages and then either go on or put it down for a couple of days.
Anyway! It was awesome and I totally understand how Miranda put this book down and was like "…surely someone's written a musical about this guy, right? Right???? No?I'm not going to throw away my shot Then I'll do it."
Chernow is clearly a fan of Hamilton, but this doesn't extend to thinking Hamilton can do no wrong. Chernow doesn't make excuses or try to rugsweep when his subject does something incredibly stupid — indeed his frustration is almost palpable. But more of that later on.
It's really really interesting to read after being obsessed with the musical. You know how Alexander Hamilton, in the musical, is this sort of archetypal hero who starts from nothing, gets caught up in all these Events, attains the pinnacle of success, and then falls from it? The historical Alexander Hamilton is all these things turned up to eleven. I mean, Miranda didn't exaggerate. If anything he downplayed Hamilton. If he'd also added that the boat Hamilton took to America literally caught on fire (I laughed out loud at this) and that, far from being a little gawky and awkward as an adolescent as he is in the musical, he was in fact possessed of an extreme poise and confidence, we wouldn't even have believed it, right? He would have come across as a complete Mary Sue, right? …And yet.
(Also! Spoilers for history, I guess, but there is this fascinating subplot where his father might not actually have been James Hamilton, and then the guy who might have been his legitimate half-brother came to the US and saved his life during a yellow fever epidemic by basically being a smart cutting-edge doctor who knows germ theory. I MEAN REALLY.)
The other big feeling that I had about it is that it fills in a lot that the musical alludes to but doesn't go into any detail about. See, here's the thing about the musical. It's very clear Miranda was trying to stuff it full of all the amazing things he learned, and man, in the constraints of a couple of hours he does a lot, but he can't do everything. And a lot, particularly in the second half, is sacrificed for the sake of having a (relatively short) clean narrative line. (Interestingly, the Chernow bits on the Revolutionary War, which I find more interesting and cohesive in the musical, are less interesting to me in the book. Chernow on early US government and politics is really fascinating — I think because he can delve into all the complexities that the musical just can't.) Throwaway lines like Jefferson's "Imagine what gon' happen when you try to tax our whisky!" turn out to be references to the Whiskey Rebellion, which is, uh, what actually happened when they tried to tax distilled spirits (which "One Last Ride" used to refer to explicitly, but that got cut too), which is fascinating to read about in Chernow — it's a case where Hamilton knew it was going to be an issue and people were going to complain (and in fact in many ways was a regressive tax), but in his view import taxes could not be raised any higher and it was the least objectionable domestic tax possible that would still preserve Hamilton's first greatest love, the union of the United States. Wow, that sounds so boring when I write it down like that; Chernow makes it interesting :)
I mean, the entire musical is practically like this; it's like Miranda keeps interrupting himself to say, "Look, I can't tell you all this stuff! He founded the Coast Guard — he and Jefferson got in this huge print battle — oh, go read about it!"
The musical is, I can see now, much less historically accurate than I had previously thought; but I still think it's (with one exception I'll talk about later) very true to the broader characters and principles Chernow outlines in the history. Angelica Schuyler Church was married before she met Hamilton (and had a bunch of brothers), so the whole "Satisfied" arc isn't really a thing; but the broader characterization that she and Eliza and Alexander had an emotional threesome going, and that Angelica herself was adept at working within the confines of her sex and societal position, is pretty much historical. It isn't really true that Hamilton "never had a group of friends before" Laurens et al, but that group held a special place for him.
(There are certain lines, mind, where Miranda is just being obnoxious! Like when Alexander says the line about Martha's feral tomcat being named after him is "true" when Chernow says it was almost certainly apocryphal (genius.com annotation says that Miranda says he just liked the idea of Alexander bragging about it even if it wasn't true), or when Burr says "My fellow soldiers'll tell you I'm a terrible shot," when Chernow quotes a fellow soldier as saying he was a good one.)
Some of the parts I kind of previously objected to in the musical I object to less now. For example, historical Maria Reynolds… it really is possible, even probable, that she was in cahoots with her husband and not a nice person. (It's also possible she wasn't. Very little to go on. While I wish she could have been fleshed out a little in the musical, I can't say I think Miranda was wrong not to do so.) Eliza Hamilton really did immerse herself in telling her husband's story. (That being said, I have reconciled myself to the last song all except the line "You could have done so much more," which — huh — I just realized that I always parse that as "you could have done more than I did," which I hate, but it could be parsed as "You could have done so much more in addition to what I did," which makes me feel a lot happier.)
I've seen some critiques of the musical, that it makes Hamilton too present-day-liberal, that it makes him out to be too much of the hero looking out for the little guys and the underdogs, when (e.g., in Cabinet Battle #1) it was really Jefferson who was looking out for the common folk. Which… there's truth in it… it's true that in the real-life counterpart to Cabinet Battle #1, Hamilton's plan to consolidate debt did screw over the poor farmers who had bought bonds but then resold them to fat cat bankers, and it was actually Jefferson, not Hamilton, who was concerned about this.
(Like so many other things, this is also stated explicitly if briefly in the musical. "Our poorest citizens, our farmers, live ration to ration / As Wall Street robs ‘em blind in search of chips to cash in!" Miranda plays fair. No, he doesn't give it emphasis, and Jefferson's painted as the antagonist by this point, but these words are there.)
But… the truth is, of course, much more complicated than either the musical or its critics paint it. Hamilton wasn't, perhaps, a guy whose first priority was to help the poor and downtrodden (in fact, he had a first priority and that wasn't it), but he was not just an elitist who was just looking out for rich people either. He was the only Founding Father who was a fervent abolitionist, one of the charter members of the New York Manumission Society. He wrote eloquently in behalf of Laurens' black battalions (stating of blacks that "…their natural faculties are probably as good as ours," which was a radical sentiment for his time, especially when you contrast Jefferson's saying "in reason much inferior… in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous." Ugh — and Hamilton also mocked Jefferson for his racial views in a way that is, in fact, somewhat reminiscent of Cabinet Battle #1). He and Eliza (okay, let's be fair, mostly Eliza) brought up an orphan with their children. He championed a humane policy towards the Native Americans. And yet -- he was willing to throw all of that — his concern for others, his abolitionist principles — under the bus for federal unity, which was always, always his overriding concern.
(And also for so many years Hamilton was thought of as an arch-conservative. I mean, he was the founder of financial systems! The original tycoon of Wall Street! And for most of my life — I think the shift started happening when the whole Sally Hemings thing came out in the late 90's — I learned that Jefferson was the champion of liberty, the talented renaissance man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and "plays the violin" — well, there you go; just look at 1776, which literally romanticizes Jefferson (even if he does come across as kind of whiny) and doesn't even mention Hamilton. So it's hard for me to believe that Miranda, who is about my age (…when I look at that fact too closely, I identify with Burr so hard, oh man), isn't playing with those expectations.)
The book was also really interesting in showing Hamilton's self-destruction. The musical emphasizes the personal Reynolds-pamphlet destruction, giving it a multiple-song arc, whereas his political self-destruction as part of the Adams Administration is one very short song that is in fact setting up the Reynolds pamphlet arc. (In real life, these arcs are actually switched chronologically; the Reynolds Pamphlet was published in 1797, before Hamilton and Adams had really thoroughly annihilated each other.) I think it used to be longer in workshop (my understanding is that there was at least one more John Adams song), but I can see how to make it more immediate and personal, Miranda chose to emphasize the Reynolds pamphlet. But wow, in Chernow the political destruction was astonishing, much more astonishing than his personal destruction, and particularly the way the same qualities that led his rise to the top (all of which are perfectly recognizable from the musical: his absolute almost fanatic commitment to ideals and to the unity of the nation, his energetic obsession with politics, his hotheadedness, his belief he was the smartest in the room, his almost aggressive integrity and obsession with his honor) contributed to his fallout with Adams, his fall from the top to being all but a political nonentity, and the decline of the Federalist Party. And of course, those are the same qualities Miranda highlights as well, both in musical!Hamilton's rise and the fall, so again he's portraying the truth even if he's doing so through different emphases.
But there is one part where I think the criticism that Miranda makes Hamilton too "nice" is actually deserved, although I assert that it is a personal niceness rather than a political niceness. This is the last arc, where the musical makes it sound like Hamilton, having found redemption with his family, was loath to get back into politics and stick it to Burr until "the people have asked to hear [his] voice." Nope. It was Hamilton who was frantic to work against Burr, both in the 1800 election and in a later election for NY governor (Miranda has conflated the two, thus leading to the odd lyrics where the vote is a tie but then Jefferson wins in a "landslide"; it was in fact the governor's election where Burr's opponent won in a landslide, and that led to the duel). Hamilton did not need any encouragement to work against Burr at all. If anything he was desperate to work against Burr.
Also: I had tears in my eyes for basically the entire last couple of chapters. AGH.
Anyway! Highly recommended, whether or not you like or have any interest in the musical. If you are a huge fan of the musical-as-history, I would go so far as to say that this is a must-read so that you don't go around telling people that Alexander Hamilton punched the Princeton bursar (he didn't) — although the good folks at genius.com have annotated the lyrics so that you can get a pretty good idea for what's history and what's not.
4/5. I FINALLY finished the Chernow biography of Alexander Hamilton, not just so I could write this post on it, but I could easily have taken another month otherwise. It's a very good and readable book, but it's also a very chewy book — it's not dense, I didn't have to read things twice or wait until I was in a super cognitive mood, like I did for Hild, but it's definitely the kind of book where I could read a couple of pages and then either go on or put it down for a couple of days.
Anyway! It was awesome and I totally understand how Miranda put this book down and was like "…surely someone's written a musical about this guy, right? Right???? No?
Chernow is clearly a fan of Hamilton, but this doesn't extend to thinking Hamilton can do no wrong. Chernow doesn't make excuses or try to rugsweep when his subject does something incredibly stupid — indeed his frustration is almost palpable. But more of that later on.
It's really really interesting to read after being obsessed with the musical. You know how Alexander Hamilton, in the musical, is this sort of archetypal hero who starts from nothing, gets caught up in all these Events, attains the pinnacle of success, and then falls from it? The historical Alexander Hamilton is all these things turned up to eleven. I mean, Miranda didn't exaggerate. If anything he downplayed Hamilton. If he'd also added that the boat Hamilton took to America literally caught on fire (I laughed out loud at this) and that, far from being a little gawky and awkward as an adolescent as he is in the musical, he was in fact possessed of an extreme poise and confidence, we wouldn't even have believed it, right? He would have come across as a complete Mary Sue, right? …And yet.
(Also! Spoilers for history, I guess, but there is this fascinating subplot where his father might not actually have been James Hamilton, and then the guy who might have been his legitimate half-brother came to the US and saved his life during a yellow fever epidemic by basically being a smart cutting-edge doctor who knows germ theory. I MEAN REALLY.)
The other big feeling that I had about it is that it fills in a lot that the musical alludes to but doesn't go into any detail about. See, here's the thing about the musical. It's very clear Miranda was trying to stuff it full of all the amazing things he learned, and man, in the constraints of a couple of hours he does a lot, but he can't do everything. And a lot, particularly in the second half, is sacrificed for the sake of having a (relatively short) clean narrative line. (Interestingly, the Chernow bits on the Revolutionary War, which I find more interesting and cohesive in the musical, are less interesting to me in the book. Chernow on early US government and politics is really fascinating — I think because he can delve into all the complexities that the musical just can't.) Throwaway lines like Jefferson's "Imagine what gon' happen when you try to tax our whisky!" turn out to be references to the Whiskey Rebellion, which is, uh, what actually happened when they tried to tax distilled spirits (which "One Last Ride" used to refer to explicitly, but that got cut too), which is fascinating to read about in Chernow — it's a case where Hamilton knew it was going to be an issue and people were going to complain (and in fact in many ways was a regressive tax), but in his view import taxes could not be raised any higher and it was the least objectionable domestic tax possible that would still preserve Hamilton's first greatest love, the union of the United States. Wow, that sounds so boring when I write it down like that; Chernow makes it interesting :)
I mean, the entire musical is practically like this; it's like Miranda keeps interrupting himself to say, "Look, I can't tell you all this stuff! He founded the Coast Guard — he and Jefferson got in this huge print battle — oh, go read about it!"
The musical is, I can see now, much less historically accurate than I had previously thought; but I still think it's (with one exception I'll talk about later) very true to the broader characters and principles Chernow outlines in the history. Angelica Schuyler Church was married before she met Hamilton (and had a bunch of brothers), so the whole "Satisfied" arc isn't really a thing; but the broader characterization that she and Eliza and Alexander had an emotional threesome going, and that Angelica herself was adept at working within the confines of her sex and societal position, is pretty much historical. It isn't really true that Hamilton "never had a group of friends before" Laurens et al, but that group held a special place for him.
(There are certain lines, mind, where Miranda is just being obnoxious! Like when Alexander says the line about Martha's feral tomcat being named after him is "true" when Chernow says it was almost certainly apocryphal (genius.com annotation says that Miranda says he just liked the idea of Alexander bragging about it even if it wasn't true), or when Burr says "My fellow soldiers'll tell you I'm a terrible shot," when Chernow quotes a fellow soldier as saying he was a good one.)
Some of the parts I kind of previously objected to in the musical I object to less now. For example, historical Maria Reynolds… it really is possible, even probable, that she was in cahoots with her husband and not a nice person. (It's also possible she wasn't. Very little to go on. While I wish she could have been fleshed out a little in the musical, I can't say I think Miranda was wrong not to do so.) Eliza Hamilton really did immerse herself in telling her husband's story. (That being said, I have reconciled myself to the last song all except the line "You could have done so much more," which — huh — I just realized that I always parse that as "you could have done more than I did," which I hate, but it could be parsed as "You could have done so much more in addition to what I did," which makes me feel a lot happier.)
I've seen some critiques of the musical, that it makes Hamilton too present-day-liberal, that it makes him out to be too much of the hero looking out for the little guys and the underdogs, when (e.g., in Cabinet Battle #1) it was really Jefferson who was looking out for the common folk. Which… there's truth in it… it's true that in the real-life counterpart to Cabinet Battle #1, Hamilton's plan to consolidate debt did screw over the poor farmers who had bought bonds but then resold them to fat cat bankers, and it was actually Jefferson, not Hamilton, who was concerned about this.
(Like so many other things, this is also stated explicitly if briefly in the musical. "Our poorest citizens, our farmers, live ration to ration / As Wall Street robs ‘em blind in search of chips to cash in!" Miranda plays fair. No, he doesn't give it emphasis, and Jefferson's painted as the antagonist by this point, but these words are there.)
But… the truth is, of course, much more complicated than either the musical or its critics paint it. Hamilton wasn't, perhaps, a guy whose first priority was to help the poor and downtrodden (in fact, he had a first priority and that wasn't it), but he was not just an elitist who was just looking out for rich people either. He was the only Founding Father who was a fervent abolitionist, one of the charter members of the New York Manumission Society. He wrote eloquently in behalf of Laurens' black battalions (stating of blacks that "…their natural faculties are probably as good as ours," which was a radical sentiment for his time, especially when you contrast Jefferson's saying "in reason much inferior… in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous." Ugh — and Hamilton also mocked Jefferson for his racial views in a way that is, in fact, somewhat reminiscent of Cabinet Battle #1). He and Eliza (okay, let's be fair, mostly Eliza) brought up an orphan with their children. He championed a humane policy towards the Native Americans. And yet -- he was willing to throw all of that — his concern for others, his abolitionist principles — under the bus for federal unity, which was always, always his overriding concern.
(And also for so many years Hamilton was thought of as an arch-conservative. I mean, he was the founder of financial systems! The original tycoon of Wall Street! And for most of my life — I think the shift started happening when the whole Sally Hemings thing came out in the late 90's — I learned that Jefferson was the champion of liberty, the talented renaissance man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and "plays the violin" — well, there you go; just look at 1776, which literally romanticizes Jefferson (even if he does come across as kind of whiny) and doesn't even mention Hamilton. So it's hard for me to believe that Miranda, who is about my age (…when I look at that fact too closely, I identify with Burr so hard, oh man), isn't playing with those expectations.)
The book was also really interesting in showing Hamilton's self-destruction. The musical emphasizes the personal Reynolds-pamphlet destruction, giving it a multiple-song arc, whereas his political self-destruction as part of the Adams Administration is one very short song that is in fact setting up the Reynolds pamphlet arc. (In real life, these arcs are actually switched chronologically; the Reynolds Pamphlet was published in 1797, before Hamilton and Adams had really thoroughly annihilated each other.) I think it used to be longer in workshop (my understanding is that there was at least one more John Adams song), but I can see how to make it more immediate and personal, Miranda chose to emphasize the Reynolds pamphlet. But wow, in Chernow the political destruction was astonishing, much more astonishing than his personal destruction, and particularly the way the same qualities that led his rise to the top (all of which are perfectly recognizable from the musical: his absolute almost fanatic commitment to ideals and to the unity of the nation, his energetic obsession with politics, his hotheadedness, his belief he was the smartest in the room, his almost aggressive integrity and obsession with his honor) contributed to his fallout with Adams, his fall from the top to being all but a political nonentity, and the decline of the Federalist Party. And of course, those are the same qualities Miranda highlights as well, both in musical!Hamilton's rise and the fall, so again he's portraying the truth even if he's doing so through different emphases.
But there is one part where I think the criticism that Miranda makes Hamilton too "nice" is actually deserved, although I assert that it is a personal niceness rather than a political niceness. This is the last arc, where the musical makes it sound like Hamilton, having found redemption with his family, was loath to get back into politics and stick it to Burr until "the people have asked to hear [his] voice." Nope. It was Hamilton who was frantic to work against Burr, both in the 1800 election and in a later election for NY governor (Miranda has conflated the two, thus leading to the odd lyrics where the vote is a tie but then Jefferson wins in a "landslide"; it was in fact the governor's election where Burr's opponent won in a landslide, and that led to the duel). Hamilton did not need any encouragement to work against Burr at all. If anything he was desperate to work against Burr.
Also: I had tears in my eyes for basically the entire last couple of chapters. AGH.
Anyway! Highly recommended, whether or not you like or have any interest in the musical. If you are a huge fan of the musical-as-history, I would go so far as to say that this is a must-read so that you don't go around telling people that Alexander Hamilton punched the Princeton bursar (he didn't) — although the good folks at genius.com have annotated the lyrics so that you can get a pretty good idea for what's history and what's not.
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Date: 2016-02-06 02:05 pm (UTC)...there's no actual evidence of this AT ALL, but since Washington sings two lines before I've figured that the whole cast is onstage at that point, and the section is about the fight against slavery, and the song's about everyone who's died -- I dunno, in my head it's an acknowledgment of all the people who died and could have done more with their lives, if they had the chance, rather than Eliza feeling like she specifically didn't do enough and Hamilton could have done more.
(Someday soon I will actually read the Chernow! I gave a copy to my brother for Hanukkah but do not yet have one myself; it was the most-fought-over item at our apartment Yankee Swap party and I did not win.)
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Date: 2016-02-14 04:57 am (UTC)(I think you will really like it!)
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Date: 2016-02-06 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-14 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-06 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-14 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 01:25 am (UTC)If he'd also added that the boat Hamilton took to America literally caught on fire
I love when actual history is so outrageous that no one would believe it, so it gets left out of the fictionalized version.
I assumed that "You could have done so much more" meant "You could have done so much more with your own life, if it hadn't been cut short." The other interpretation never even occurred to me.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-14 05:03 am (UTC)I... think maybe my brain is the only one that made that particular interpretation? It probably says something unfortunate about my brain, alas.
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Date: 2016-02-12 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-14 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 02:59 pm (UTC)But the historical/political impact of the 1793 Philadelphia epidemic is shocking. The federal government shut down for months because the Constitution didn't let Washington call Congress into session outside of the capital! The secretary of the treasury and numerous other government officials afflicted with the disease, and some killed! How did I not know more about this?
no subject
Date: 2016-02-18 12:01 pm (UTC)Yeah, I don't know how I didn't know about it either! I feel like as a kid I learned a lot (or, well, relatively a lot) about Colonial America and the Revolutionary War, and then... nothing except President names until, like, the Civil War.