Alexander Hamilton — Ron Chernow
The book that inspired a Broadway revolution is even better than you might expect
This is the first review in an ongoing series called The Hamilton Project. For more information and to read others in the series, click here.
The story is legendary among fans of Hamilton the musical. Lin-Manuel Miranda went on vacation to Mexico and took Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton with him. The story resonated with him to such great affect that even though he was on his first vacation from Broadway’s In the Heights in over 7 years, he couldn’t wait to start his next musical about the founding father that he later claimed “embodied the spirit of hip-hop”.
I must admit that although I expected to enjoy Alexander Hamilton, I didn’t have all that high of expectations. I read Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life, and it was good, but all I really took from it was the immense amount of work that went into researching it (as evidenced by this very short 2017 review). There were a several insights on Washington contained in it, such as his surprising temper and his strained relationship with his psychologically-abusive mother, but it didn’t stick out very much from other biographies. I’ve historically never really been a “big biography” person, but I’m beginning to think that’s changing after having read my three personal favorites over the past eighteen months. Those three? John A. Farrell’s Richard Nixon: The Life, David Blight’s Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, and now Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton.
There’s A Million Things I Haven’t Done, Just You Wait
Alexander Hamilton is simply the most entertaining biography I’ve ever read. I kept trying to separate out my Hamilton love and determine if it would still be so entertaining without that background, and I truly believe that it stands on its own. Hamilton led such a thrilling life that crossed paths with almost every major person and event from early American history and his attitude, just as in the musical, creates even more drama. I don’t know that there has ever been someone that vacillated between ultra-competence and fly-off-the-handle impetuosity so seamlessly.
In the hands of Chernow, the character and questions behind Hamilton are expertly managed. Even his early life, which flies by almost faster than in Hamilton’s opening number, is interesting not only because of the inherent drama but the questions left unanswered. Chernow responsibly explores the possibility that James Hamilton may not have been Alexander’s father, making a compelling speculative case while remaining on the fence because it is, after all, just speculation. However, when the historical record speaks counter to a narrative, Chernow calls it out. When dealing with the fact that Hamilton did not get the Constitution that he wanted, historians, politicians, and others have asked perniciously how it was “that Hamilton could support such a document that he had contested at such length.” However, Chernow says, “In fact, the Constitution represented a glorious compromise for every signer. This flexibility has always been honored as a sign of political maturity, whereas Hamilton’s concessions have often been given a conspiratorial twist. For the rest of his life, Hamilton remained utterly true to his pledge that he would do everything in his power to see the Constitution successfully implemented.
But Hamilton is not even the only character expertly managed. Jefferson is explored in all his inconsistencies. Chernow quotes John Quincy Adams as saying of the Hamilton rival and third president that he had “a memory so pandering to the will that in deceiving others he seems to have begun by deceiving himself.” This struck a chord because I have known people just like this, which makes Jefferson seem that much more human. Even Patrick “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” Henry makes a small appearance simply to make a much less popular statement. He said of the proposed Constitutional government “They’ll free your n*****s.” (Chernow uses the full word, but I don’t have the historian clout to pull that, so asterisks it is.)
Legacy. What is a Legacy?
Chernow’s legacy is more than just Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, but you can see the seeds that germinated many of Miranda’s most memorable lines. From page two, as he is describing Eliza late in life staring at a bust of her departed Hamilton, Chernow quotes a visitor who says “she gazed and gazed, as if she could never be satisfied.” It might be a coincidence that the phrase “could never be satisfied” is a common refrain in Hamilton, but the commonality is apparent.
Sometimes entire quotes are taken directly from Chernow’s text, which shows the beauty of the original. Chernow excerpts a letter from Hamilton when he was still living in the Caribbean, and in it Hamilton intones “I wish there was a war. Alex. Hamilton.” (In “Hurricane”, Miranda’s Hamilton recalls “as a kid in the Caribbean I wished for a war”, while in “Aaron Burr, Sir” he exclaims “God I wish there was a war / Then we could prove we’re more than anyone bargained for”.) The most powerful of Miranda’s Chernow tributes comes from Chernow’s retelling of Aaron Burr reading Laurence Sterne’s Tristam Shandy. In that book, one of the characters puts a fly outside a window instead of killing it, and Burr reportedly said “Had I read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me.” (“The World Was Wide Enough” is the song that relates the Hamilton-Burr duel and its aftermath.) Reading Chernow’s book will only enhance your love for Miranda’s work.
The Schuyler Sisters Are the Envy of All
Another aspect of Alexander Hamilton that I found particularly scintillating was Chernow’s focus on Hamilton’s relationship with the Schuyler sisters: Alexander’s wife Eliza and her sister Angelica. Eliza is portrayed as “an ideal companion for Hamilton, lending a strong home foundation to his turbulent life.” Chernow adds, impressed, that “his letters to her reflected not a single moment of pique, irritation, or disappointment.” This is almost unbelievable for a man with as many strong emotions as Hamilton, and it proves how loving and stable he found himself in her presence.
Although the musical intentionally embellishes some parts of the “love triangle” between Hamilton and the Schuyler sisters (for instance, Angelica was married before she and Hamilton ever truly met), there is indeed something to it. Angelica adored Hamilton, and he felt the same. However, and this is something that is almost impossible to understand from our modern point of view, Chernow explains that Angelica’s “incessant adoration of Hamilton, far from annoying or threatening her beloved younger sister, filled her with ecstatic pride. Their shared love for Hamilton seemed to deepen their sisterly bond.” In one letter to Eliza, Angelica writes of Hamilton:
“I love him very much and, if you were as generous as the old Romans, you would lend him to me for a little while … Ah! Bess! you were a lucky girl to get so clever and so good a companion.”
All this coming from a married woman across the Atlantic from her sister, yet the sisters could not have been closer in spirit.
It is even more interesting to look at how the Schuyler sisters saw Hamilton in light of his later unfaithfulness to Eliza by way of Maria Reynolds. In an extended passage on Hamilton’s affair and his intentional direction of Eliza not to come home from upstate New York, Chernow states that “Eliza Hamilton never expressed anything less than a worshipful attitude toward her husband. His love for her, in turn, was deep and constant if highly imperfect. The problem was that no single woman could seem to satisfy all the needs of this complex man with his checkered childhood.” It is hard to know what Eliza thought of the affair in her own words because she destroyed all of her letters, intentionally removing herself from Hamilton’s narrative. However, Angelica was of the opinion that “marriage to such an exceptional man entailed a large quota of pain and suffering that was abundantly compensated by his love, intelligence, and charm”, and Chernow suggests that Eliza most likely shared in that belief. I personally recoil at the idea of hand-waving away so much heartache and infidelity (it’s worth adding that Hamilton’s career was his more consistent mistress), but within the historical context and the lower social standing of women, it is a bit more understandable that the sisters wouldn’t make a greater stink. What stands out throughout the entire book is Eliza’s faithfulness to Hamilton, even unto her death at 97. The most telling sign of this is relayed by Chernow in the epilogue as he describes Eliza about 50 years after Hamilton’s death:
Around her neck, she wore a tiny bag containing brittle yellow scraps of the love sonnet that Hamilton had given to her during their courtship in Morristown — the scraps were sewn together as the paper decomposed — and the intimate farewell letter he had prepared for her on the eve of the duel.
This, the same letter where Hamilton named her “best of wives and women”. This unfailing love, in addition to her work in co-founding and running New York’s first private orphanage, is probably the greatest testament to Eliza’s Christian faith. I am thankful that my next read in #TheHamiltonProject is a biography of Eliza Hamilton.
And When My Prayers to God Were Met with Indifference, I Picked Up a Pen, I Wrote My Own Deliverance
This line, sung by Miranda as Alexander Hamilton in “Hurricane”, seems unfair given the apparent Christian faith of Alexander. Chernow mentions several times throughout the book that Hamilton took his faith seriously even if he was not consistent in his devotion or actions. He seems to vacillate throughout his life, as admittedly many Christians do, distracted by his earthly vocation at the expense of his eternal mission. Chernow is convinced that a Christian so devoted as Eliza would not have married someone that did not share her convictions. I am less sure of that, but for most of the book Hamilton simply seems like a man in need of God’s grace like the rest of us.
However, and this is a big however, I began to doubt Hamilton’s belief a little bit. (Note: Far be it from me to determine someone’s eternal resting place, but I do find it helpful to interrogate the beliefs of historical figures as a way of analyzing and learning more about God’s gift of salvation.) With a life that yearns after God, right belief tends to follow. But Chernow states that “like Washington, he never talked about Christ and gave vague references to ‘providence’ or ‘heaven’” (one of the tell-tale signs of a Deist), and Hamilton wrote in a letter consoling a friend:
Arraign not the dispensations of Providence. They must be founded in wisdom and goodness. And when they do not suit us, it must be because there is some fault in ourselves which deserves chastisement or because there is a kind intent to correct in us some vice or failing of which perhaps we may not be conscious.
This reminds me more of the advice of Job’s friends than it does true Christian belief, but, again wrong belief does not mean you are not truly saved. If he believed in Jesus as the Savior of the world and of him personally, Hamilton may have thought saying so would have caused rifts between himself and some of his closest partisans. While this is not right, it is understandable.
It is the deathbed scene where Hamilton seems most confident in his faith, which is telling of that same faith. Who can be so confident when about to meet the Creator of the Universe unless that confidence comes from the Creator Himself? Hamilton asks the pastor, John Mason, for communion, which the priest must deny because it was not practice to give communion individually but only corporately (a practice I personally respect). The next passage is powerful. Chernow writes:
Mason tried to console Hamilton by saying that all men had sinned and were equal in the Lord’s sight. “I perceive it to be so,” Hamilton said. “I am a sinner. I look to His mercy.” … As Mason told how Christ’s blood would wash away his sins, Hamilton grasped at his hand, rolled his eyes heavenward, and exclaimed with fervor, “I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is the gospel in microcosm. I am thankful to Chernow for relaying it in such beautiful detail, with such a focus on the faith of Alexander Hamilton.
I would wholeheartedly recommend Alexander Hamilton to anyone, Hamilton fan or not, that is interested in American history, stories of underdogs, or the themes I’ve discussed in this review. At over 700 pages, it is a little daunting, though not at all a slog. It has shot up the list of my favorite biographies for its entertainment value and its treatment of both its subject and the many characters that cross his path.
I borrowed a copy of Alexander Hamilton from my local library. Borrow it, request it, or consider donating to your library today.
