Hamilton | Based on a True Story

[Music] this episode is sponsored by viewers like you and the great courses plus more on that at the end of the video after a bit of fun hey cypher here hamilton is a fun musical and word of warning i tend to be a bit forgiving of them but here's the thing there's a lot of issues with this and i've got a lot to say about it as you can probably tell by the time stamp in the end i think it makes up for the problems with what it does correctly but only barely stick around for the ride cause this is super complex the fact is the alexander hamilton presented in this play is quite divergent from reality in ways that blatantly whitewash the past in favor of this strange halfway progressivism from the obama years despite its veneer of diverse casting and hip-hop music it actually represents a revival of deeply conservative inaccurate and marginalizing historiography at the same time the play does a lot of interesting new and relevant things with its attempt to cover a cradle to grave story which is always fraught of a founding father [Music] alexander hamilton was born out of wedlock in the british west indies his father abandoned them despite being of nobility still they weren't poor until his mother died of yellow fever while he was 11 years old so he had to go work for her ex-husband who seized all their property he became quite adept at facilitating trade in the caribbean at least until a hurricane devastated the islands in 1772 he penned a letter sermonizing that the disaster was the correction of the deity our imagination represents him as an incensed master executing vengeance on the crimes of his servants it was so well received by the islanders that they pulled money to send him to king's college up in new york city which is now called columbia university he studied there until the revolutionary war broke out in 1775. first he joined the new york militia as an artillery officer obviously he was a patriot even writing publicly in favor of independence though he remained in town to complete his studies instead of fighting at least until the british took control of the city a year later then he went full time under the continental army hamilton fought as an artilleryman until he started working with his old friend and trading partner hercules mulligan to gain information about what was going on in new york mulligan's slave cato ferried the messages and hamilton deciphered them through this work general washington recognized hamilton's ability with a pen so hamilton became washington's aide de camp he was basically washington's right-hand man writing the orders and various communiques so he became close friends with john lorenz and marquis de lafayette while they were all wintering in valley forge after that miserable time they managed to continue the fight long enough to secure an alliance with france when american prospects were significantly improving in 1780 hamilton met elizabeth skyler and married her after some silly quarrel between him and washington hamilton quit to be with his new bride refusing to rejoin the fight for almost a year washington finally convinced him to come back by offering a command of a battalion thereby promoting him to colonel along with his friend lafayette they led the two key charges during the decisive battle of yorktown the war was basically over for him so he returned to new york to become a lawyer he also handled much of the schuyler family business which included slave trading and quickly ingratiated himself in new york society even though the british occupation continued for two years during that time he took his first political role as congressman under the articles of confederation he'd served there off and on for the rest of the 1780s but the constitution was clearly broken so hamilton was one of the delegates to the creation of the current constitution in 1787. to campaign for its ratification he organized a pamphlet writing effort to argue its case he recruited james madison and john jay to collectively write under the pseudonym publius hamilton wrote most of them though historians generally consider madison's number 10 the most important one sure enough the states ratified the constitution george washington hamilton's old commander from virginia became the first president and appointed hamilton as secretary of the treasury for all of his trading prowess he set to work making a monetary policy that would enfranchise the most powerful elites in the country by centralizing the banking system the faction forming around thomas jefferson fiercely opposed this because they envisioned an american society surrounding yeoman farmers as the elites instead hamilton and jefferson compromised in 1790 allowing for the first national bank charter and part of the new capital to be in jefferson's home state of virginia though most of it would be in maryland the factionalism really broke out surrounding whether to join with france against britain during the war of the first coalition in 1793 with hamilton's federalists taking the site of neutrality whereas jefferson's democratic republicans argued for the french alliance washington sided with the federalists sending john jay to sign a trade agreement with britain jefferson quit the cabinet and eventually formed his own party well hamilton remained until 1795 when he resigned because of the burden of the job the treasury was the largest department at the time and he'd worked tirelessly to establish it he still wrote washington's famous farewell address which denounced the growing party system despite being heavily on the side of the federalists back in new york hamilton continued lawyering but still wrote copious amounts of public letters and pamphlets when james monroe confronted him about an affair he had back in 1791 where he paid off a cuckholded husband to continue with his paramour for another year hamilton publicly confessed to it in a pamphlet this halted hamilton's political prospects for the rest of his life but he still had influence especially when he took over leadership of the society of the cincinnati a veteran's group of elites from the revolution and he eventually used his connections there to gain supreme command of the us army during the quasi war with france with the rise of factionalism came a huge amount of pettiness despite the somber gravitas we often depict the founding fathers with today they were melodramatic primadonnas they took every little slight as an affront to their honor hence why duels were so common including around 12 affairs of honor with hamilton though only one carried all the way through to an actual shooting not only was hamilton an elitist bent on currying favor with the wealthy but his political rivals simply wanted a different kind of elite so sure enough local politics in new york dragged him into a bunch of overbloated bickering a democratic republican named aaron burr beat his father-in-law phillip schuyler for senate in 1791. skyler beat burr in 1797 with the help of hamilton's connections so burr decided to form his own club he started organizing tammany hall into a political machine the rival factions became so beleaguered that burr fought a duel with hamilton's brother-in-law john church though no one was injured meanwhile hamilton fell a foul of john adams who thought hamilton was conspiring against him as head of the army and society of the cincinnati leading to adams even firing two of his own cabinet because of their supposed loyalties to hamilton the adams administration was imploding when the bellicose election of 1800 happened and hamilton stayed aloof he had just worked with burr during a famous murder case that year but when the electoral votes were tied between burr and jefferson congress had to decide the tie hamilton tacitly supported jefferson who became president and burr relegated to vice thereby cementing the rivalry between him and burr with all this melodrama hamilton was a contentious figure his firstborn son ended up trying to defend his honor and died from wounds inflicted during a duel hamilton did not have to live with the sorrow for very much longer burr ran for governor of new york in 1804 hamilton openly supported burr's opponent and during the election some supposed statements from hamilton leaked to the press that challenged burr's honor they sent a torrent of letters to each other but burr was a consummate duelist himself and continued to be unreconciled despite still holding the position of vice president hamilton made his intentions clear when he wrote a public letter stating i have resolved if our interview is conducted in the usual manner and it pleases god to give me the opportunity to reserve and throw away my first shot and i have thoughts even of reserving my second fire and thus giving a double opportunity to colonel burr to pause and to reflect technically throwing away your shot in a duel is called de-loping now that would make the song a lot less catchy i'm not gonna de-lope i'm not gonna deal anyways it's actually unclear if hamilton intended to since he reportedly made it seem like he was going to shoot at burr on the day through many subtle clues but he probably de-loped just in time for burr to kill him the duel made burr persona non-grotto with the jefferson administration and humiliated him it didn't help that he was heavily in debt so he hatched a scheme after losing political office to filibuster the west roughly around american louisiana and spanish texas the second jefferson administration found out about it and had him arrested but the supreme court heard the case for treason and chief justice john marshall acquitted him burr was so hated that most american cities had effigies burnt of him he ran to london for a time before returning to die hiding from his creditors under an assumed name on the day of his newer wife divorcing him his ignominy began by ending alexander hamilton's story the man who made america forever capitalist and a two-party system [Music] as you can guess what hamilton represents has been a source of controversy to say the least factionalism and capitalism are two things people aren't very likely to praise the conventional saying goes it's not good but it's the best we've got in fact that's kind of how people talk about democracy by saying democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time but we invest a lot of nonsense in the founders neither the federalists nor democratic republicans we're interested in democracy like we know it today they didn't want to expand the franchise most were either in favor of a wealthy upper class controlling the republic like the federalists or wanted an agrarian society hamilton was so opposed to it that he called democracy our real disease after all they'd rebelled over taxes hamilton was simply furthering that bourgeois revolution by creating a system that ingratiated capitalists toward american society and despite his untimely demise at the age of 47 he was ultimately successful when the first national bank charter expired in 1811 it was bought by the wealthiest american at the time steven gerrard he's probably the fourth richest person in american history of course congress realized their mistake in letting that bank charter lapse because only a year later they had to depend on gerard to give them enough credit to fight the war of 1812. hamilton got his wish though because that meant gerard stayed loyal to the us sure enough we live in a much more hamiltonian united states than a jeffersonian one today there's been more urban americans than rural ones since the turn of the 20th century though neither side of that divide was particularly enamored with the prospect of commoners gaining political freedom as such hamilton has been a symbol of elitism throughout most of us history someone who toiled for the benefit of capitalists while he was never a forgotten figure as even this musical likes to frame him his legacy certainly did not appeal to most americans but times were a-changing first came the revisionists who really emphasized the elitism of the founding fathers describing their flaws as intentional and bereft of morality then came the overreaction to the reaction for our friends in the press who place a high premium on accuracy let me say i did not actually hear george washington say that from the 1980s onward culture warriors assailed the history profession neoconservatives wanted a return to triumphalist orthodoxy long demurred as inaccurate and purposefully marginalizing revisionists had abandoned the idea of a glorious national character splintering it into race class and gender divides neocons hated that with a passion and wanted to stuff the genie of historical inclusion back into the bottle so a new batch of authors arose in the 1990s to redeem the nation from revisionism called founder chic these folks sought character in the founders as though scholarship had just frozen in the 1950s and that arthur schlesinger jr was the last historian to write on the topic at all so now they could apply newer storytelling techniques to revive the so often maligned elites suffice it to say this was extremely popular but also extremely inaccurate into that heady mix came the basis for this musical ron chernow's book it's a classic work of founder chic filled with idealistic whitewashing and mischaracterization for the sake of popular appeal so we can understand many of the errors the movie makes because it is based on something with so many errors if you want an excellent book that seems to spend more time highlighting chernow's problems than the plays check out historians on hamilton linked in the description what chernow's book did was erase hamilton's elitism which was so fundamental to his character all in favor of making him seem like a man of the people this is where this whole idea came from that's entirely a mischaracterization as we will see later seemingly unbeknownst to the playwright lin-manuel miranda scholarship on the founders did not settle into the cozy orthodoxy of founder sheik american exceptionalism was well and truly dead post-revisionism has instead been the actual answer to revisionism characterized by a disregard for moralizing and an emphasis on nuance these historians apply increasingly complex theories to interpret the past and reveal newer and more accurate stories about it that is where the field is going as a whole essentially dropping the anachronistic founder's chic altogether but when the musical came out in 2015 it was perfectly calibrated to the obama era's neoliberal sensibilities as in an open disregard for the problems belying systemic oppression for the mere spectacle of representation with a veneer of possible progress as we've gone through a very different presidential administration those issues became more difficult to ignore but the movie has functioned as a welcome respite from that craziness raise a glass of freedom something they can never take away despite its ugly ideological underbelly it hides that influence well delivering an obligatory dose of triumphalism to a beleaguered 2020 public and stimulating an intense renewal of interest in history of course such renewals always demur once presented with the reality behind the music many of whom are probably already befuddled by this criticism and will go no further out of sheer ignorance to the people saying bullcrap like it's just a movie or whatever take miranda's word for it when he says i want historians to take this seriously now i would be remiss not to mention the play's other influences telling the story of a famous historical figure with a modern musical twist came from bloody bloody andrew jackson but most importantly was the 1972 film 1776 which i've already reviewed that's why john adams doesn't show up as a character in this one unfortunately founder sheik was reacting to what that film represents and so in many ways that film is much more progressive than this one what that film did so incredibly well by addressing new scholarship and examining some real systemic issues this film utterly fails at i think the musical somewhat atones for its mistakes but let's talk about the problems first before i get to how it counteracts them [Music] perhaps the root of all the issues in this play is that it attempts a cradle the grave story rather than narrowing his topic lin-manuel miranda tried to tell all with a biography like hamilton's that's next to impossible even here where i've got the benefit of voice over narration i had to pick my battles suffice it to say there's a lot of time compression it's also just discombobulated like for the first time i had to make dueling timelines in order to make sense of all the differences yeah it's that complex maybe it's because they're rapping so the inaccuracies simply come faster but there are some severe problems with what this musical does so i'm going to do a bit of a lightning round counting up a bunch of smaller and less important inaccuracies before getting to the tougher issues because i don't think these quick ones matter all too much [Music] you punch the burster yes hamilton did not quit king's college he had to flee because of the british and in fact he defended the college's loyalist bursar from an angry mob [Music] the only person in this song that hamilton met before joining the militia was mulligan the rest were acquaintances from his time as washington's aid to camp [Music] thanks to the wording of the declaration of independence and the preceding pamphlet common sense americans blame king george iii for the rise in taxes in the entire revolutionary war but he simply acquiesced to parliament it was his parliament after all the other issue with this campy performance is that it shows george's insanity when that wouldn't come for years afterwards i guess you could argue that's just time compression though [Music] once again hamilton only met lafayette after becoming washington's aide to camp lafayette joined the continental army of his own accord before the french intervened and the reason for that intervention was the spectacular victory at saratoga which was led by benedict arnold so this serves to once again erase arnold's tragic legacy also burr happened to be at those battles so they missed a good juxtaposition there [Music] here is a perfect example of how things happen at oddly mixed up times because a lot of events happen out of sequence eliza and hamilton met in 1780 but they'll talk about the battle of monmouth after this which actually happened two years prior there's a deeper problem here but i'm just going to point out that phillip schuyler had three sons [Music] instead of me he promotes charles they seem to pretend that hamilton was passed by to promote general lee at this point hamilton was a mere captain and lee had been an officer in the french and indian war so this claim makes no sense furthermore they skipped right over the fact that washington court-martialed lee so this duel was fought over the fact that lee kept declaiming washington for the prosecution and washington simply blew him off [Music] so go home washington did not send hamilton away hamilton quit also he didn't go home he stayed near the army as he campaigned for his own command eliza even joined him there's hamilton's first son was born in 1782 and stuff happens after this such as the battle of yorktown that actually happened before the birth of his first son also the play doesn't talk about alexander and eliza hamilton's other seven children when i was given my first command i led my men straight into a massacre i'm guessing washington is referring to braddock's defeat in 1755 here first of all he did not lead that second he'd already led two expeditions into the ohio valley the second of which sparked off the french and indian war though i guess their defense of fort necessity could be considered a massacre but no one would have called it that back then [Music] this is the first murder trial of a brand new nation hamilton and burr worked on what's sometimes called the first murder trial in 1800 it's called that purely because this is the first surviving court transcript of a murder trial so it's a bit misleading also considering this happened in 1800 it's out of place to illustrate hamilton becoming a lawyer which he had already been for two decades at that point [Music] hamilton did not propose that burr writes some federalist papers that was governor morris burr was not a major political figure in 1787 but this is the play amalgamating characters a lot is invested in bird despite him not becoming a concern to hamilton until 1791 they do the same thing with the reynolds affair that wasn't jefferson and burr but james monroe who was reynolds lawyer it makes a lot of narrative and logistical sense but keep in mind that's pretty inaccurate [Music] i have found a wealthy husband who will keep me in comfort for all my days angelica schuyler was already married by the time she met hamilton james madison was not a member of washington's cabinet yet edmund randolph was there so madison functions as an amalgamated character here furthermore there wasn't much to defend for the south what were they even trying to affect [Music] keep ranting we know who's really doing the planting while jefferson was a slave owner hamilton had traded in slaves himself and benefited from marrying into the slaveholder schuyler family new york was a slave state at this time so this whole standoff doesn't make sense and belies a much deeper problem we'll get to later [Music] and i just turned 9 i have a sister but i want a little brother he already had four siblings [Music] lafayette's a smart man he'll be fine and before he was your friend he was mine jefferson befriended lafayette around the same time as hamilton and actually met him before hamilton did so that's a strange statement hamilton quit in 1785 before adams's administration he was general of the army from 1799 to 1800 but was not fired this was not the source of their conflict philip hamilton was not defending his father's honor because of the reynolds affair for the pamphlets had already been out for half a decade when this happened it had to do with george eaker calling his father a traitor over some political writings [Music] if eliza did become grief stricken and separate with hamilton because of the reynolds affair it happened while the whole thing was a secret she was clearly back to his side by the mid-1790s because they had children together the pamphlet itself was not a shock to her perhaps because she already knew she'd end up burning a lot of correspondence decades later but i think that's actually a nice homage to the lacking primary sources we have on her [Music] the election of 1800 happened before philip's fatal duel in 1801 obviously [Music] you won in a landslide by popular vote jefferson won in a landslide but certainly not by electoral votes which is what this line is referring to that's not how the system worked prior to the 12th amendment [Music] there were four years between the election of 1800 and the burr hamilton duel but once again that's some simple time compression he's already dead as you can see most of these are simply necessary inaccuracies it is a bit chronologically confused and there are some blatant mistakes but for the most part it does not affect the narrative unfortunately that's not the case for three deeper problems throughout the movie angelica is depicted as being jealous of her sister now hamilton was certainly a horn dog hence the whole reynolds affair but this is simply salacious pandering it's been a common tendency of laymen to mistake the common writing affectations of the time with latent sexual energy but in reality they wrote in the sentimental style from the late 16th to early 20th century you could find all kinds of people writing letters that we would think illustrate some kind of physical affection it was commonplace for centuries and only disappeared with the first world war since we don't write like that anymore people just assume they can see hidden relationships because of that old style this has led to a lot of people mistakingly saying famous people were actually gay without any corroborating evidence other than misinterpreting correspondence if the play wanted to indulge in this kind of fan fiction it would do them well to include the people hamilton employed even more sentimentality in letters with marquis de lafayette and john lorenz oh yeah it's a founding father's threesome dear cleo people are gonna take that seriously though some folks do indeed misinterpret these letters they are simply not understanding what the sentimental style is same goes for angelica to the point that miranda seems to have tried to ignore her marriage to john barker church even though she'd been married to him for three years prior to even meeting hamilton and bore their first son only a year after their marriage so this entire subplot reveals quite a misunderstanding of primary sources but the next one is worse [Music] perhaps the most important interpretive phrase in this play is this immigrants we get the job done since miranda is a puerto rican by ethnicity though he's a native new yorker and immigration from latin america has been such a hot button topic throughout the last decade it makes sense that it would have such a bent throughout the musical hamilton's supposed immigrant background is played as a key interpretive framework [Music] well i don't have your name i don't have your titles i don't have your land [Music] an arrogant immigrant orphan bastard horse even the key song about avoiding de-loping or throwing away his shot is proceeded with this phrase during a curtain call in 2016 they very publicly used this interpretation to plead with the newly elected vice president to take the pro-diversity message to heart we serve we are the diverse america who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us unfortunately this is one of the key misinterpretations from chernow's book in no way was hamilton an immigrant no one considered him to be nor did he think of himself as one when he went to king's college he did so in the same way that an american today might go to a different state in the union to go to college by that logic i am far more of an immigrant than hamilton was given that i now reside in my third state for the sake of college moving from one place in the british empire to another was not seen as immigration plus no one would argue lafayette was an immigrant turns out we have a secret weapon an immigrant you know in love who's unafraid to step in everyone give it up for america's favorite fighting friends that's just simply out of place this especially contrasts with hamilton's actual thoughts on immigration he said how extremely unlikely is it that they as in immigrants will bring with them the temperate love of liberty so essential to real republicanism there may as to particular individuals and at particular times be occasional exceptions to these remarks yet such is the general rule remind you of anyone and some i assume are good people so this is actually the play projecting modern ideals onto a character who certainly didn't hold them that kind of breaks the entire narrative's back they essentially whitewashed alexander hamilton and it gets worse [Music] argue over the definition of whitewashing all you want this movie making hamilton out to be anti-slavery will fit that definition perfectly the schuylers were a slave-owning family and hamilton managed much of their assets eliza had a personal slave at the time of their marriage and since coverture laws were still in effect that made hamilton himself a slave owner this becomes particularly troublesome when the schuylers are singing about the need for women's rights all while the chorus positively proclaims the greatness of work [Applause] then talking about how hard they're working when they're slave owners makes that phrase take on a whole new meaning doesn't it hamilton did not express anti-slavery sentiments he joined the new york manumission society once it formed in 1785 but they merely wanted to help with manumission and end the transatlantic slave trade in fact most prominent members of the society were slave owners themselves he was no abolitionist and he did not learn the error of his ways in fact new york was a slave state his entire life while they passed an abolition act in 1799 it only gradually emancipated slaves who wouldn't gain freedom until 1827. it also indentured their children for 20 years if male and 25 if female so when the movie says this a bunch of revolutionary manual mission abolitionists give me a position show me where the ammunition is it is blatantly ignoring all of this history 1776 handled this so well by representing slavery as a system one in which the north was just as much implicated in it as the south whose spotsons are made in the triangle trade hail slavery the new england dream god what a bastardly bunch we are atomizes individuality so much that people only think of slave owners themselves as inherently evil rather than part of a system as a country we've turned further and further rightward since the crisis of confidence in the 1970s it is a crisis of confidence that is why they will follow us so you can't expect a 2020 movie to be more progressive than one that came out half a century prior we're still is how they present hercules mulligan [Music] they had a golden opportunity to show kato his slave but instead erased him from the narrative this is truly whitewashing plus there's so much emphasis on lorenz's failed scheme to create a black battalion work with hamilton we write essays against slavery and every day's a test of our camaraderie launches in south carolina redefining black and white soldiers wonder alike if this really means freedom as you know john dreamed of emancipating and recruiting 3 000 men for the first all-black military regiment this completely fails to show what he proposed that for beginning in virginia but eventually elsewhere the british had a program of recruiting slaves from patriot owners and freeing them for their service this is why lorenz proposed a patriot version of course they pretend he didn't have enough time to institute such a policy his dream of freedom for these men dies with him but in reality that was because the patriots would not endanger their cause by implementing it pennsylvania was the first state to pass gradual abolition and that was toward the end of the war in 1780 no amount of diverse casting can remove the stain of whitewashing hence why many historians fiercely denounce this play especially those who study slavery but i do think it atones for these issues in several ways that diverse casting is doing something interesting though there are two non-hispanic white actors with speaking parts in this and one plays a loyalist while the other plays king george himself while they certainly fill the role of antagonists bird does more directly who is played by a person of color this is not some silly kind of color-blind casting it is doing something narrative-wise their race indicates their patriotism if they are lacking in patriotism like preaching against the american revolution as in samuel seabury then they are portrayed by a white actor one of the key problems that scholarship over the last half century has tackled is to de-center the idea of a national character the idea of some homogeneous identity that makes for a kind of cultural consensus was at the core of orthodox history the problem with such a notion is that it inherently marginalizes people if people are not the majority or seen as carrying the nation by their very physique then they do not fit the nationalist narrative at the core of this casting decision is to show that people of color are part of america and that's truly something special movies plays or any kind of media including history are always products of their time history is written in the present hence why saying stuff like just tell the past as it was is inherently ignorant of the entirety of historiography the writing of history has a history itself so while there is this problem of trying to represent people who enslaved black people by having them played by people of color and then apologize for their misdeeds while wearing the face of the very people those misdeeds were perpetrated upon it also shows the inclusive spirit of recent historiography if not truly capturing its depth and the play shows an obsession with not so much history itself but historiography it constantly says stuff like this [Music] but no one else is in the room where it [Music] the past is up to the present to interpret it directly addresses what historian marissa fuentes calls mutilated historicity she speaks of how archives reinforce the violence of slavery by perpetuating the erasure of enslaved voices this film is preoccupied with how and by whom history is told many of which are the very people the violence of the archives is inflicted upon it is unfortunate that the basis of this film is from the defunct perspective of founder sheikh and cradled the grave storylines but that's the moment we're in a time where neoliberalism has atomized individuality so much that we can somehow incorporate culture wars neoconservatism into progressive representation along with this hyper focus on historiography is a great deal of primary sources quoting a primary source at length can slow a movie to a crawl in the best of circumstances but to include this much in a musical even wrapping a few of them now that's just plain amazing here are a few places where they went out of their way to quote stuff i anticipate with please and expectations in which i promised myself to realize the sweet enjoyment of partaking the purpose is of improper speculation my real crime is an amorous connection with his wife it even deals with the fact that we lack many of eliza's letters you can appreciate what they're doing when they cite their sources verbally even though the plot is all discombobulated it covers much of what hamilton did and that's a lot you can return to these dueling timelines if you want to get a better picture of the actual timeline but it doesn't really matter to the narrative so long as they're there plus the inaccuracies section will help sort you out a little bit they had to amalgamate and exclude some characters simply because of the limited space of a broadway production and it even manages to allude to a lot of other events outside the play like remember this guy who that's to me all those years ago what was it 85 that's poor man they're going to eat him alive he's alluding to the fact that adams was the first u.s minister to britain after the war and he was certainly in for a hell of a time as president plus one thing this play just nails is the dumb pettiness of these interpersonal rivalries even if adams is off screen we see how nasty it got really the election of 1800 could rival some recent electoral drama for its sheer enmity probably the standout moment for me were the cabinet debates they frame it as a rap battle and that's just a perfect allegory washington simply let them bicker and stood aloof as though judging the arguments though he seemed to always back the people who would become the [Music] on your federalists so it would be a mistake to say these parties were sectionally aligned when you realize washington was basically a federalist and the play brilliantly captures these issues in fact i dare say this would have been far better if they simply focused on the early republic from the battle of yorktown to hamilton's death in 1804 because this is where the play shines brilliantly someone managing to make the melodrama of the founders fun and interesting bites back against the turgid sobriety these kinds of things are normally depicted with and considering booze was one of the main things that the founders consumed sobriety is definitely something you don't want to depict them with god [Applause] imagine what's gonna happen when you try to tax our whiskey drink and drink a dragon dragon fight sure the events are shuffled around characters amalgamated much of it mischaracterized and many obvious mistakes but it makes up for those problems honestly if miranda had relied more on other historians narrowed down the plot and handled its themes with a bit more ambiguity especially in appreciation for systemic oppression we'd be looking at something comparable to that 1776 film but man those cabinet meetings are a real stroke of genius also if a film wants to do more with diverse casting this is a real standout example plus we just need more movies quoting their sources like this so yeah overall it's a fun and worthwhile film my name is what you know gilbert and sullivan now i'm the model of the modern major thanks to the great courses plus for sponsoring this episode they're a subscription streaming service built off of a 1990 venture that records and professionally produces well it's in the name college courses essentially they take university level lectures given by prestigious professors in their fields apply some slick visuals and generally make the lecture more compelling than even being in the actual classroom along with giving you access to supplemental course materials and they cover all kinds of topics not just history from philosophical and scientific stuff to more practical and fun things like beer appreciation or photography they've got an ever-growing list of lectures for you to watch and you can do so not only from your computer but through their android and apple apps unlike an actual class you can do this at your own leisure without an instructor like me making sure whether or not you've learned there are no tests it's kind of like auditing a course but with better production value and if you click on the link in the description or go to thegreatcoursesplus.com the cynical historian you can start a free trial today as a perfect companion for this episode you can check out joseph hoffman's course on the federalist papers he goes over the specific implications of those documents not only for their time but how they continue to inform our current interpretation of the us constitution so go check them out to see that [Music] you

Channel: The Cynical Historian

Views: 66,255

Keywords: history, documentary, Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton, founding fathers, George Washington, review, accuracy, true story, based on, New York, musical, Revolutionary, Hercules Mulligan, Lafayette, John Laurens, Schuyler, Elizabeth, Yorktown, King George, Thomas Jefferson, federalist, founders chic, Aaron Burr, duel, Adams, 1776, bank, Chernow, Historians, Lin Manuel Miranda, Miranda, early republic, Reynolds affair, James Monroe, James Madison, factionalism, farewell address, hamilton musical

Id: OR3OjvxuOWk

Length: 45min 44sec (2744 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020