I might maybe once or twice in the last few months have mentioned how I am super into Alexander Hamilton now? On account of that the cast recording of the musical Hamilton took over my whole life? You may have heard something about that. Anyway, when Alice said “Chernow biography readalong,” I was naturally like:
(even though I don’t really read biographies and I find American history, like, pretty boring)
Ron Chernow starts by destroying everything I thought I knew about Alexander Hamilton. He was a bastard, but not an orphan (his father was alive for much of his adulthood), and his mother wasn’t a professional whore so much as a lady with a shady sexual reputation. Moreover — and y’all, brace yourselves for this one — Chernow thinks Hamilton maybe wasn’t even the son of the Scotsman James Hamilton. Chernow thinks he was maybe this other dude’s son, which like, he doesn’t have hard evidence, but the circumstantial case he makes is compelling. THE SCANDAL CONTINUES.
It is fun reading about how talented and brilliant Alexander Hamilton is. Like, you wanted him to be as talented and brilliant as Lin-Manuel Miranda constantly insists that he is, and Ron Chernow is there for you.
Nonetheless, the essay [by Samuel Seabury] made a huge popular impression and demonstrated that the patriots were being outgunned by Tory pamphleteers and needed a literary champion of their own.
Did they? Is that what they needed? HEY I HAVE AN IDEA.
It was clear that [Hamilton] had found his calling as a fearless, swashbuckling intellectual warrior who excelled in bare-knuckled controversy.
I mean, look: If Chernow had written this biography after the Hamilton musical came out, I’d have maybe suspected him of pandering to the hungry fans. And also, I wish I were temperamentally suited to being a fearless, swashbuckling intellectual warrior who excelled in bare-knuckled controversy. But I am too pacific, I think, for that.
Okay, so, here are my three favorite things about Alexander Hamilton so far:
1. He has twice leaped in front of a mob comprised of his own political allies to stop them from doing Mob Violence upon his own political foes. Again, I’d like to say that I’d unhesitatingly confront a dangerous mob and deter them from violence using only my words, but would I?
2. Every time anyone says “Could you do this thing?” he does the thing to the nth degree. No cutting corners for this guy. His drill regiment had the shiniest buttons. His political pamphlets were ten trillion words long. He marched up to massively experienced American generals and said “I am twenty-two but yet you must do exactly as I say,” and then badgered them until they did exactly what he said.
3. He talked to himself all the time. Like you actually probably would see him in the street walking by himself, talking to himself, cause that was a thing he did. I picture him being sort of like the Doctor, you know? Where he has a very whizzing-about sort of brain, so he talks more or less constantly, whether there’s anybody there to listen to him or not? That’s what I imagine.
If you haven’t signed up for #HamAlong yet, there’s still time to join us!1 We will be reading this massively massive biography for probably ever? Like I don’t know if you’ve seen it but it’s super huge, and the whole entire thing is about Alexander Hamilton and American history. I will basically have a bachelor’s degree in American history by the time I finish it, is what I’m saying, and you can too.
