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Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow

4.3 AVERAGE

informative medium-paced

A long but interesting read.
challenging reflective sad slow-paced

Just rewatched “Hamilton,” the 2015 Obama-era musical, on Netflix this past weekend, and found this book in an audio format on Libby. I couldn’t put it down for days.

Looking back at the earnest lyrics and casting choices during Obama’s years of post-racial optimism, this musical might be denounced today as “too woke” by the growing MAGA right.

In this post-election week of American chaos, I‘m listening for parallels between Hamilton’s times and ours. So much of the factionalism and manipulated populism of today is what Hamilton had warned against. Chernow’s description of Jeffersonian Republicanism that sprung to violence during Whiskey Rebellion feels somewhat akin to the MAGA movement of today — and I don’t think Hamilton would be surprised by a figure like Trump winning the popular vote, nor would he be surprised if despotism were to become the end result.


=== HAMILTON, the Man ===

I usually read biographies to be inspired on a more personal level by the choices, successes and failures, lessons painfully learned by historic figures — so that I might be the wiser. This book certainly satisfies this kind of curiosity, for broader perspective and for personal growth.

Hamilton is portrayed in comprehensive depth as an admirable man whose integrity, sheer brilliance, and work ethic helped him rise above the adversity of his Caribbean orphan childhood. He achieved countless wins in almost every endeavor he undertook, due to incredible hard work and sacrifice, which Chernow presents in great detail. Hamilton‘s friendships, family relationships, sense of responsibility to his community — show a man of consistently good character.

Hamilton’s foibles are also humanized by Chernow in a way that makes him seem actually quite noble. His honesty and openness got him in trouble, but such characteristics are preferable to the sly reservations of Burr. Hamilton’s impulse to defend women in abusive marriages, who may have reminded him of his own promiscuous and ill-treated mother Rachael, is cited by Chernow as a kind of Achilles’ heel, perhaps as a gentler excuse for his affair with Maria Reynolds. He had a rough and tumble sense of pride and got in many quarrels with others over honor, but the principled magnanimity with which he showed fatal restraint in his final duel with Burr, and his gentle sense of forbearance and commitment, even at his deathbed — is undeniably impressive.

The book focuses more on the events of Hamilton‘s life than the specifics of his policies or political thought. While I enjoyed reading the sections on his writing of the Federalist Papers, I came away with a better sense of how Hamilton‘s personal experiences may have influenced his ideas than a fine-grained command of Hamiltonian economic or political frameworks. For that, I’ll be looking for other works of scholarship to follow.


=== HAMILTON v. Jefferson ===

One big takeaway from this account, which is written more like a drama than a textbook, is the ongoing rivalry between Hamilton and Jefferson. (Stage whisper: Hamilton is a far more rigorous thinker, and more courageous and moral human being.)

Hamilton’s focus on American manufacturing, trade and finance, coupled with his anti-slavery convictions, has proven to last the test of time, surpassing Jeffersonian’s agrarian vision of American wealth built entirely on slavery. His abolitionism and tolerant attitudes towards Jews and Native Americans was progressive for his times, and he was prescient in predicting that a civil war between the South and North would be inevitable due to the issue of slavery and the slave economy.

Contrary to wrongful accusations of grift, Hamilton was extremely conscientious in his decisions on public coffer, and generous to a fault in neglecting his own personal finances, in order to dedicate himself to public service. As a lawyer, he also did pro bono legal work to support those whom he felt were wronged, and turned down any client who he believed was in the wrong, no matter what the pay. Rather than promoting greed or British aristocracy, Hamilton’s banking and economic system was instrumental in providing means for the new country to stand by its Constitution, and the clothing manufacturing industry he promoted also enabled equality of opportunity, including for some working women, whom he was correct in predicting would find the beginnings of economic/gender equality through organizing for labor rights in the factories of downtown Manhattan, many decades later.

Jefferson was a wealthy landowner who pretended to a simple scholarly life of (expensive) books on his plantation in Monticello, only made possible by an ample inheritance of slaves. By contrast, Hamilton was born impoverished and illegitimate on the island of St. Croix, working diligently as an apprentice in the shipping industry from the tender age of twelve. Hamilton’s unlikely rise to power alongside Washington as the General‘s trusted wordsmith, as well as a military hero in his own right — exemplifies the meritocracy Hamilton believed could be built in the new country.

Coming from “the masses” himself, Hamilton was more suspicious of the sentiments of the masses, and did not harbor the same idyllic notions about “common people” as the philosopher-Prince Thomas Jefferson, who spouted French revolutionary ideology of radical equality, while buying (and impregnating) slaves. Jefferson refused to acknowledge blacks as human beings, proclaiming they were something between ape and man, and asserted fanatically in his “Notes on the State of Virginia”, as if to prove his stance, that male orangutans were sexually attracted to Negro women.

Jefferson remained to his deathbed unwilling to claim fatherhood of his illegitimate children with his slave Sally Hemmings. On the other side of social privilege, Hamilton was born an illegitimate son of unknown paternity (perhaps a secret brother to his childhood best friend Edward Stevens), more familiar with poverty’s challenges and vices than the pampered Jefferson. Working as a teenager in the island’s shipping industry, Hamilton detested the cruel treatment of African slaves, noting also the unstable tension of slaveholders who lived in constant fear of slave rebellion. This is not the kind of society on which a solid foundation could be built. Having experienced poverty himself, and living in shame of his own lowly birth, Hamilton did not use idyllic rhetoric or imagery of the Poor to build populist power, as ironically, his wealthy colleague Thomas Jefferson did.

Hamilton distrusted direct democracy, as he was pessimistic about human nature and believed people could be easily led astray by populist demagogues. (In this, he has been proven correct, as with his predictions of the violence and despotism that would follow the French Revolution.) Instead of pure direct democracy, Hamilton believed in representative leadership by dedicated, honest and educated public servants, empowered to best discern the interests of the people. For this, he was often called an aristocrat or anglophilic monarchist. He thought that the new republic could be destroyed by factionalism between the north and south, and that civil war would be one day inevitable to address the question of slavery. In this, as in many other political matters, Hamilton has shown powerful prescience.

Hamilton was often disgusted by the backstabbing, wily, and utterly incompetent ways of his colleagues in politics. His greatest weakness was his foolish impulse in honestly expressing his opinions at the offense of the ambitious people around him — including Aaron Burr, who would become his remorseless executioner.



=== UGH! The Feels ===

What a shady, spineless knave Burr was — and what a hypocrite and scheming coward Jefferson was beneath such a veil of poetic high-mindedness!

The book, much like the musical, left me crying and celebrating with Hamilton, through his prodigious childhood, his son Phillip’s death, his many political ups and downs. In the last chapters, his duel with Burr was written in a way that is simply spellbinding.

A surprise deviation from the musical: Hamilton‘s affair with Maria Reynolds did not cause as big a rift in Hamilton’s family life as the musical might lead you to believe — Eliza stuck loyally by his side, and it is not clear why she left her own letters out of Hamilton‘s historic records, which she painstakingly preserved for fifty years after his death. Chernow suggests this was due more to modesty and a reluctance to act in ways that might seem self-serving, in order to be pure in her devotion to Hamilton‘s memory, rather than due to any anger harbored towards Hamilton, as one song in the musical seems to suggest:

“I’m erasing myself from the narrative / Let future historians wonder / how Eliza reacted / When you broke her heart… The world has no right to my heart / The world has no place in our bed / They don’t get to know what I said / I’m burning the memories…the letters that might have redeemed you…. I hope you burn.”

It seems, in real life, Eliza did everything she could to redeem her husband’s reputation, and harbored no such anger towards him in her later years, if ever.

I was also surprised to find that the Hamilton portrayed in these pages to be so opposite from the shorthand high school history version of Federalists (aristocratic, centralized control favoring cities) v. Jeffersonian Republicans (liberty, democracy, and farmers). Chernow effectively proved that Hamilton was no elite despot but an earnestly patriotic guardian of the Constitution he helped to write, and a man of sterling integrity above all. He is successful in defending Hamilton’s legacy from the gross political slander of his rivals who outlived him: Jefferson, Adams, Monroe, Madison, and Burr — all portrayed in a particularly negative light — as caricatured in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical.

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” Carrying on Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton’s defense of her husband, from Ron Chernow to Broadway, Hamilton gets the last word over Jefferson in 2015, but it is perhaps the hip hop playwright Miranda, born in Hamilton’s New York of immigrant Puerto Rican (Caribbean islander) descent, who has made the largest impact in rescuing Hamilton’s reputation from the jaws of vile detractors.

Though I feel I should now supplement my readings with other biographies by historians like Joseph Ellis or Jon Meacham, who are more favorable towards Jefferson, I’m glad to first read this positive portrayal of Hamilton’s life — as touchingly preserved by his dearest Betsy, the real heroine, who opens and closes this story.

“No one really knows how the game is played / The art of the trade / How the sausage gets made…”

Short of being in the room where it happens, this meticulously researched and riveting account of Hamilton’s life, gave me a closer look at the colorful events that shaped his life, and the early life of this country. It very delightfully satisfied my need to know more MORE M-O-R-E! after watching the movie musical.
informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

This book provides an incredibly in depth look not just into Hamilton’s life, but into the creation of the USA as a whole. Understanding the environment and political world of the time allows the reader to to situate Hamilton, his beliefs, and his faults more firmly into the historical record.
While some of the finance aspect could be very dry at times (especially for a non-American who’s interest doesn’t lie in economic history), the focus on the social history and relationships, as well as the summary and analysis by Chernow helped make the book interesting and engaging overall.
challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

  • Chernow seems to think of hamilton as a genius (who occasionally made mostakes)
  • Eliza is portrayed as very simple
  • Burr is portrayed as more cunning

Seriously might be the best non-fiction book I've ever read. Certainly the best biography, and I just read His Excellency and read Churchill a few years ago. Hamilton is also now non-negotiable my favorite Founding Father.

This book is stellar if you can skim over meticulous detail.

As a history buff, I had been interested in Alexander Hamilton and the American Revolution long before the musical (of which I love) made its debut. This novel amazingly captured the life of the first Secretary of the Treasury. Alexander Hamilton was so in-depth because of the hundreds of thousands of pages of literature that Ron Chernow had examined about the trials and triumphs of Hamilton, which are all listed in the back of the thick novel.

Alexander Hamilton, in some of its parts, will leave the readers heartbroken over the harrowing accounts of the losses that shook Alexander's life, the pain he inflicted upon his family during his affair, and his ultimate death. The subject, Alexander, is such an interesting figure in history that when written about on paper he seems like a legendary character that was the subject of a fictitious novel or a Greek legend. However, it is a true account of a revolutionary and the men and women that built the country he thrived in.

That being said, the thoroughness that Chernow went to when crafting this bibliography may be off-putting to some. Although I love history, as was mentioned before, some of the meticulous detail I had to skim over to keep from being bored to death.

But, all in all, it was a wonderful read! I would definitely recommend this to all Americans, as it is the story of a revolutionary, and all those that adore history. (Initially, I had tackled this book to read for a school project that consisted of reading a non-fictitious work within two weeks and writing a paper on it.)
informative reflective sad slow-paced

Read because I recently saw the musical and wanted to know more. Thoroughly recommend this!

Unfortunately it has taken me a while to finish so I have definitely forgotten tons of fascinating details, but some of the ones that stick out now are:

Hamilton's early life is even more tragic than I thought. His service in the war was way more interesting than I expected and the dynamic with Washington was far more complex too. 

For a book written over two decades ago I could not stop drawing comparison between post revolution America and the current political landscape in a way that was both depressing and fascinating. Jefferson kept reminding me of Trump.

Adams was a curious and particularly unpleasant figure.

Burr just swanned through life causing chaos and misery, through an insane level of self interest surpassing that of the other founding fathers that come off poorly. 

Elements of Hamilton's life that at first seemed hard to follow are conveyed so clearly here, like: the continental convention, the federalist papers, tenure in Washington adminstration, Reynolds pamphlet, the Burr duel etc.

How Hamilton became such a polarising figure is illustrated incredibly well.

Probably gonna read something way more lightweight next.

The simplest thing to say about this book is that I just really enjoy Chernow's writing. I don't typically agree with his perspective, but he's a compelling writer who takes the lives of these larger than life men, pulls them down to the ground, humanizes them, then also manages to make them once again larger than life.

I think what Chernow's done best over the course of this biography and the Washington biography is paint Jefferson as so loathsome that we actually want to root for these vain, audacious, petty men because at least they're not as much of an hypocritical ass as Jefferson.

There's nothing particularly likeable about Hamilton in this biography, but it's clear Chernow admires him, and makes a good case for him being a very admirable man. It's certainly true that few accomplished so much with so little or shaped the nation quite as much. A prodigy, a genius, a relentlessly motivated and persistent man who did everything in his power to shape the nation in the way he believed would be best. Of course, he did a great deal to acquire power and retain power.

What I find of particular interest during the revolutionary and early republic era of the US is how very little has changed in a lot of ways. Jefferson, at least in Chernow's depiction, is really no different from a modern Republican politician. He advocates for small government, decries the tyranny of government oversight, yet when he comes to power as president, he takes advantage of every executive power Hamilton and Washington built into the executive branch, while also, arguably, expanding on that power. He presented himself as a common man, while really being from an extremely wealthy and privileged background. He advocates for freedom for all while enslaving hundreds and raping at least one of them for decades. He sees every political rival as an unscrupulous potential tyrant, ignoring his own grasping for power.

What's interesting about this, too, is that Jefferson basically invented the Fox News prototype. He secretly funded a muckraking newspaper that thrived on fabricated controversies about Hamilton and Washington. The absolute reckless and unscrupulous nature of the early press in the US, on both partisan sides, is kind of astonishing. It actually makes some of what we see today as somewhat mild. I mean, really, they flourished on publishing actual fake news, constantly pushing fabricated partisan controversies.

But, yes, another fascinating biography of a vastly influential man. I wish Chernow had more of these political biographies, but I guess I'm moving on to his financial biographies.

It's a bit funny that I--and probably thousands of others--came to this biography through the musical Hamilton. The contrast between the two is interesting, as Miranda takes a lot of liberties with timelines and so on, but Miranda captures the spirit of Chernow's depiction of Hamilton.

But, yeah, great stuff.