Confession: When I was reading the lyrics to the last few songs of Hamilton to decide on a post title, I teared up. I could hear Philippa Soo’s angel voice in my head, and I am not made of stone. This section served up a whole bunch of things that broke my heart into tiny pieces, and I guess I might as well just lay them out for y’all so you can be heartbroken too. Feeling poorly, Kent retired early to bed. Anxious about his guest, Hamilton tiptoed into his room with an extra blanket and draped it over him…
22 CommentsTag: Alexander Hamilton
At least, dear friends, the worst has happened. The #HamAlong has reached the second-saddest bit of the musical:1 Philip Hamilton dies in a duel which he fought to defend his father and in which his father urged him to delope. Anyway, not quite yet. We’ll get to that. The first thing that happens is that Hamilton supports the Alien and Sedition Acts, which Chernow tries to pretend is semi-okay even though it is blatantly not. And like — honestly? This section makes me feel rather patriotic. Like, the ways that America turned out well were very far from inevitable, if…
18 CommentsPoor old George Washington! With his strongest and cleverest ally gone from the cabinet, this section of the readalong finds him struggling to find competent people to fill political posts, while the southern motherfucking democratic republicans roundly abuse him all over the press. He keeps writing pitiful letters to Hamilton to be like And in actually the nicest gesture I have so far encountered in this readalong, Washington sends Eliza and Alexander a supportive gift during the Reynolds Pamphlet hullabaloo, with a note that says this: I pray you to present my best wishes, in which Mrs. Washington joins me,…
19 CommentsSo. Much. Finance. Talk. I trust that the #HamAlong will experience a sharp upward turn in action in the subsequent chapters, and can only conclude that the schedule for this week allotted a comparatively lowish number of pages to make up for how heavily taxy this section is. One thing I learned that tied into knowledge I already possessed was that Britain had, at this time, something like a monopoly on textile production. A. Ham wanted to diversify American business, rather than continuing to depend on only agriculture, so he spent a lot of time learning about textiles and how…
21 CommentsOkay, it’s possible that the first chapters of Alexander Hamilton misled me about how nonstop thrilling Alexander Hamilton’s life was going to be. #HamAlong has now reached the stage at which Chernow dedicates almost thirty pages to describing each and every number of The Federalist Papers. Yo, I already knew the important thing, which is that HAMILTON WROTE! THE OTHER FIFTY-ONE! I do not need an entire chapter on this. In this section, Hamilton helps make a new Constitution, convinces George Washington to become President, and accepts a position as Treasury Secretary. Apparently he wasn’t even Washington’s first choice! Washington…
13 CommentsI 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),…
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