HAMILTON - The Real History Behind the Musical

all right i think we're live uh this is all very new what i'm doing today i'm not only using new software i'm on a different channel all together so i expect it's going to take a little bit of time for folks to find their way here so nelson good to see you and i believe that if i've done everything right that the chat's supposed to show up on the little corner here but it doesn't appear that it is uh it might be taking a little bit of time for that to happen i don't know like i said i'm experimenting with all of this so it's all fairly new to me but we'll give a couple minutes and we're going to get started i'm just going to kind of give a little bit of background information and kind of tell you how this is going to go before we get started the first thing i want to say right off the bat is uh nelson you don't have to have seen the musical uh i'm only using the musical uh as a guide for the discussion uh from the standpoint that gives me kind of the topics surrounding alexander hamilton we're going to discuss so robert hello um i want to stay up front i absolutely love hamilton i love musical theater in general i was not a fan of hamilton when it first came out when i first heard about it i thought it was a terrible idea like a lot of other people did as someone who loves history i was like oh you know i don't know but once my daughter got into it and she really loved it she got me sold on it and now i absolutely love it we got to see it live a couple of years ago on the tour when it came to cleveland and it was fantastic so i highly recommend it if you have the least bit interest in history or musical theater check it out on disney plus and watch it it'll be well worth your time secondly the musical hamilton is primarily based on ron chernow's uh biography of alexander hamilton which is lin-manuel miranda who wrote hamilton that was his source information that he used and i've read chernow's biography it's phenomenal it's what led me to want to read chernow's grant biography biography which is also fantastic i recommend both of them to you and if you're not somebody who can sit down and read a huge book get audible now that's what i did because i travel a lot and i listen to it on audible and it's so good zach mills hello robert sharon hello um so you can see my my space is starting to take shape and what you see over here these are actually and i'll show you one of them i'm doing up these little kind of memorial boards for each of my civil war ancestors that's what you see with the flags there uh so they look like this uh so this is private john mowry who's my third great grandfather he was in company k 40th kentucky mountain infantry and it kind of shows some of the highlights of what he was serving in some of these others are just ancestors of mine that's the uss wyoming right there who my great-grandfather was on this is a letter from harry truman to my uncle who was in world war ii and then right here you see his service record uh behind me that's his original uh discharge uh record that he was given uh so just kind of showing you a few things there i have not mr alecra i haven't seen his or read his washington bio but i'm definitely going to have to check that out so uh with that said i i'm just saying i love hamilton so so by talking about the history and what it got wrong and what i got right i'm not trashing hamilton i get it in a musical as in movies and things like that sometimes they have to condense characters um combine characters uh so people are in places they never were saying things they never said for the sake of the story and i'll talk about some of those examples but hamilton is outstanding i highly recommend it so with that in mind i'm just going to kind of work my way down through uh they're like 40 some songs some of these we won't talk about much at all but others there's a lot to digest i'm going to kind of walk through the the musical and talk about what was happening in the musical what the story talks about and what the real history is so the first song is called alexander hamilton and that's the one you're probably most likely to have seen it's the one that kind of starts with if you're familiar with it all he starts with head as a bastard orphan son of a [ __ ] and a scotsman uh dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the caribbean by providence improv impoverished and squalor grow up to be a hero and the scholar so it gives a lot of the background about who alexander hamilton is so i want to talk a little bit about his history alexander hamilton is born to a couple out of wedlock uh and that was something that haunted him his entire life uh on the island of nevis in the british west indies and uh he grew up on saint croix which is a nearby island his mother her maiden name was rachel faucette she was half british half french huguenot and she had first married this guy named peter levion and peter levion was not a good husband by all accounts they end up separating but because of the laws in place at that time she could not get a divorce without his consent so even though they were separated they were no longer married peter levion never granted her a divorce and so when she meets james hamilton who is this fourth son of a scottish laird named alexander hamilton and being a fourth son you're never going to inherit anything so he comes to the caribbean to try and make his fortune yes saint kitts and nevis that's the same place robert that's where hamilton's from uh he was born in nevis in a town called charlestown so james hamilton and rachel faucet are unable to marry they would have married if they were allowed to by law but they couldn't and so they have two children together they have a son named james and then a younger son named alexander and alexander from the very beginning is this really intelligent bright kid that everybody kind of just can tell there's something special about him but when alexander is a small child his father leaves and goes to another island and as far as we can tell hamilton never sees his father again they write letters they stay in contact the rest of their lives but as far as anybody can tell they never saw each other face to face after that so he's just a young kid when this happens his uh his mother then ends up getting i think yellow fever and she dies when alexander is like 11 12 years old yeah and uh so now he's an orphan uh as is his older brother was his older brother by this point is kind of old enough to take care of himself and so now he's an orphan and he ends up they first go to live with this cousin and then the cousin commits suicide and that's in the song so it's just this one just bad break after another for this kid he ends up being employed as a clerk for a trading company a wealthy trading company and he he so distinguishes himself as a like 13 14 year old kid as a clerk that the owner of this company basically leaves him in charge and so this kid is bossing around sailors and tradesmen and making important decisions involving uh large sums of money and uh these trading things that are happening and that's where he first experiences slavery because slavery is a big part of the sugar uh crop that's happening on this island that's primarily what's happening there so everybody either was a slave or probably was involved in the slave trade in some way and that was all happening all around alexander hamilton well then as though you think things can't possibly get any worse a hurricane devastates the island of saint croix where he's living and it's this moment as with many moments in hamilton's life where he rises up and that's a theme in the musical hamilton writes a description of what happened on the island and uh it gets published in a local newspaper but there and what is just one of many times where older men recognize the promise of this young man there's a guy who ends up um he hold on one second i got this little cup thing i gotta get rid of there um there's a guy who ends up i think his name was knox taking this and sending it to the mainland and it gets published and suddenly everybody's like holy cow who is this author this is a really brilliant mind and that's when for the first time everybody uh who's never met hamilton hears about him and starts to realize there's something special about this kid so long story short the people on the island of saint croix take up a collection to sponsor alexander hamilton going to new york going to the to america to get an education with the with the idea that he's going to become a doctor or something and then he's going to turn right back around come back to the caribbean and offer you know his services to those people well once hamilton leaves he never comes back um so buffing what are you saying is there a problem nelson um looks like everything's working okay um so he uh he never comes back so uh this whole that song covers all of that uh so he gets you know sponsored to go to the new world and he he shows up in new york uh and and initially he wants to go to princeton uh princeton is a brand new school co-founded by a guy named aaron burr senior who's the father of hamilton's future nemesis and so he finds out he's not able to quite get in there he ends up deciding he's going to go to king's college which today is known as columbia university in new york but he doesn't have enough of an education to do that so he's got to take some some courses at a boarding school or something like that and while he's doing all this he meets a guy named hercules mulligan who is another person who will help define his future and hercules mulligan is one of several people that we are introduced to in the second song in hamilton which is called aaron burr sir he meets aaron burr he meets hercules mulligan uh he meets marquita lafayette and he meets uh john lawrence well it didn't quite happen that way he didn't meet all these guys at once in a bar and immediately become good friends with all of them robert how's it going good to see you um what he does is he meets hercules mulligan and mulligan starts getting him connected with people in society and so people start to to get to know this teenage kid who's just come to a new world you know a thousand miles from home and uh he eventually goes to uh to columbia university uh he hasn't at this point actually met john laurens or aaron burr i don't believe um or certainly not marquita lafayette well right when he starts uh to go to king's college in new york down there in manhattan uh the revolutionary war breaks out up in massachusetts uh lexington and concord all that stuff and and hamilton's immediately uh just captured by the spirit of all of this and wants to be a part of it and one of the things that was happening during this point in history that was a really big part of politics and a big part of all of this stuff is that people would write anonymous editorials basically to publish in local newspapers and one of the early uh accounts that gets published is what's known as by a westchester farmer and we'll get to that later on but hamilton ends up kind of getting in a writing war with this guy but he sees the the um the rallies that are happening he sees the protests that are happening he sees how loyalists are getting treated and he initially kind of tries to defend those people even though he doesn't agree with those people you'll find that in hamilton's life he was all about people who had strong opinions even if they were wrong he could respect somebody who had strong beliefs principled beliefs so i should mention too if at any point you have questions about anything or you want to add something to the discussion please feel free to do that i want this to be as interactive as possible otherwise i'm just going to keep on talking and so then uh hamilton is looking for his opportunity and as a kid he had written a lot about things like how he said oh i wish there were a war where i could rise above my station and distinguish myself because he recognized that as a kid with no land no family uh born to a couple out of wedlock uh that he really had no good prospects for getting ahead in life and so unless something happened like a war so he was always wishing for that while lo and behold he comes to america and a war breaks out and so he immediately volunteers and he ends up becoming the captain of a uh company of artillery in new york and it's actually i believe one of the oldest uh still in existence military units that can trace its lineage all the way back to the beginning of our nation um so he becomes this this artillery captain and uh yeah so zach i'll give you all the details i can about all this stuff um so that's what's happening in hamilton's life then the the story shifts in hamilton and it starts showing the story of the schuyler sisters uh angelica eliza and peggy margarito was her name but she went by peggy um are the three oldest children out of like 15 children of major general philip schuyler who was a revolutionary war commander who i think was primarily uh in command of upstate new york which is where he lived up in albany he robert at that point in history uh you were elected captain of a unit even in the revel even all the way up to the civil war a lot of volunteer units uh would elect their officers and so hamilton was chosen by the other men to be the captain i think he was like 19 years old at that point so that's why he got to be captain because he helped he helped organize the unit and then they made him the captain of it um so now we see the story of of angelica peggy and eliza schuyler uh now peggy is kind of spun as the younger sister who doesn't know much who really is kind of an afterthought in the story but um well mr alaika at this point hamilton had like six months of a college education uh he didn't actually finish his uh education for his law degree until after the war was over um yeah so uh yeah so he he was not yet a lawyer until several years after the revolution so peggy actually ends up marrying a guy named steven van rentzler who if adjusted for inflation was one of the 10 richest men who ever lived in history richer than elon musk richer than jeff bezos people like that i think something like in today's dollars his his wealth was something like 400 billion dollars today so peggy did really well for herself but she doesn't really get to be much of the story uh angelica and eliza are the story because it's not an understatement to say that alexander hamilton had two women in his life it's such a weird weird relationship that hamilton ends up having with his sister-in-law which is who angelica ends up becoming but um but we're not there yet so we're introduced to these daughters of philip schuyler who's a very wealthy man himself uh and and as a major general in the continental army okay so then we get to a song called farmer refuted which is the sixth song it's really cool because this is where a westchester farmer who was a bishop named samuel seabury uh who was a loyalist who was writing the strong defenses um of the robert the the way that a man in the late 1700 gets so rich is land uh philip our stephen van rentzler had a ton of land and after the revolutionary war uh what ends up happening is west of the allegheny mountains uh the appalachian mountains which had been off limits by the british government were suddenly opened up and so there's all this new land available and people gobbled up that land and then turned around and sold it uh and made a huge profit um so that was primarily how people got to be wealthy then especially in the north where there wasn't a lot of slavery um so farmer refuted is uh a series of letters that hamilton wrote to the newspaper where he refuted what a westchester farmer the anonymous name for samuel seabury was writing in defense of the british government hamilton starts writing against writing in defense of the the revolution and it's just one of those times when people start to people start to to notice the intellect of alexander hamilton that song goes right into one of my favorite songs which is called you'll be back and that's when king george iii walks out on stage uh and basically if i understand right what king george iii is doing at this point is this is meant to be his olive branch petition response in 1775 the revolution was largely a new england problem and that's how it was viewed by the rest of the colonies pennsylvania virginia carolinas they kind of saw that as massachusetts problem new england's problem it wasn't their war they didn't want to get dragged into a conflict with the mother country and so they were doing everything they could to try and to try and make peace and reconcile with the british government um yeah mr electro was uh you're right washington was very involved in early land speculation of that sort especially in the western part of virginia uh because virginia at that time owned all the way into what is now kentucky tennessee part of that [Music] so the olive branch petition was an attempt by the continental congress to stave off full-blown war by all 13 colonies so they sent this petition to the king saying listen if you'll just hear us out on some of our grievances we'll we'll end the rebellion we'll stop we don't want to fight we want to reconcile and king george's response was basically uh our faithful subjects are being misled by these horrible people in this congress and they need to lay down their arms or they're going to be arrested for treason and uh commander thorne that's okay we are just getting started there's still plenty to be talked about so um so king george comes out and he sings this song which is basically a breakup song to the colonies saying you'll be back and that leads into uh the next words you hear after that song are british admiral howe's got troops on the water 32 000 troops in new york harbor so these brothers admiral hal and general howe uh they invade new york city this is a massive british force that has come to put down the rebellion and right about the time that the continental congress is passing uh the resolution for independence and and signing the declaration of independence this massive british force is landing in new york city to put down the rebellion um do i think the southern part of the colonies would have fought a proxy war no you know what i think they wanted to avoid that i think loyalist sentiment was much stronger in the carolinas for example and if the king had shown the slightest willingness to reconcile to meet the colonies halfway on some of their grievances i don't think the south would have been a part of the revolution because they had to have all 13 colonies on board the the revel the declaration of independence ended up being 12 in favor one abstention and the only reason new york abstained is because they hadn't been given the okay to vote for independence by their constituent assembly back in new york uh so they abstained uh so there's massive invasion force uh yes absolutely commander thorn i highly recommend hamilton i'm just kind of kind of talking through some of the history and clearing up some of what maybe wasn't exactly the way it actually happened uh this massive invasion force lands in new york city to put down the rebellion and this is the darkest hour uh for washington i don't think the darkest moments for the continental army was um valley forge valley forge wasn't even the worst winter the colon the continental armor experienced it was the winter in morristown most likely but washington is facing a difficult situation and he almost loses his whole army in new york when the british land there's a series of battles that kind of push washington off of long island push him out of manhattan back to harlem they get surprised at kip's bay washington bungles the defense splits his forces loses a division of troops that are captured surrendering one of the forts but it's this moment when washington first notices alexander hamilton because alexander hamilton's leading this battery that he's the captain of and he does so with bravery when a lot of other troops are running when a lot of other people are are running away in fact there's the scene during the uh landing the british landing at kipp's bay and it's in the hamilton musical where washington is just beside himself at how people are running and he says are these the men with which i am to i am to defend america but it's during this time that he notices that hamilton isn't like a lot of those others and he takes notice of hamilton other people had taken notice of hamilton too people like nathaniel greene henry knox some of washington's leading generals tried to hire hamilton as a staff member but hamilton wasn't interested in being on somebody's staff he wanted to fight so by this point we're told that in the musical that hamilton has become friends with marquita lafayette and with john laurens well he hasn't met these guys yet marquita lafayette's not even in america yet lafayette comes in 1777 he's one of a number of foreign officers who show up with letters from people like ben franklin in paris saying hey put this guy in a staff position somewhere and so all of these german and french officers are showing up expecting to be given some title because of who they are and a lot of them get are given these like honorary major general titles but washington sees something in lafayette when he comes in 1777 and gives him real command gives him opportunities and one of the reasons why hamilton and lafayette end up hitting it off is hamilton speaks for fluent french so he can communicate with this guy who just showed up from france not speaking much english lafayette was only like 20 years old himself two of the most important people in the revolutionary war are alexander hamilton and marquita lafayette and they were both like 20 years old um no uh robert it's actually a musical well it's well yeah it's a it's a movie now uh but it's a musical play movie uh the movie is actually just like a movie version of the musical that was filmed on stage so now we get into the song called right hand man which is where hamilton and washington meet and this didn't actually historically happen until after the battle of trenton uh you know washington crosses the delaware he takes the hessians at trenton hamilton was still a uh artillery captain at this time now a lot of movies skew that like there's a movie called the cross thing with jeff daniels playing george washington and you see alexander hamilton as a member of washington's staff at that point but he wasn't he was still an artillery captain at that point uh mr alecro you're thinking of baron von steuben uh who was the guy who showed up and ended up kind of whipping the army into shape afterwards [Music] where does hamilton learn french his mother was french uh and he grew up uh in saint croix where a lot of people spoke spoke french so it was kind of required for him growing up where he did and growing up with french grandparents um so right-hand man is where washington invites hamilton to become a member of his staff now remember hamilton wants to fight he wants the glory of combat but when the commander-in-chief of the continental army says i need you you don't say no and so hamilton joins washington staff and basically becomes his chief of staff this young 21 or 20 year old kid bossing around generals washington's trust in hamilton is so complete that he almost lets hamilton issue orders for him hamilton is running things for george washington from that point forward in 1777. this is when he becomes friends lifelong friends with john laurens john laurens father is henry lawrence who ends up becoming the the successor to john hancock as the president of the continental congress henry lawrence i think ends up getting captured by the british and i think he ends up in the tower of london for a while but john lawrence is from south carolina he's a young guy who even though he's from south carolina believes very strongly in equipping and empowering black soldiers to fight now the revolutionary war is the last time that black and white soldiers fight in the same unit together until vietnam um revolutionary war it happened but then after that uh you know in the civil war in the indian wars in world war one world war ii black soldiers had their own units sometimes with white officers but lawrence was all about he wanted to raise and equip entire battalions of black soldiers to get him into the field so lawrence was very much ahead of his time in that especially for a southerner which is really impressive so can you ask exactly what a general chief of staff does exactly well it was pretty vague because technically hamilton was not didn't have the title of chief of staff he he was a de facto chief of staff he was a member of what washington called his family john laurens aaron burr was a member of the staff for a while um he had these men that helped kind of run you know answer letters uh organize things make sure that you know copies of orders go out to people they're basically like glorified secretaries but hamilton had much more power and much more authority than that it's very vague uh there was no official title given to hamilton but he basically was given a lot of authority in that way but he was constantly writing letters to congress on behalf of washington saying here's what we need in terms of supplies he helped run washington's spy ring um which you see a lot of in the series turn washington spies uh the man i mentioned earlier hercules mulligan who had taken hamilton under his wing is a big part of that serious turn washington spies so the one lines there would have been nothing left to do for someone less astute uh yeah he would have been dead or destitute without a cent of restitution he started working clerking for his late mother's landlord trading sugar cane and rum and all the things he can't afford scamming for every booking getting his hands on planning for the future uh so yeah other people would not have been able to rise above like hamilton did so yeah in that first song they're talking a lot about how he used his brain to get ahead in life so now he's on washington's staff and it's as a member of washington staff that he gets involved in a duel for the first time uh and this actually takes place much later in the musical in in song 15 which is called uh the ten duel commandments they kind of mix up the timeline a little bit but there was this thing called the conway cabal all throughout washington's time as commander-in-chief there were all of these other generals who thought they could do it better hercules mulligan robert is in the last season he's an irish guy who is a tailor uh who spies on the british because he's working on their uniforms and everything he's mostly in the last season you'll see hercules mulligan um but so hamilton is you know fiercely defensive of george washington who he sees as like a father figure to him washington's in his 40s at this point hamilton's just barely 20 and didn't have a father growing up and so you know washington has become a father figure to him this conway cabal was named after thomas conway who was a brigadier general and who was part of the um the group of this committee who was involved in kind of running the war um there were other generals charles lee specifically who wanted secretly to get rid of washington because they thought they should be in charge conway ends up being shot in the mouth in a duel because of what happened but the duel that we see in the musical hamilton uh takes place between john laurens and general charles lee uh because what happens is charles lee who has been constantly trying to undermine george washington nelson welcome back uh charles lee gets given second in command under george washington um is he the guy arnold arrest yes he is uh hercules mulligan is the guy that arnold arrests in the first episode of season four um so charles lee is putting command of the vanguard of the attack on the british rear uh at the battle of monmouth and uh he immediately starts retreating and george washington he is a fiction no he's a real character in assassin's creed um so charles lee uh orders a retreat and george washington shows up on the field and he is just absolutely livid that charles lee has retreated when he should have been attacking the british and uh no charles lee is not related to robert e lee robert e lee's father was light horse harry lee who was a cavalry officer during the war both were from virginia but so charles lee orders this retreat washington confronts him on the battlefield and basically relieves him of command on the battlefield puts lafayette in command of charles lee's position for that attack he takes the attack on in and as the musical says we snatch a stalemate from the jaws of defeat and it looked like a sure defeat under charles lee but lafayette ends up managing to to get a draw out of the battles 100 degrees that day a lot of men died of heat stroke charles lee is disgraced at that point uh and uh it starts bad-mouthing washington openly to anybody who would listen and lee had actually been captured by the british and some people think that the british had turned him and he was openly undermining the british command or the american command but john laurens challenges charles lee to a duel and this duel is portrayed in hamilton now they show aaron burr as the second for charles lee he wasn't it was a different guy but alexander hamilton was the second for john laurens at this duel and john laurens actually shoots charles lee in the chest in the side lee survives the wounds but he never serves in combat again after that uh hamilton is the revolutionary war yeah yeah so you you do see that in turn washington spies you see uh charles lee being dismissed you don't see the duel but so that's hamilton's first of many experiences with duels which will end up defining the end of his life he ends up meeting as a member of washington staff in 1780 he meets eliza schuyler and ends up marrying her now one of the things that they show in the hamilton musical is they show angelica schuyler as lamenting the fact that she basically backs off uh where she wanted to marry hamilton herself but the fact is angelica was already married to a man named john barker church by this time who john barker church is a british guy who ends up being in the british parliament for a while after he and angelica mary so angelica's already married at this point when alexander hamilton has this whirlwind courtship with eliza he marries her and they have this really cool scene then when they're having kind of a drinking party uh like a bachelor party for hamilton um where he's with lafayette uh hercules mulligan um and john laurens and they're celebrating his uh his marriage and they're saying yeah uh they talk about hamilton as being the newly not poor of us because hamilton has married into a very wealthy family whereas he has no money of his own the only thing he has going for him is his proximity to power because he's on washington staff so then in the musical aaron burr shows up at the end of the bachelor party and all the other guys hate aaron burr uh and aaron burr kind of shows up and he's had a command of his own he's a lieutenant colonel by this time hamilton's a lieutenant colonel as a member of washington staff but burr's got a combat command and hamilton wants that and then now we're introduced to aaron burr's story and we find out that burr is uh secretly seeing this woman named theodosia who's married to a british officer which is all true uh aaron burr continental officer uh having an affair with a woman married to a british officer well her husband ends up dying um i think down in georgia or in the caribbean or something and uh and burr ends up marrying this woman named theodosia but now we get a glimpse into aaron burr his psyche what motivates him what he's all about and what aaron burr is all about is political opportunism whereas hamilton's life is defined by strong uh beliefs by principle aaron burr is all about what's gonna get me in power what's gonna get me ahead and so this song called wait for it is where he talks about how i'm just gonna wait and see what happens and when i see my opportunity i'm gonna take it and that's what defines aaron burr's life and that's why eventually he and hamilton who are in close proximity all their lives to each other and why they eventually butt heads now aaron burr has this incredible history of his own he was also orphaned at like two years old his father aaron burr seniors the president of princeton university helps found that university his mother was the daughter of jonathan edwards uh who jonathan edwards was this uh as it was described in the musical fire and brimstone preacher uh he he's the one who preaches this sermon called sinners in the hands of an angry god and so that's burr's upbringing he's brought up by these powerfully outspoken people in his family but he comes from wealth and privilege whereas hamilton does not he has everything handed to him hamilton has to fight and scrap his way for everything and so those things will eventually butt heads as you guys have said a clash of egos a clash of beliefs a class clash of motivations so they go their separate ways and they don't see each other really until after the war at that point uh so at this point now hamilton ends up clashing with that with george washington because over and over and over again all hamilton wants is a chance to fight and he he keeps asking washington put me in the field give me a command and washington says no you're too valuable to me on my staff i can't possibly risk you losing your life and so eventually hamilton resigns as a member of washington staff but he doesn't go home as portrayed in the musical he kind of waits around and kind of hangs out in the camp and his opportunity comes at yorktown so i'm not going to get into all the history but basically what has happened is lafayette goes back to france and he gets guns and ships as described in the musical and he he gets more support from the french government he brings guns but mostly the most important thing is he brings the french fleet the french fleet is the defining factor because they defeat the british and the battle of the chesapeake they run off the british navy and now george washington has lord cornwallis cornered in yorktown with the french navy on one side and his army combined with the french army on the other side um yeah robert we're going to get into that burr and jefferson that's a big part of the story and we're going to get to that uh pretty soon that's one of the defining moments of burr's life but also hamilton's life and hamilton's clashes with jefferson will define his life as well and we're going to get into that really soon so now they've got the british surrounded in order to be able to complete the siege they've got to take what are known as readouts 9 and 10 which long story short are the last part of the british outer defenses that need to be taken and this is when washington goes to hamilton and says okay here's your chance you want to command i'm going to put you in command of this attack and so now the musical in the song yorktown says um that john laurens is in south carolina redefining bravery is how it describes it but no that is not the case that's one of the biggest historical no-nos in all of hamilton is when they say that hamilton's off fighting in south carolina during the battle of yorktown no or that laurens is off fighting in south carolina no lauren's was part of the attack that hamilton was in and so was lafayette lafayette was in command of this attack uh hamilton's in command of a battalion on the ground and lawrence is there with him and uh so they lead this attack in the middle of the night hamilton issues orders to his battalion to fix bayonets but not to load their guns in the musical they say take the bullets out your gun take the bullets out your gun we move undercover and we move as one through the night we have one shot to live another day we will not let a stray gunshot give us away we will fight up close seize the moment and stay in it it's either that or meet the business end of a bayonet and then they say the code word is roshambo and this is really cool because that's one of those little things little details that i love about hamilton the code word was indeed rochambeau for that attack uh so i love that he fits that in there and so lawrence hamilton lafayette they're all part of this attack on readouts nine and ten and by all accounts hamilton is incredibly brave distinguishes himself in this bayonet attack and they take readouts nine and ten with very few casualties and that seals the british fate and so now hamilton can say i led troops in combat in the defining battle of the revolutionary war uh zach he's absolutely pivotal and we'll talk about that uh pretty soon uh hamilton is is is one of the the most important founding fathers uh he's one of the most forgotten uh but we our country doesn't look like it does without alexander hamilton we'll talk about how that happened uh pretty soon the admiral in french charge of the french navy was comp de gras i believe was his name uh was the name of the french and they only had a window of a couple of weeks because the french navy said you've got to do it now because we're heading back to the caribbean before too long and it could have gone a different way because general clinton who's now in command of the british army overall in america refused to send troops to help out with cornwallis and that kind of sealed cornwallis's fate so they win at yorktown and so now there's victory uh everything's going great and so now we come to what happens now uh and by this point hamilton's first born child is born a son named phillip uh who we will talk about uh here pretty soon we're getting near the end of the first act of hamilton and what happens now is that hamilton goes back to new york and he and burr both finish their law degrees and become lawyers and here's one of the most amazing uh things that happens hamilton who's already had some brushes with history now goes back becomes a lawyer and he is hired to define to defend a man named levi weeks in what becomes the very first murder trial in the history of the brand new american nation levi weeks was accused of murdering his fiance and i believe dumping her body in a well and weeks declared his innocence said it wasn't him that did it and he puts together a law team kind of a dream team that includes alexander hamilton and aaron burr aaron burr and alexander hamilton are co-counsel in in the very first murder trial in the history of the united states and they do such an amazing job that they get the guy off and he probably wasn't guilty and there's this really cool scene where they describe how hamilton had all the other lights off in the courtroom and held up a candle to his face for dramatic effect and kind of walks them through why levi weeks could not possibly have committed this crime and it was dramatic it was like something you'd see on law and order and they win they win the trial so um yeah your ego is going to skyrocket when you do jefferson do you know a lot about jefferson is that why robert yeah we're getting to jefferson very soon here actually in just a couple of minutes so that happens so hamilton sets up a really lucrative law practice and he's doing really well for himself as a lawyer he's making a lot of money so he gets a nice house they start having children uh he crosses paths with with burr a lot because they're two of the most prominent lawyers they're both both also kind of involved in politics hamilton's very outspoken about the need for a strong central government that is just not happening with the articles of confederation that they're living under so he becomes one of the first people to really speak out in favor of the need for a united states constitution long story short he gets selected to be one of i think three delegates from the state of new york to be in the constitutional convention so hamilton goes to the constitutional convention and when it's his turn to speak he stands up and he speaks for six hours six hours without anybody else speaking without taking a break for somebody else to have a turn six hours the man speaks what he spoke about for six hours i don't know um because james monroe is the guy who um was supposed to be keeping notes but they had agreed they weren't going to publish the notes they wanted them kept private because they didn't want people they wanted to be able to debate honestly without worrying about their words being used against them later so monroe kept notes but we don't really know exactly what hamilton said during these six hours nelson thank you for that i actually may end up a history teacher at some point i'd love to i've always wanted to be i've got to finish a few college credits to be able to do that and i'm working on that but the first filibuster yeah that's about it um so we don't know exactly what he said but we we have an idea of what hamilton proposed because a lot of people for the rest of hamilton's career the words that he spoke in the constitutional convention are used against him because he was a strong proponent of hereditary uh titles so people like in the senate for example inheriting like a house of lords where you pass down your seat in the senate to the next generation lifetime titles he wanted the office of president to be a lifetime appointment so people very strongly accused him and in some cases rightly so of being a monarchist and being pro-british in his policies and that's that's largely true but that was used against him for what he argued for there but he ends up supporting the constitution and he along with john jay and james monroe get together once the constitution is signed and alexander hamilton's signature is on the constitution george washington was the president of the constant constitutional convention so again he gets to see hamilton in action sees what he's capable of and uh once the constitution is adopted now it's got to be ratified by all 13 states they got to get at least nine i think to ratify it and it was hardly a done deal that that was going to happen a lot of people were going to take some convincing in order to pass to ratify the constitution so hamilton john jay who's also from new york and james monroe from virginia get together and they decide that they're going to start writing a series of essays to promote the constitution anonymously they're going to write 25 of them and each of them are going to write about eight of these essays well as you learn in the musical john jay gets sick after writing five and he drops out james monroe writes like 21 or something like that they end up writing 80 or so essays over six months and hamilton writes 51 of these essays it's described yeah john jay absolutely he's a forgotten founding father much like hamilton is john jay ends up chief justice of the united states he was very prominent in new york politics and largely forgotten as a founding father so hamilton writes the vast majority 51 of the what are known as the federalist papers uh these started as these anonymous essays and i think he wrote under the pseudonym of publius was his title uh for those um but the federalist papers to this day are used by the united states supreme court when they want to try and understand what the founding fathers intended in the constitution now the federal federalist papers are the most referred to documents in supreme court decisions to this day and hamilton wrote most of those papers so he is one of the the founding fathers of our our government in that sense and these things help convince uh some of the people on the fence to come off the fence and support the constitution so now george washington's the only guy that anybody thinks should be president of the united states so he's president and the constitution excuse me i'm gonna take a sip of this the constitution really doesn't spell out exactly what uh the cabinet positions should look like or even what those are supposed to be so that's really largely up to washington and his cabinet to define the role of president the role of cabinet much of what we know and what we believe to have been the intention of the constitution when it comes to an attorney general and the role of the president those aren't really spelled out in the constitution so it was up to the first people to take office to define those roles for future generations and so washington initially wants uh this really well-known economist uh to have the role of secretary of the treasury uh but the man's not willing to take on the job i'm trying to remember off the top of my head who it was um but it wasn't alexander hamilton hamilton wasn't washington's first choice for treasury secretary he was a good friend of his and if give me a second i'll actually look up uh i'm just going to look this up robert morris was the guy he was a good friend of george washington's there's a robert morris university to this day i think it's in pennsylvania maybe virginia i don't remember um but robert morris turns it down and everybody kind of around robert morris is like you know if you want a treasury secretary you want somebody who's brilliant in finances alexander hamilton's your guy and him washington didn't need much convincing because he loved alexander hamilton he knew hamilton's mind he knew what he was capable of so here's alexander hamilton he's about 30 years old at this point and washington says will you be my treasury secretary so hamilton is hired as the first uh secretary of the treasury uh henry knox who had been a general under washington is the secretary of war and now uh washington needs a secretary of state so uh over all the way in yeah you do see nelson you do see the uss wyoming right there uh yeah there it is that's the uss wyoming um so washington wants thomas jefferson as secretary of state jefferson is the u.s ambassador to france and he's been in france for quite a while by this point his wife has passed away he's starting to have children with sally hemmings who is actually i don't know if you know this but most people know that jefferson had children with his slave sally hemings not a lot of people know that sally heman hemings was the half-sister of thomas jefferson's wife they were both daughters of the same man same white man who owned sally hemming's mother and had sally with him so she looked a lot like jefferson's wife so jefferson finally decides that he's coming home from france and jefferson shows up in monticello in charlottesville virginia to a letter letting him know that not only has he been uh been nominated by george washington to be secretary of state but oh by the way the senate has already confirmed you you are the secretary of state congratulations so jefferson no sooner shows up back home in monticello for the first time in like a decade then now he's off to new york city which is the capital of the united states at that time to take office as secretary of state and this is where the clash begins at this point hamilton and jefferson have never met however jefferson knows a lot about hamilton because jefferson while in europe had met angelica church hamilton's sister-in-law and had actually flirted some with her angelica and her brother-in-law alexander hamilton i alluded to this earlier had a very strange relationship and you see that in the musical they openly flirted with each other any reasonable person who knew them and saw how they talked to each other and certainly if they saw their letters to each other would have concluded that they were having an affair they were very openly flirtatious about there's no evidence they ever had an affair but it sure looked that way based on their relationship and eliza his wife was fully aware of the way that hamilton and her sister talk to each other but anyway so uh angelica church hamilton's uh sister-in-law knows jefferson well now jefferson and hamilton meet for the first time and they are complete polar opposites jefferson is a uh today you'd call him a states rights guy he's all about virginia being the the strong power uh and the the central federal government being as weak as possible whereas hamilton's the exact opposite he's all about a powerful executive a power uh residing in the central government and not with the states and um yeah jefferson was the late 1700s hugh hefner yes yeah something like that no jefferson and hamilton hated each other and we're going to talk about some of that here now it starts out okay but it doesn't last because one of the very first things that happens when hamilton gets into office hamilton doesn't do anything small hamilton is one of those go big or go home guys um yeah uh what was normal then is difficult to fathom now if one was a conjecture and character one must consider if uh said individual would do the same in today's dread minion that's an absolutely great point that's why i i really hate when we try to judge people from other areas of history on today's standards it's really unfair for us to do that we can recognize for example that slavery was evil and it was not a good thing and not excuse people who own slavery without necessarily equating people who were part of that society as automatically being evil yeah jefferson in some ways would be a modern day republican in terms of the focus on states rights and wanting small government i wouldn't go so far as to say that he's exactly a modern-day republican because the parties don't look like they did then but jefferson uh definitely very close to the democratic party of the civil war era you know in terms of conservative uh pro-slavery pro-south hamilton's pro-central government um so anyway hamilton immediately when he gets into power starts growing the office of treasury to the point where henry knox who's the secretary of war had something like eight employees in the in the war department i think eight i think that was the max he ever had hamilton had hundreds of employees at the treasury that's how huge and how powerful the treasury was a lot of people said that hamilton was a de facto prime minister for george washington that hamilton was really the guy who was running the government and washington was more of a figurehead so robert we're talking about the washington administration jefferson's the secretary of state hamilton's the secretary of treasury they're by far the most two influential two most influential members of washington's government hamilton starts growing the treasury and his big first proposal is well we need to assume all of the state debts incurred during the revolutionary war so he wants to take north carolina's debt and virginia's debt in new york's debt massachusetts debt and pay off all of that debt and have the the federal government assume that debt and by assuming that debt now they're able you know it's just like today where you got to get a credit card to start um developing credit for yourself establishing credit the federal government was going to do the same thing by assuming that debt they were going to start to establish a line of credit and so he's trying to get the the new country off on the right foot financially and jefferson is absolutely horrified by this idea because number one he sees that as a accumulation of power by the central government but number two as a guy from virginia virginia has largely paid off their debts whereas most of the northern states haven't so he opposes this idea because it's going to hurt virginia and help states who haven't paid their debts off so far so hamilton and jefferson start having this debate about this um uh yes hamilton established let me tell you some of the things that hamilton established hamilton hamilton established the national bank and we're going to get to that in a minute hamilton founded what is today called the new york post hamilton founded the coast guard uh so all of those things uh are things that hamilton's directly responsible for today um so hamilton wants to establish a national bank to assume this debt georgia says team thomas jefferson all right jefferson's absolutely opposed to this and so they're at an impasse because hamilton doesn't have the votes to get this done meanwhile there's also a debate going on about the future site of the u.s capitol are they going to keep it in new york are they going to move it to philadelphia are they going to build a new city somewhere and there's no agreement on that because everybody new york people want it in new york philadelphia people want it in philadelphia southerners want it to be on the banks of potomac they can't agree on any of this so thomas jefferson james monroe and alexander hamilton get together at what's called the dinner table compromise they get together in new york city and they meet to the coast guard was basically it was a bunch of privateers it was basically revenue cutters it was called the revenue cutter service i think at the time um because at this point and i'm getting a little ahead of myself the federal government's only real source of revenue because there's no income tax there's no real property tax for the federal government the federal government's only real source of revenue is taxes on imports tariffs so that's why it was so important to make sure that people weren't importing goods without being taxed on them because the government needed that revenue oh you got a tropical storm warning be safe man so hamilton jefferson monroe get together and they hash out a compromise james monroe is a member of the house of representatives at this time and so he says here's what we're going to do we'll get you your votes for the assumption plan the the assumption of state debt and the establishment of a national bank we'll get you your votes in the house to pass that if you will get your new york people to support the southern proposal to build a city of washington dc on the banks of the potomac river out of land carved from virginia and maryland and so hamilton says okay let's make it happen that's the song robert just alluded to it it's called the room where it happened and this is where aaron burr is seeing that people are making decisions that he has no part in and by this point aaron burr is actually a senator aaron burr gets elected senate uh to the senate from new york uh and guess who he defeats to take that senate seat phillip schuyler alexander hamilton's father-in-law so there's another source of conflict uh aaron burr basically jumps ship but by this point political parties are starting to form and i'm getting a little ahead of myself with that but political parties are starting to form and aaron burke kind of jumps from hamilton's side of the equation to the anti-federalists of jefferson's camp in order to run against philip schuyler for the senate seat he gets elected to the senate seat and becomes a member of the senate but he's still kind of outside of the decision-making that's happening um mr laker i'm with you too i'm not and i know this will offend some of the people in the chat not a fan of thomas jefferson at all i do not like the man and i'll explain why pretty soon it's not so much for his political stances i i don't agree with some of jefferson's political stances but i understand them it's much more about his personal behavior which i'm going to get to in a minute that i don't like about thomas jefferson and hamilton was guilty of some of that too as well so hey we're an hour in we've probably got at least a half hour or so to go on this but i hope you guys are having a good time so far make sure to hit that like button if you haven't already somebody hit the dislike i'm sad now um but um did byrd not like jefferson either burr liked burr i think aaron burr's only aaron burr was only a fan of aaron burr he was a political opportunist and so he liked whoever was going to get him ahead so anyway hamilton wins this battle and his authority and his power only get magnified because of this uh assumption plan and that now he's given all this power well while this is all going on is the beginning of the end for alexander hamilton's political career his wife and the whole family all the kids go up to spend the summer in albany because it's a little cooler the further north you go they go upstate to visit with the family but hamilton stays behind in the u.s capitol to help work out everything part of that agreement by the way was also that the capital would temporarily be moved to philadelphia for 10 years while they built the new capital of washington dc so now it's not in hamilton's hometown anymore of new york city they've moved it to philadelphia [Music] so while all this is happening a woman named mariah reynolds shows up at hamilton's office and basically says my husband james reynolds has been abusing me he's run out on me i have nothing i hear that you're a man of honor can you please help me and hamilton does something really really stupid he says yeah i can help you what's your address i'll bring by so i need to get some money together i'll bring it by to your house later on and drop it off to you and yeah so that's where things start to go wrong because hamilton shows up mariah reynolds house he gives her some money and mariah says you know what why don't you hang out for a while let's go up to my bedroom and they sleep together and so it happens happens a few more times the song at this point is called say no to this uh and hamilton the way he describes it he says i wish i could say that was the last time i said that last time it became a pastime and so they start this affair for a while and he says in the song he says a month into this endeavor i receive a letter from a mr james reynolds even better he gets a letter from mariah reynolds husband basically saying i know what you did you're sleeping with my wife if you want it to stay a secret you're gonna pay me and you're gonna keep paying me by the way if you wanna keep sleeping with her go ahead just keep paying me to stay quiet about it so um yeah so this goes on for a while but what happens is james reynolds is a bit of a scumbag himself and he's involved in all kinds of shady deals that are happening and i don't want to get too off track from hamilton's story but one of the things that's going on in this time is that all of the veterans of the revolutionary war were given um basically were given uh bonds that were going to be redeemed after the war also promised land and things like that and there was a big concern that the government was going to go bankrupt and it wasn't going to be able to redeem these bonds and so men like james reynolds and others start going around and offering these veterans fractions on the dollar just pennies on the dollar for these bonds so that these veterans feel like you know at least i'll get something on as a return on my money because these speculators as they were known knew that eventually the government was going to pass this assumption plan and that these things were going to be worth their full value and they were going to make a ton of money on this stuff and reynolds is one of the people doing this well anyway eventually hamilton realizes this is never going to stop um and he's he ends the affair he says i'm not paying you anything else you know do what you got to do i'm done i'm done with the affair i'm not cheating on my wife anymore and i'm not paying you another cent well reynolds gets arrested because of one of his shady deals that he's going through and he kind of starts bragging to people in jail and saying hey you know what i got something on the treasury secretary if anybody wants to hear about it but it doesn't really go anywhere at that time well while that's happening another thing happens and that is that alex or the thomas jefferson and this is one of the things that i don't like about thomas jefferson um he hires on the state department payroll this guy named james calendar james calendar isn't really i think he's hired as like a translator but james calendar is not really being hired to be a translator he's being hired to be thomas jefferson's political hatchet man and calendar sets up a newspaper and starts writing these horrible things about alexander hamilton and the other what are known as federalists people who support a strong central government hey what did you miss fanny that that's the name for those that don't know that's the name of the song where you're introduced to the character of thomas jefferson he comes in and says what did i miss because he's been off in france so um anyway james calendar starts being basically the voice for thomas jefferson so what you have going on right now is you have the secretary of state for for george washington's government actively funding with government money a guy who is publishing hit piece stories against washington's government just trashing people like hamilton trashing george washington and calendar is the guy who's doing all this and james calendar finds out about the mariah reynolds affair but he doesn't really make a whole lot of it at that time because at that time hamilton's pretty popular it's just really not politic expedient for him to do that but calendar keeps writing these hit pieces so he's he's he's paid for with government dollars to undermine the government it's it's pretty corrupt um at that time but um anyway so uh fast forward through all of that eventually um at least in the hamilton story the way it's portrayed is that hamilton is still the secretary of treasure treasury when washington decides to resign but that's not what happens or to not run again hamilton and jefferson both leave um after about four years they neither one of them serves out through both of washington's terms so hamilton steps down mainly because he needs money because he makes way less as the secretary of treasury of the treasury than he did as a private lawyer so he needs to make some money to afford the lifestyle that he's accustomed accustomed to and to pay off some of his debts that he's accumulated so he finally goes back to private practice leaves government so does thomas jefferson because jefferson's already thinking about running for president when washington's no longer in office so fast forward a little bit to about i think 1797 right near the end right around the time that john adams takes office and james calendar starts to kind of leak the mariah reynolds story but it doesn't really go anywhere but yeah mr alekra so one last time is one of my favorites as well so the song one last time which is about midway through the second act of the story is george washington's farewell address to the country if you've never read it i absolutely recommend that you should it's one of the most beautiful things ever written by person in government it's basically washington telling the country why he's stepping down and not serving another term one of the best things george washington ever did in service of this country was to not run for a third term as president and he he understood that one of the brilliant things about george washington was his recognition being able to read the landscape and understand that he was basically viewed almost at god-like status in the country and he needed the country to move on from him if it was ever going to move on at all and um so yeah so hamilton is invited to help he's a private citizen he's no longer on washington staff at this point but washington asks him to help write the farewell address and so in the musical you have hamilton speaking the words while washington is singing the words because hamilton's a little more abrasive washington is able to say the same words and have them be received better and so washington among other things is basically saying how you know what i recognize i'm human and in this farewell address he says though i'm unconscious of any specific errors that i may have committed while president i am too knowledgeable of my own faults my own defects not to believe that i must have committed many errors it's really humble and saying you know what i know i'm not perfect i'm sure i screwed up but i did my best and then he talks about how he says after 45 years of service to my country i want to step down and i want to enjoy the fruits of my labor i want to go home to mount vernon i want to be a private citizen i want to enjoy just living under this incredible government that we've created for ourselves and it's so tragic to realize that that washington died like two and a half years after he left office all he wanted was to go home to mount vernon and he never got to really enjoy that um nelson uh when my daughter and me sung a song from this i don't remember which one we did but yeah yeah we'll do that again sometime um yeah the roosevelts decided to challenge that but yeah washington knew he needed to step down for the good of the country and that's what he did so he steps down so john adams becomes president and adams immediately gets embroiled in some issues where he recognizes that we're going to need a govern need a a standing army and so he wants to create an army and he recognizes that there's only one person who can lead this army and that's got to be george washington so here's poor george washington who says i just want to go home i just want to enjoy retirement and peace and adams was like hey washington we need to create an army and you're the only person that anybody will accept in leadership of this army and washington says i'll accept on one condition that you make alexander hamilton my chief of staff my my second in command give him the rank of major general give him actually it's the rank was inspector general i believe which at that time was the uh second in command of the army now john adams absolutely despises alexander hamilton even though they're kind of on the same side politically they're both federalists hamilton and adams hate each other to the point where hamilton had actively worked to make sure that adams was not elected president he actually supported i think charles pickney from south carolina and wrote a lot of anonymous articles and newspapers criticizing john adams he tried to make sure adams didn't get elected washington was in his 60s by that time georgia farm and thank you for that and hey if you haven't already please everybody make sure you subscribe to the channel i would greatly appreciate that to this channel washington was i think 67 when he died he died of a throat infection that was probably very curable by simple antibiotics today and it's really unfortunate uh that he died from that um but yeah he was he was in the 60s by that point which was pretty old for that time and place uh so washington was put in command of the army the army in name only hamilton was really the commander of the army at this point uh so adams hated hamilton hey hamilton hated jefferson and jefferson hated adams jefferson and adams kind of hated each other they had kind of a they were like frenemies they hated each other but they were also friends for a while they had been friends then they became enemies then they became friends again long story um so adam's very very reluctantly gives hamilton the title of the the uh rank of major general against his wishes uh one of the they were also going to appoint a series of brigadier generals and one of the people who applied to be appointed one of those brigadier generals was aaron burr but aaron burr was not given the title or the the rank of brigadier general because george washington said no i don't like aaron burr he served on my staff for a while he's kind of a scumbag he doesn't really have any principles the only person he really cares about is aaron burr no don't make him a brigadier general so burrs denied that chance also i should mention uh going back to mariah reynolds the lady that alexander hamilton had an affair with she ends up divorcing her husband give you one guess who her divorce attorney was aaron burr so there's all of these places where burr and hamilton are crossing paths burr was on washington staff but leaves hamilton ends up succeeding very good has a lot of success on washington staff they serve side by side as lawyers but hamilton ends up a much more successful lawyer than burr burr defeats hamilton's father-in-law to become a senator from new york hamilton and burr find themselves on opposite sides politically burr ends up representing uh hamilton's ex-mistress in a divorce trial so all these things are happening [Music] yeah so john adams gets elected president thomas jefferson as the vice president because at that time according to the constitution the way it worked was the person with the most votes in the electoral college as president the person with the second most votes in the electoral college is vice president so could you imagine right now president donald trump with vice president hillary clinton because that's how the system was at that time i know it's all very confusing jd i'm trying to trying to keep it as understandable and relatable as possible but yeah so so then washington steps down he resigns as commander-in-chief of the army so now who's in command of the u.s army alexander hamilton alexander hamilton major general alexander hamilton is the army commander under john adams john adams can't stand him doesn't want him there and basically has him forces him to resign as the general in chief of the army but hamilton said a lot of awful things about adams adam said a lot of things about hamilton there's a song in hamilton's called the adams administration where um john adams among other things called uh alexander hamilton that creole bastard uh thomas or john adams was called by alexander hamilton a fat slob um people called john adams a hermaphrodite uh just awful awful things and so this is what was going on in politics at that time um so meanwhile the story finally breaks courtesy of james calendar about hamilton's affair with mariah reynolds but the problem is uh these people and in the in the musical it's aaron burr thomas jefferson and james er and james madison who confront alexander hamilton about the affair in the form of we've got these check these checks that you wrote to james reynolds and it sure looks like you were embezzling government funds to pay for improper speculation what do you have to say for yourself well it wasn't really those three guys but in the musical they're not going to introduce three new characters to the story just to tell that so they have it as three political opponents of hamilton confront him it was actually the um speaker of the house i think frederick muhlenberg was his name it was james monroe was one of the other guys and i forget who the third one was oh yeah mr electra absolutely dirty politics is not new and i would argue that what was going on at this time was in some ways nastier than the worst thing you could come up with today politics was awful at that time yeah robert you're right each elector had two votes and you can only vote yeah you couldn't vote for somebody from your state and so that's where it got kind of dicey watergate before watergate so hamilton tells them what really happened he says listen no i didn't i was totally above board in my role as uh treasury secretary however i was having this affair with this lady here's what happened he tells them the truth and james monroe takes notes from the meeting and then somehow within a week or two or so something like that the notes from that meeting get leaked uh publicly and everybody hears about this and hamilton is livid and he knows that monroe's the guy who took the notes so he confronts monroe about it and they get to the place where they actually are gonna have a duel hamilton's gonna duel james monroe the future president of the united states james monroe who was a officer like hamilton under washington crossing the uh delaware in fact in the famous painting of washington crossing the delaware in the same boat with george washington as young lieutenant james monroe who i believe was wounded at the battle of trenton um so um yeah james monroe must love notes uh yeah what was it was madison who was the guy who took the notes at the constitutional convention monroe takes the notes of this meeting so anyway the guy who defuses the situation is aaron burr aaron burr is james monroe's second for this duel and he he stops it before it comes to them shooting each other and they kind of defuse the situation for the time being so i'm looking where are we and the story at this point so some of the stuff gets turned around in the story i'm telling things as they happened historically not as they happened in the musical because the musical kind of reverses some of the events uh from what they really happened so yeah i'm gonna get to calendar two two small bros we're gonna get to what happened to james calendar here in a couple minutes because that's an interesting story in and of itself so anyway so now hamilton's no longer uh the general in chief he stepped down from that he's actively working against john adams james calendar is still writing things on behalf of jefferson against john adams so now it's the election of 1800 and once again you have president john adams vice president thomas jefferson running against each other for president aaron burr gets in the fray uh and what ends up happening long story short is that john adams is done for so it comes down to two anti-federalists thomas jefferson and aaron burr and the understanding was that when the electors voted they were going to vote for jefferson for president and burr for vice president well somebody didn't get the memo or somebody didn't do what they were supposed to and it ends up a tie a thai vote in the electoral college for burr and jefferson well when there's a tie in the electoral college the the constitution says that the vote goes to the house of representatives well even though by this point i should back up hamilton has lost most of his influence by that time because he publishes this thing called the reynolds pamphlet i should have mentioned that first hamilton writes 98 pages about his affair with mariah reynolds he gives the details uh he basically starts out he says the charge against me is for improper speculation in connection with the one james reynolds my real crime was an amorous connection with his wife for a considerable time with her knowing or with his knowing consent so he details the entire affair and he publishes it but before he publishes it he he runs it by some of his friends and says hey i'm thinking about publishing this do you think i should and all of his friends are like listen you know what i get it you're trying to clear your name but i think the country's going to view 98 pages about an affair with another man's wife as a little bit worse than the accusation that most people have already forgotten about that while you were secretary of the treasury you did something you shouldn't have done because you're not treasury secretary anybody more nobody's really taking these accessions seriously but it publishes this stuff and it gets public and it just destroys his reputation okay fast forward back to the election of 1800 some of the federalists say you know what we have to choose it's either going to be burr jefferson who do we pick jefferson's uh viewed by hamilton even though they're enemies as the lesser of two evils and so he kind of quietly uses some of his influence to say yeah mr electro is like no i know you want to come clean but nobody needs 100 pages of detail but you're right um so so hamilton quietly uses some of his influences and the way you see it in the musical is he says if you're asking who i'd promote jefferson has my vote he says you know jefferson and i have never seen eye to eye on anything we hate each other but at least thomas jefferson has principles aaron bird doesn't have any aaron burr only cares about what works politically for him in the moment so he supports jefferson jefferson wins the election but now aaron burr's vice president so there's that now here's where the story diverges from history a little bit in the story we are told that hamilton's influence in that election is what ends up causing the duel between hamilton and burr it wasn't but what happens first is another duel um john barker church ends up uh this is hamilton's wife's brother-in-law so hamilton's married to eliza schuyler eliza schuyler's sister is angelica scholar angelica's husband is john barker church church is back in america by this point and he and aaron burr fight a duel uh so this is hamilton's brother-in-law he and aaron burr before bird becomes vice president fight a duel they actually shoot at each other they they miss and they're thinking about firing a second shot when they finally say you know what okay i'm sorry i didn't mean what i said let's go our separate way so after having shot at each other once and missed they they agreed to end the duel so hamilton's brother-in-law has already fought a duel with aaron burr at this point now what happens is hamilton's 19 year old son philip hamilton who's a student at king's college which is now known as columbia university by all accounts every bit his father's son just as brilliant as his father has all of the same kind of aspects about his character and his intelligence that hamilton has over here's that this man named george eaker has been bad-mouthing george alexander hamilton and philip hamilton 19 years old goes down to confront george eaker about this and one of his buddies also convinced confronts george eaker says hey i heard you called my father a scoundrel i want you to take it back right now or else we're going to have a problem and eaker says no i'm not going to take it back it's true and you know it seems like the apple didn't fall far from the tree and you're apparently a scoundrel too so both philip hamilton and his buddy that was with him i don't know his name both challenged george eaker to separate duels so um eker and this other guy fight a duel uh i think they shoot at each other and miss same kind of deal or maybe they never shoot i don't remember how it goes but basically that duel ends without anybody getting hurt immediately after the first duel now phillip hamilton is going to fight a duel against george eaker and he borrows the pistols from his uncle john church hamilton who's already fought a duel with aaron burr and they go to this place in weehawken new jersey right across the river that's one of the best spots to get a view of new york city it's a beautiful spot for a view of of manhattan and he fights a duel with george eaker and george eaker shoots philip hamilton and mortally wounds him now in the musical you get the the idea that alexander hamilton knew his son was going to fight in the duel and gives his son the instructions to fire in the air and throw away his shot and that if george eaker's a man of honor he'll do the same that'll be the end of it but um from all historical accounts that i have read when alexander hamilton found found out that his son was going to fight the duel that he fainted that he was horrified he did not think it was going to come to actually fighting a duel so he's beside himself philip ends up dying of his wounds and if you look at pictures portraits of alexander hamilton before his son died and just a couple of years later it looks like hamilton aged 20 years he looks like just a sad man he looks a lot like tommy lee jones actually the actor but you can tell that his son's death in that duel has just destroyed this man absolutely destroyed this man that happened in 1801 and so that all happens and so then here's what happens none of this is covered in the musical aaron burr understands that he's not going to be vice president again during jefferson's first term they change the law they amend the constitution so that you basically have a running mate and it's the system as we have it today um so burr's not going to be vice president at the end of his term so he decides he's going to run for new york governor while he's vice president he's running for governor of new york and yeah robert you're absolutely right at that point alexander hamilton is just done with life he's only in his mid 40s you gotta remember at this point he's lived a full life but he's still only in his mid 40s burr runs for governor of new york and it's in the process of his campaign for governor of new york that hamilton is at a dinner party and this is 1804 at this point hamilton's at a dinner party and there had been some stuff published in a newspaper basically alluding to the character of aaron burr people had said some anonymous things and somebody asks hamilton about this and he says you know what uh at least this is what is is claimed it's claimed that hamilton said man i could tell you things that are far worse about the character of aaron burr than any of that and um this gets back to aaron burr and burr writes a letter to hamilton and says uh general hamilton what is this i'm hearing that you've said some that you know some things about my character explain yourself take it back and hamilton uh jefferson's running mate for the second term was george clinton who was the governor of new york because he knew he needed the federalist votes in new york to be elected gov president again so it was george clinton um so hamilton says you know what i i don't know what you're talking about i don't remember saying that but if you want to know what i said about your character you're gonna have to be a little more specific so he doesn't deny that he said something he just basically said what are you talking about give me specifics and then i'll tell you whether or not i said that well that doesn't satisfy burr and they start this series of letters back and forth alluding to what hamilton said and it escalates and it escalates and it escalates and it gets to the point where burr says either take it back or meet me on the field of honor and hamilton says well i'm not going to take it back so i'll see you in weehawken and that's where um it gets to be so i should mention by this point that aaron burr has fathered multiple children with a woman who is not his wife he had a daughter named theodosia with his wife theodosia who ends up dying but while he was still married to theodosia he starts having half black children i i believe it was a son and a daughter so all of burr's descendants who have the last name burr are half black through he had a relationship with a servant of his who was born in india who but i believe was half african um but nobody ever mentions that you know everybody talks about hamilton having an affair well aaron burr was doing the exact same thing with a servant girl while he was married and actually had children with the woman um so while all that's happening one other thing i should mention james calendar the guy we talked about earlier thomas jefferson's hatchet man who wrote all these terrible things about hamilton and who leaked that affair story actually turned on thomas jefferson and started writing things about thomas jefferson including during the campaign he alludes to the fact that hey i know some things about how thomas jefferson was using government funds to pay for people to undermine washington's government washington and during all that and it was true that really did happen and he was all set to testify in a court case where all of this would have come out where he was going to testify that thomas jefferson who's running for reelection this president of the united states funded political opposition with government money and lo and behold james calendar shows up drowned in three feet of water surprise surprise surprise they say he got drunk and could not rescue himself out of the three feet of water but it it looks for all intents and purposes like thomas jefferson or somebody else who was about to be outed uh got epstein's you know what i mean that he was murdered to cover up what he was about to testify about so yeah mr alekar is absolutely right what he's saying about the federalists and after john adams the federalists never had another president they did kind of devolve into the whigs um but they never became a party exactly right like the democratic republicans did which was jefferson's party and they eventually morphed into the democratic party okay so anyway so all of this happens and burr has challenged hamilton to a duel now his son has just died in a duel a couple of years earlier uh his brother-in-law john barker church has fought a duel against aaron burr hamilton has said over and over again that his religious faith says that duels are wrong but he's involved over and over and over again in these what are called affairs of honor so he gets his second a man named uh nathaniel pendleton uh aaron burr gets his second these were the people who are gonna like your your right hand man you're uh kind of on your behalf they row across across the hudson river early in the morning uh hamilton leaves a letter for his wife in which he among other things calls her best of wives and best of women he expresses to several people his intention that he's going to fire in the air he has no intention whatsoever of hurting aaron burr meanwhile uh aaron burr people who visited him in the weeks because there were several weeks in between when the duel was agreed to and when they actually fought it aaron burr some people who visited birth this time at his house said he was target shooting in the backyard that he was practicing his aim with pistols so that he could be as accurate as possible so this idea in the hamilton musical where burr says my fellow soldiers will tell you i'm a terrible shot no he wasn't he was practicing for weeks um what happened to whose father uh robert williamson whose father are you talking about aaron burr's father or hamilton's hamilton's father also hamilton's father had died by this time they wrote back and forth but they never really saw each other again but i think hamilton's father was dead by the time all these things happened his brother i think also died at that point he also had a half brother uh named from his uh his his mother's later marriage i think it was or maybe from his first marriage um but he did have another brother a half brother that he tried to support financially who ended up coming to the states so yeah hamilton's brother father james i think died before this point okay so they fight the duel burr's been practicing for weeks hamilton insists he's not going to fire it he tells everybody this but hamilton's wearing his glasses and this is what aaron burr claimed for decades afterwards is the reason he believed hamilton was going to shoot him because he was wearing his glasses why would he wear his glasses if he wasn't looking to shoot me so no one can agree on who fired first they both agreed that both fired everyone agrees they both fired burr's shot hits hamilton in the abdomen hamilton's shot hits a tree above hamilton everyone agrees hamilton never aimed at burr but the question is did he aim above burr and fire or was his gunshot a reaction to having been hit by burst shot which happened first and you can get shirts just like you can with star wars that say burr shot first you know just like the ones that say han solo shot first or greedo shot first things like that no georgia farming duels were far from a sure thing when it comes to aim and also it didn't happen the way that we think of duels they didn't stand back to back go 10 paces and when you hit 10 you turned around and fired you actually counted off the paces stood facing each other and then they would give the order to present which meant raise your guns and then you were allowed to fire it was very different than the way that it's portrayed most of the time but no it doesn't need to have much velocity when you're standing 20 yards apart or whatever they were but also it wasn't a sure thing that you would hit but what we do know for sure is that burr hit hamilton hamilton's shot was fired above burr and they actually say that as soon as hamilton was hit aaron burr actually rushed toward hamilton almost as though he regretted having shot him but the the men kind of stopped and said okay you know you got to get out of here they had to get him out of there they brought a doctor right away the doctors and everybody in fact most people would stand facing the other way so they could have plausible deniability and say no i never sho i never saw anything i didn't see them shooting each other i don't know what you're talking about so if they testified in court they could say they didn't see it hamilton's brought back he actually lives for the better part of a day aaron burr goes into hiding the sitting vice president of the united states has just murdered one of the other founding fathers so a warrant was issued for burr's arrest he was charged with murder in both new jersey and new york but the charges were never really followed through on burr kind of escaped for a while uh left the area hamilton dies and what's really sad about all this is his wife eliza has just lost her son in a duel um same pistols by the way that john barker church used in his duel with burr were then used by philip hamilton and then used by alexander hamilton they were borrowed from john church and a few months after and also during the time that their son hamilton philip hamilton died peggy died eliza's sister and then i think four months after alexander hamilton died philip schuyler died so eliza then loses her father as well so just a devastating time for this woman um did turn accurately portray dueling with abe versus simcoe i think so i can't remember exactly how it happened but i seem to recall it being portrayed largely accurately okay so um that song where all that happens is called the world was wide enough and the reason that it's called that is because years later uh aaron burr interesting thing whenever aaron burr would refer to alexander hamilton in the years that followed and burr lived for like an almost another 30 years after this but his political career was over at that point burr would always refer to hamilton as my friend hamilton whom i shot if that doesn't tell you everything about how weird that whole situation was i don't know but burr only ever expressed regret over shooting hamilton one time in his life and i want to get the quote exactly right because that's where the song came from um but it the world was wide enough as the name of the song but here's what aaron burr said he said had i read stern more and voltaire less i should have known the world was wide enough for hamilton and me and doesn't that sum it up perfectly these men were so blinded by their beliefs so blinded by their hatred of each other so concerned with being right that they couldn't see anything else and if only burr had understood that the world was wide enough for aaron burr and alexander hamilton and thomas jefferson and john adams and everybody else that things could have gone differently so alexander hamilton dies in his late 40s but his legacy largely died with him and people pretty much forgot him if it hadn't been for one person and that's who the last song's about his wife eliza she lives another 50 years she lives until 1854. in fact she was one of the last connections that people had to the founding fathers to the point where in her later years she lived in in washington dc and whenever somebody came to dc a new senator a new president every guy who got elected president in the 1830s the 1840s the 1850s paid a courtesy call to mrs hamilton at her home and one of the people who did that was james monroe monroe when he came to eliza hamilton's house he was hoping that they could reconcile he was hoping that they could basically let bygones be bygones eliza wasn't having it she was a strong christian woman who believed in forgiveness but when monroe came to talk to her she basically said unless he's willing to take everything back to apologize to say he was wrong about my husband i i want nothing to do with that man and she refused to see him so there was a lot of animosity toward monroe even then but every founding father uh every president knew eliza one of the coolest things that eliza does is that she helps found the first private orphanage in new york city which still exists to this day which is an amazing thing uh amazing legacy this woman who loved her husband this man who had cheated on her this man who had thrown his life away in a duel who possibly had helped their eldest son throw his life in a way in a duel and i didn't mention their daughter angelica because they didn't lose one child that day when philip died in that duel they lost two angelica had a mental breakdown as a teenager when her brother died in that duel and it was said that after that she was in an eternal state of childhood she was mentally had the capacity of a small child for the rest of her life and i think she lived 40 or so years after that had to be taken care of and that so eliza hamilton lost so much and yet she spent the rest of her life honoring the legacy of her husband it's an amazing amazing thing that she did and i give her all the credit in the world what an incredible human being she was so she starts this um i think it's called graham graham windum is the name of the orphanage it still exists today founded by eliza hamilton and others in an honor in honor of her i believe james buchanan no not buchanan uh it would have been franklin pierce uh was the last president to meet eliza hamilton i could be wrong about that but i'm pretty sure it was franklin pierce so it was all the way up to like the 14th president of the united states met mrs hamilton others did too i think lincoln may have met her at some point as a congressman i'm not entirely sure of that she helped raise money to build the washington monument but she spent her whole life uh interviewing everybody who knew alexander hamilton gathering all of his letters trying to make sense of thousands and thousands of letters and pages of things that he wrote he left behind a ton of writing uh washington monument the construction began i believe in the 1840s but the construction was stopped during the civil war because of funding and it wasn't completed until afterwards which is why if you visit the washington monument about a third of the way up it changes color because that's where the construction was stopped and then they had to get the stone from a different quarry after the civil war after the 20 years or so that they stopped working on it [Music] so eliza does all these things to honor her husband's legacy she never finishes it and so her son in particular i think john church hamilton who was one of her sons continued that legacy quite a few of her grandchildren were influential in the civil war i believe one of alexander hamilton's sons was secretary of state under andrew jackson i think uh is when he was secretary of state um i'm pretty sure james alexander hamilton i want to say that too it was yeah several grandsons were generals in the civil war one of alexander hamilton's granddaughters was married to henry halleck who was the general in chief of the union army during the civil war the orphanage exactly vani one of my favorite moments in that musical so mrs hamilton had an incredible legacy of her own that deserves to be remembered i'm probably missing so many things that i could have talked about but those are kind of the main things that kind of define alexander hamilton my honest opinion one of the most brilliant men who has ever served in government certainly flawed but then again who wasn't who isn't flawed we can find flaws with every member of our government every person who served in government but alexander hamilton absolutely brilliant completely underrated as a founding father and in what he did for this country and how he set us up financially for the abundance that we have enjoyed for the past 200 plus years but fatally flawed like a lot of people are who are brilliant but i would i would encourage you if you're a reader get ron chernow's biography of alexander hamilton it'll give you so much more detail than i gave you here it's an incredible read it's well worth your time i if you read it i think you'll end up being an as in awe of hamilton as i am watch the musical if you are into those sorts of things you'll you'll be familiar with a lot of what we talked about now but if you have ideas for the next vlog like this let me know you

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 16,049

Rating: 4.9425836 out of 5

Keywords: alexander hamilton, hamilton songs, hamilton broadway, hamilton history, hamilton musical, hamilton mistakes, hamilton explained, hamilton comparison, hamilton differences, hamilton an american musical, aaron burr, hamilton documentary, full documentary, hamilton, burr hamilton duel, philip hamilton, elizabeth schuyler, thomas jefferson, alexander hamilton history, james callender, george washington, eliza hamilton, alexander hamilton biography

Id: ZpwU8HRGlWc

Length: 110min 5sec (6605 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021