Alexander Hamilton

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This afternoon while Joseph was watching Super Why and Matthew was pretending to nap (worked for me), I sat reading the last few chapters of Alexander Hamilton with tears streaming down my
cheeks. Who would have guessed that I would be so devastated about the death of someone who died more than two hundred years ago, who drove me crazy for several hundred pages of his biography?

And yet, there I was, absolutely brokenhearted about the untimely death of Alexander Hamilton and amazed by Eliza Hamilton's subsequent decades of widowhood which she spent doing good and protecting his name.

If I don't publish this tonight, I likely won't ever do it (after all, I planned blog posts about Middlemarch, New Seeds of Contemplation, and David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism that never got published), so here's just a (long) smattering of thoughts I had while reading Ron Chernow's biography.

(Oh! I should add this. If you don't know too much about him, he was a Founding Father who emigrated from the West Indies as a teenager, fought in the Revolution [most notably in the Battle of Yorktown], became Washington's right hand man, developed the financial system that made America solvent after the war, served as Secretary of Treasury under Washington, and then kind of went downhill politically after John Adams became president. Aaron Burr killed him in a duel.)

Comparisons

• A lot of information in the biography came from letters. I think biographies written about people now will be able to draw on work emails the way they drew on work letters from back then, but personal letters will be very different because they don't quite exist. I can't imagine poring through gchats, Facebook statuses and comments, and Twitter feeds to try and understand the scope of a person, but maybe that's what will happen. (For the record, I wouldn't mind being in a time where letter writing was a normal part of life, even if I never saw those people again.)
• The whole time I was reading, I kept comparing Alexander's personality traits to those of people I know. I know people who walk around talking to themselves about philosophy, people who read and read and read, people who are witty and flirtatious, people with overall dim views of human nature, people who are quick to lambaste those who disagree with them (often with strong language), and people who write and write and write like they're running out of time. By making these comparisons, I was able to see Alexander as a real person I might run into someday, even though I don't know someone who encompasses all of his traits. (And that's okay.)
• Although I also compared myself to Alexander, I mostly compared myself to Eliza and Angelica. Eliza was his bright, pleasant, pious, hardworking, forgiving, generous wife. Angelica was Eliza's older sister -- worldly, persuasive, ambitious, clever, and witty. I felt like their relationship was a lot like the relationship I have with my sisters, and I understood why Eliza never minded (and even enjoyed) the flirtatious relationship Angelica and Alexander carried on. (Maybe it's kind of like the time before I met Kevin when my little sister's boyfriend gave me a ring catalog peppered with awkward references to Edward and Bella.) Although my interest in politics is probably more like Angelica, from what I read of Eliza, I want to grow up to be just like her. (And I know plenty of people like her, which is great.)
• I made lots of comparisons to our current president as I read. Burr definitely reminded me the most of him, with his flip-flopping and political expediency (e.g. he started a clean water project in NYC with no intent to actually get the clean water to the people, just to sneak in his own money making scheme). His relationship with Theodosia also reminded me of Ivanka (down to some of the wild accusations, hoo boy). 
• But many of the Founding Fathers reminded me of him too -- Adams was old and paranoid and kept his family as his closest advisers. He also had a pretty bad temper when sufficiently provoked, though that seemed true of most Founding Fathers. Jefferson was a hypocritical populist who rallied rural people in the cause of freedom (except for the rural people that happened to be slaves), kept a folksy persona despite living the cosmopolitan life in Paris, and seemed way too okay with violence (as evidenced by his fervent adoration of the French Revolution, even when heads started to roll). Oh, and poor Sally Hemings. Poor, poor Sally.
• As for Alexander Hamilton and similarities to the president, well, let's just say it's probably good Twitter wasn't around back then for his sake. Pen and paper were sufficiently destructive.
• Speaking of political climates, whew! Things were pretty wild back then between the Federalists and Democratic Republicans. I actually prefer things now -- we've got enough years under our belt as a country that we're not going to actually disintegrate. In contrast, back then they weren't even sure if the nation would last, or if the Constitution would hold up. Talk about stressful. 
• And, if you think fake news is bad now, you should have seen the newspapers back then. Lurid, hyperbolic, character assaults were nothing out of the ordinary. I think things are better now. Except, of course, that people still believe fake news nowadays.
• Oh, I forgot a few other character comparisons. George Washington reminded me of David O. McKay (possibly because that was the last biography I read). A steady, wise, formidable influence that was universally respected, at least until Jefferson got whiny. Good leaders, both of them.
• One last comparison: Alexander Hamilton reminded me of Joseph Smith. Kind of hard to put my finger on -- maybe it was that they were both prolific visionaries, with bigger ideas of what their communities could become. Maybe it was that Alexander died in July 1804 and Joseph Smith was born in December 1805, so it was like the world got about a year break before God decided it was time to put another powerhouse individual like that on earth.

Questions

• How much was $1000 worth? That was about how much Alexander paid James Reynolds for his stupid, stupid affair. Okay, I checked and it was about $23,000. What??? Why on earth would anyone pay that much to hide something from his wife (who was inclined to be pretty forgiving)? How on earth could he afford to pay that much? (He was never all that rich.)
• Was Eliza as straightforwardly good as she was portrayed? She destroyed all of her letters, so we don't really see her, only what family and friends had to say. I know a lot of really, really good people who have their fair share of inner turmoil, but I also know some who really are guileless and faithful and straightforward most of the time. And I feel like people back then had so much physical labor that they were too tired to be all that angsty. Except the Founding Fathers, who all had bad tempers.
• I knew as I read that I was getting only one perspective about Hamilton's political enemies such as Adams and Burr, but it certainly wasn't flattering. Did Jefferson do anything good at all as Secretary of State? Would reading a biography of John Adams make me like him better? Would their mistakes be seen as minor indiscretions rather than indicators of their fatal weaknesses, as Hamilton's mistakes were portrayed?
• How much was Alexander really a womanizer, before and after marriage? The book convinced me that he wasn't licentious after marriage (with the exception of Maria Reynolds), but what about before? I just don't know what morals were like back then, or if what was scandalous back then was not too terrible by the standards of even religious people now.
• Do politicians these days hate each other as much as politicians back then?
• David O. McKay said, "No success outside the home can compensate for failure inside the home." But can success inside the home compensate for failure outside the home? By and large, Hamilton was a wonderful husband and father, but he made some pretty big political mistakes there at the end that hurt his career and hurt his chances to make a difference in the nation, especially regarding abolition. How are those mistakes tallied in the eternal scheme of things?
• Why could the North abolish slavery but the South couldn't? I know the South was more agricultural, but I feel like they could have at least tried.
• Hamilton wanted lots of things centralized, such as manufacturing. What would America have looked like if he had gotten his way with that?
• Why, oh why, oh why did he carry on with Maria Reynolds, who didn't compare at all with Eliza? Okay, the answer to that probably comes by watching soap operas, so it's not all that interesting of a question. But oh my goodness why did he do so many dumb things like this? And while we're at it, why didn't he ask Eliza to proofread his most scathing letters and articles before sending them off, just to make sure they didn't destroy his career?

Surprises/Things the musical got wrong

• It only takes the musical about 5 words to get things wrong. Alexander was not an orphan, at least not until 1799 when he was about 44 years old. I mean, his father abandoned him, but he still wrote letters and even gave his father money occasionally.
• Aaron Burr was not a terrible marksman. He practiced for months before his duel with Hamilton, and he aimed to kill.
• Burr was actually a worse person than the musical portrayed him. This wasn't an "off day" where he just happened to kill Hamilton. And he joked about it for years afterwards.
• Eliza's mother was pregnant at the age of 47 or so. And Eliza had babies well into her forties. Wow!
• Angelica was a confidante of lots of Founding Fathers. It's kind of funny that both Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton respected her opinions so much since they didn't respect each other's opinions at all.
• Yellow fever outbreaks were really scary.
• We hear a lot about the South wanting to secede, but it was actually New England that brought it up first. They were (appropriately) afraid the Louisiana Purchase would only bring in slave states, and they didn't want to lose any sort of representation. Aaron Burr ran for governor of New York on this premise, and it was Alexander Hamilton's commitment to the union that made him oppose him. (Well, that, and he really didn't like that Burr had no lasting political opinions, right or wrong.)
• And speaking of New England, it was fun to read about New Haven. Unfortunate Loyalists were captured and paraded through town during the early days of the Revolution. Also, it was nice to finally know why so much in Connecticut has Trumbull in its name. (John Trumbull was a patriot, and his son was a prolific painter of historical figures.)
• Peggy Schuyler (Eliza's younger sister) was brave! I wish the story of her saving her family during the American Revolution could have made it into the musical. When British soldiers stormed the house, the whole family huddled in the bedroom. But she went downstairs to retrieve her baby sister and while down there told the soldiers her father had run off to get help, so off they went. And possibly one of the soldiers threw a tomahawk at her just for good measure.
• Alexander Hamilton was never really all that wealthy. And he probably wasn't all that aristocratic. I mean, the same Jefferson who lobbed those accusations at him also rode around as president in wrinkled clothes and slippers, so who's he to talk about fashion?
• Alexander and Eliza always had a happy home life, and they adopted several children too. I imagine lots of that was because Eliza was wonderful, but he certainly didn't say no to opening their home and hearts. They even arranged for Eliza and her friends to go to debtors' prison to get their portraits painted by someone stuck there to help him pay his way out.
  

  

  Painted by Ralph Earl while literally in debtor's prison. (link.)

Well, this is long enough that I think I will be unlike Alexander Hamilton and stop writing. I could go on and on about his politics and financial ideas and views on human nature, but instead I will leave you with some of his last words that made me so weepy today.

"Hamilton kept intoning the one refrain he knew would soothe her troubled spirit above all others: 'Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian.'"

"I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ." 

"It has for some time past been the wish of my heart and it was my intention to take an early opportunity of uniting myself to the church by the reception of that holy ordinance."

"I have no ill will against Col. Burr. I met him with a fixed resolution to do him no harm. I forgive all that happened." (And that's when the bishop finally gave him communion.)

"If they break this union, they will break my heart."

I think you broke plenty of hearts yourself, Alexander.