- Hamilton, of course,
felt the need to sit down and explain this decision
to his father-in-law Philip Schuyler because Schuyler was a very good friend of Washington. This was obviously a very unorthodox thing to do for a young man to
quit Washington's staff and it was really Hamilton. He didn't provoke the feud. He certainly capitalized
on it and took advantage of it to do what he wanted to do perhaps all along to leave and
have his own field guy. When he sat down and wrote this
letter to his father-in-law, he described what it was
like working for Washington. He describes Washington as very moody and temperamental and says the great man and I have
come to an open rupture. He shall for once at least
repent his ill humor. Now I had never encountered
George Washington in that mode. In far from being disappointed by that, I actually was relieved. It suddenly humanized him. He came alive for me in that moment. Seeing him not only in that letter but other letters that Hamilton
wrote during the war gave an immediacy to Washington that I hadn't experienced before. They say that no man
is a hero to his valet, and Washington during
the Revolutionary War was working under excruciating pressure. And I think that precisely
because he had such immense self control
and he had this enormous image to live up to, he blew off steam in private and Hamilton saw that. I think also Washington's nature, it was why Washington did so well in life. Washington was a real perfectionist. He was very--whether
it was at Mount Vernon or the federal government, he was very exacting and demanding in terms of what he wanted and demanded very, very high performance from people. So he was a very hard charging boss. Not at all the easy going soft boss that people had imagined. But I can remember that moment
when I read that letter. I felt that there was a George Washington that had not been captured. 'Cause Hamilton was very good at penning word portraits of people. He was very perceptive, and he was a good enough writer that he could really make characters come alive. So that, for me, that was the key hole through which I began to spy a portrait of Washington that had
not been done before. And I think what happens with Washington, because we all love and revere Washington so much, both then and now, there's an almost automatic
tendency to try to wipe away the blemishes
and look the other way. - [Interviewer] He gets
the benefit of the doubt. - He gets the benefit of the doubt, and unfortunately that's
done him a terrible disservice because it's turned him into a somewhat unreal character. Imagination went he was almost too real. And I felt that the
flaws in his character, to my mind, instead of detracting from his greatness actually
enhanced his greatness 'cause you realize what he had to overcome emotionally to
be George Washington. The country was looking to
him for a kind of perfection. He had ordinary human flaws and he was always caught in the conflict
between those two things. So that was really the
starting point of that book. And of course when I was doing Hamilton was very fun to write about because he was on the one hand so brilliant and on the other hand so flawed that the more I studied Hamilton
the more I admired Hamilton, but the more I revered Washington. I can remember when I was working
on the Hamilton biography, I would say to people Hamilton is the subject of my biography but Washington is the hero of the biography. Washington always does the right thing. Hamilton most of the time
does the right thing. - [Interviewer] Alright so before we jump into the Hamilton and Washington, there was one thing about
the Washington biography. So I think it can be fairly said that your biography of Washington is probably the definitive biography since the Southall Freeman's multi set and then his single volume as well,
which is a really great book. Still the one thing you had access to was all the papers of
George Washington project and I know the people down there in Charlottesville and editors everywhere are really pleased with you because A you give them lots of credit, B you use the newest things and didn't use the old stuff when there
was new stuff available, and there's so many
biographies where people are still using the writings of Washington and not using the papers
of George Washington. So talk a little bit-- - No I feel-- - [Interviewer] --that project and how it helped you advance
where Freeman had been. - I feel very humble about this. I feel that if I at all saw farther than other biographers it was because I standing on the shoulders of this extraordinary team of editors
down at Charlottesville. And that was actually one of the reasons I did the book 'cause the old edition that had formed the basis for Freeman, Flexner, that generation of historians, it's really very limited. I have it in the bedroom,
I think it was 17 volumes. Very large print, very wide margins. So by the time I started
the Washington biography, I think about 60 of the projected 90 plus volumes had been published. So I said to myself, do I want to wait until all 90 plus volumes were published? And I thought that was, given my age, tempting fate to do that. But I thought that there was
already enough on the record. Undoubtedly when all of the
90 plus had been finished, someone will come along
and try another synthesis. But it was probably the most
frequently asked question that I got when I was working on the book, people would say is there
anything new left to say? And I would say to people the
work is just beginning now. We actually know so much more about George Washington than his own contempers. I dare say we know more
about George Washington than Martha did because there were moments where his life was so minutely documented in those volumes you
could feel on certain days that on an hour to hour
basis, you're following him around Mount Vernon,
or on an hour to hour basis you're following
him through a series of meetings with his cabinet, secretaries and visiting dignitaries. It's astonished. And Washington was very
thorough, very meticulous. He was consummate record
keeper, God bless him, and not only recorded
everything sometimes rather surprising things he would record, but he had a great regard for the paper trail that he was creating. I was very fascinated
during the Revolutionary War that he creates a staff of people and gets a special appropriation
to create this beautiful edition of his wartime letters and then took great care in
terms of transporting them back to Mount Vernon, of course you know the story much better than I do. He even thought of
creating a house library. It would've been the first presidential library on the estate. So he's tending the documentary
record as if he knew that I was gonna come along and
dozens of other biographers were gonna come along
and be coming through. - [Interviewer] Egomaniacal version. - Coming through all these things. I feel that it was
Washington himself who spread a banquet table and documents that all of us have been feasting
on for a great many years. - [Interviewer] I started
off with the thought that Hamilton and Washington come from very different worlds
but they seem to get on. They're attracted to each other. They come together. What're the things about
each other that they admire? - Well first of all,
let me say even though those lives were so different, there are certain
parallels in terms of where these two men have come from because Hamilton is an illegitimate
orphaned boy from the Caribbean, is painfully aware of his lack of status, is tremendously ambitious
in terms of wanting to enter into high society
and into the political world, he's an autodidact, he's
constantly improving himself, but he really is an outsider trying to fight his way into the inner ranks of society and government. George Washington's story, though he was born at a much higher level, as I recall his father had an enormous amount of
anchorage and slaves, but Washington, too, was very self conscious
about what he referred to as his defective education. He wants to enter the upper
ranks of Virginia gentry, and so he was, in his
way, as hard charging and ambitious as Hamilton was and had a similar consciousness
of being an outsider. Also both of them as young
men had an unusual capacity for befriending powerful older men who became their mentors and champions. And so I think, and we can talk about this when we come to the show because
have you seen the show yet? - [Interviewer] No. - This is actually very central to the show because
Lin-Manuel Miranda asked me would Washington have seen Hamilton as a younger version of himself? And I said yes, their personalities were so unalike but there was something about their situations that would
seem familiar to Washington. Now Hamilton always said
that their personalities could not have been more different. He used the word dispositions. He said our dispositions could not have been more alike, but what
we mean by personality I think is what he meant by dispositions. And Hamilton was a brash and headstrong personality. He was very procurial and
brilliant and very impulsive. Washington was the opposite. Washington was cautious,
thorough and slow, methodical in his approaches to things. So their personal style could
not have been more dissimilar. But these two men compliment each other in a way that just feels uncannily right. George Washington was a very smart man. I think that he was much, much
smarter than people realize. But he was not an original thinker either in terms of political
theory or in craft. Washington could not have been one of the contributors to the Federalist Papers. Washington could not have
forged the provisions of the Constitution and
could not have forged a lot of the policies
of his administration, but what Washington had
in abundance was judgment, which was often the very thing
Alexander Hamilton lacked. To my mind, George Washington had what I would call a reactive
genius that many people noticed that when presented
with a set of options, he had an amazing ability
to latch onto the right one. He couldn't have generated a lot of those options himself, but
because of his judgment, his patriotism, his character,
he could spot the right one. And he was a tremendous talent scout and assembled around him so many of the great figures of the time. So what we see is that during the years when Hamilton is operating
under the direct tutelage of George Washington, whether
during the Revolutionary War, at the constitutional convention or during Washington's presidency, Hamilton goes from strength to strength. He almost seemed invincible. The second that he's no longer operating under George Washington's guidance, we see how fallible his judgment was and how self destructive
his behavior could be. But Washington established
a set of guidelines within which Hamilton
operated and managed to, this taking nothing away
from Hamilton to say this, but managed to get this extraordinary performance out of
Hamilton again and again and early on recognized what enormous intelligent young man he was. So I think this was
really the most productive partnership of the early
years of the republic. The only one that obviously can rival it would be Madison and Jefferson. But it's really Washington and Hamilton who were setting the stage by having to win the revolution,
enact the constitution, and create the federal government. And then Madison and Jefferson carry that into a second phase of the country. So I think that they're
just an unbeatable team and it's one of those cases in history where the whole is worth more than the sum of the parts and I think if you try to-- well certainly if you picture Hamilton's career without Washington, it would have been much
more limited career. When Washington died, Hamilton made a famous statement of Washington was an aegis as a shield most essential to me. We can more easily, I think, imagine Washington's
career without Hamilton certainly in terms of Revolutionary War and constitutional convention. More difficult, though, I think in terms of his presidency because
Hamilton's accomplishments as treasure secretary
are sort of fundamental especially to that first term in office that it is difficult to imagine what Washington's first term
would've looked like. And that was not a gap I think that either Madison or Jefferson
could have supplied. Hamilton had a genius for state craft. And Hamilton combined the political-- he was both a political theorist
and a brilliant technocrat And that particular combination-- I mean, Madison was certainly his equal as a political theorist or Jefferson, but they didn't combine that
gift for forging policies, creating governmental institutions. - [Interviewer] Hamilton
is so extraordinary in those early years of the presidency. Extraordinarily complicated, incredible pieces of legislation. He's everywhere. - And you know, I think that Washington was very aware when he became president that appointment was going to be far and away the most important that-- - [Interviewer] Do you
think Washington knew that, or he only knew that
you'd get it in hindsight? - I think he knew at the time because remember the country was
effectively bankrupt at the time. We were in our ears not
only on the principle but the interest of both the state and local debt that had been
used to finance the war. So Washington knew that the restoration of American credit would probably be the single most important task that he'd face and that there would be an urgent need for government revenue. Remember Hamilton had to
create the first fiscal system, first monetary system, first
accounting system, first taxes. These were all gigantic things, and Hamilton's treasury department by creating all these tax
collectors and inspectors was very quickly many times larger than the rest of the government combined. Knox's staff at war, Jefferson's staff at the state department were tiny in comparison with Hamilton's
treasury department. It really is for all intents
and purposes the government, and that certainly-- (camera click) Jefferson overweening. (camera click) Anyone who was treasure secretary would've been first among
ecables in the cabinet. Hamilton may have proved
his own personality when he was not banished
for expanded of that and played a part but that the issues that immediately confronted
George Washington the day that he took office were the
economic and financial ones. One of the questions I had was the choice of Hamilton as treasury secretary. It's sort of on the
book which I think came from Hamilton's son was about Washington stopping off in Philadelphia en route to the Inauguration offering
the job to Robert Morris, that is the reigning truth, and then Morris turning it
down and recommending Hamilton. And according to the story,
Washington said I knew Hamilton was a young
man of enormous talents but I didn't realize that he
has this financial knowledge. Morris said to him to mind
like his nothing is amiss. I'm sure that Washington knew much more about Hamilton's views at that point. They were having dinner every day during the Revolutionary War and all these topics were being freely discussed. And Washington couldn't
have been oblivious as Hamilton as they're
going from camp to camp Hamilton is lugging all these books about economics and finance. He's already bowing out. And he's writing letters and essays, very much kind of the Hamiltonian
system is foreshadowed. Letters he was writing
during the Revolutionary War. So Washington must've had
some inkling about this. But I would've loved to have better information of that moment in the book. The only name I was able to come up with in terms of other people being considered was Robert Morris, and that would be completely predictable since he had been the chief financier. - [Interview] Now when did Hamilton first come to the attention of Washington, and then how did he become a
member of his military family? - Hamilton's reputation preceded him even before January 1777,
which is when a notice was sent out for Hamilton to contact Washington about being aid to camp. Hamilton had already distinguished himself at the Battle of White Planes,
crossing of New Jersey. Hamilton had fought at
the battles of Trenton and Princeton and both places where he had really stood out and
he had already rebuffed invitations from Alexander McDougal and Nathaniel Greene and Lord Sterlington joined their staffs so Hamilton was famous as this boy wonder of the continental army had already declined down
the staffs of three people. I guess Washington figured,
correctly as it turned out, that an invitation from
him would be irresistible. But Hamilton had this unusual combination of gifts because on the one hand he was very well versed in military lore. He was always somewhat of a daredevil. He was very fearless in battle. Throughout his life he was
physically fearless personality. But he was also smart, not completed his college education at King's but his intellectual
reputation preceded him. Washington during the
revolution was feeling quite oppressed by the weight of the correspondence he had to handle. He was in a very unenviable situation. He was serving 14 political masters, 13 state governors and
the content of congress, so his correspondence is immense and like any general he wanted to
be able to concentrate on military matters rather than writing these endless letters. But the letters were
necessary because he was short of men and gun powder, shoes, clothing, blankets, food, everything. So it was like eight and a half years of badgering people to
contribute to the cause. Hamilton was a superb letter writer. The way that Washington worked with his aides is that Washington would give them what he called headings. That's what we would call
topics or points to be covered, and he would give them to Hamilton early in the morning and then Hamilton would write beautiful letters in response. And Hamilton was also
not so much mimicking Washington's voice, although
there was a little bit, but he always--the
letters feel Washingtonian rather than Hamiltonian just like all good speech writers are a little bit secretaries in that situation. He had a way of intuiting what the boss wanted in the letters. They were charming but also a little bit frustrating for Hamilton because he had a larger ego subordinating himself to someone else was uncomfortable. - [Interviewer] Of all people
to subordinate yourself to, though, at that moment Washington is the only guy he would've, I guess. - Absolutely. Hamilton from the time that he was a boy had this obsession
with military glory. The very first letter
that we have from Hamilton when he was in his early teens was Hamilton writing I wish there was a war so he could prove himself, and Hamilton knew when he was right about this that post war
political glory would not go to the person who had written the most beautiful letters during the war but to the battlefield heroes. - [Interviewer] Is that the seed of his growing frustration of-- - Absolutely 'cause he keeps asking Washington for a field command. Another young man would've been so pleased and flattered to be on Washington's family that he would've asked for nothing more, but Hamilton had this ambition and was really intent before the war ended of distinguishing himself on the field of
battle, which he did. But it's testimony to how much Washington needed him that Washington
would not let him go. And also one thing I discovered was very, very important in
terms of their relationship was that Hamilton was bilingual. Hamilton's mother was French Huguenot and so Hamilton grew up not
only with English but French and as the French alliance
became so important, it was no small thing because Hamilton was handling all the correspondence
with our French allies. And Hamilton's French was so good, it was very funny reading for instance his times when Lafayette was away and they were exchanging letters. Lafayette would write a letter to Hamilton in French and it would be full of spelling and grammatical errors, and Hamilton wrote right back an absolutely faultless letter in French to the Frenchman whose French was much better than Lafayette's. So there were kind of all these things that I think made it very difficult for Washington to let go of this young man who was sulking about the fact that he couldn't get a field command. But Washington made the right
decision that Hamilton was probably more valuable behind a desk than he was on the field of battle. But when he finally had
his chance at Yorktown, he certainly did cover himself with glory, and it was very much the
realization of his boyhood dream. The story as best I was
able to reconstruct, the French in the relationship with the Americans at Yorktown, the French really had the upper hand. The French liked to
maintain the appearance that this was an equal relationship or even that the Americans were leading. And so what happened, there
were these two redoubts-- - [Interviewer] Is that
how it's pronounced? - Yeah, two redoubt, nine and
ten, that had to be taken. And so Washington decided, again in this spirit of
Franco-American amity that one redoubt would
be taken by the French and one redoubt would be
taken by the Americans. Now he kind of made an
interesting decision because in terms of the American redoubt, that is the continental army, that he handed that off to Lafayette for the decision that Lafayette chose his aid Gimat, so it was really French both sides, one kind of nominally continental army. Hamilton was furious when
he found out about this because he outranked Gimat, he was very close with Lafayette, probably was annoyed with
Lafayette for not choosing him. And at that point,
Hamilton appealed directly to Washington and really
turned on the eloquence if not the charm and got it. And he has this amazing moment in Yorktown where he leads the charge. They were going to take
it with just the bayonets so he rises up out of the trench and he sprints across the field, it was at night and there's flares exploding across the sky, charges the redoubt. When he got there,
because he was relatively short he was five seven,
when he got there, he had one of his men kneel down, Hamilton kind of sprang up
on the back and shoulders, waves, and inches with their bayonets. They capture the French
and this defensive war. So it's a great moment and really Hamilton lived up to his own fantasies of himself at that moment and showed
that he was very brave. And of course that did help him after the war that he was a genuine war hero. Effectively it was over. There were no more major set battles. Hamilton's closest friend John Laurence died a year later in South Carolina, but it was clear there was gonna be no more battle field glory, didn't wanna go back
on Washington's staff, so he goes back to New York and he starts his legal education and
launches his career. Washington when he saw Hamilton sprinting across the battlefield in Yorktown, Washington must've been very relieved and thinking to himself
okay, he's done it now. He'll never have to bother
me again about this. - [Interviewer] So how do they come back in each other's lives in the 1780s? I mean Washington in Mount
Vernon, Hamilton's in New York. - They lose touch a
little bit after the war. But I think what happened
was that the political division of the country had been very much forged by their experience of going through the war together. They watched, for instance,
the chaos of the congress. The war left both of them with, I think, the same set of political beliefs, which was the need for a strong and energetic central government. The skepticism about
legislative leadership and a faith in executive leadership and a sense that our government has to not only be strong and energetic but flexible in terms of meeting the
needs of the country. One very strong bond between them was that both of them felt that historically one of the dangers of revolutions was that they tended to run off to extremes. So it was a question of how do you begin to turn off the fervor
of the Revolutionary War without losing that idealism? In other words, how do you kind of move this into a more pragmatic mode? And when they saw things
like Shay's rebellion, when they saw states
squabbling between each other, both of them were fearful of anarchy, fearful of mob rule. Both of them were weary of human nature is the way I would say it, and it comes to the defines a set of beliefs that unites them. So really, Hamilton
and Washington at first apart and then together
are having very similar reactions to the post war political situation and have very, very similar diagnosis in terms of the need to revise or even replace the
articles of confederation and to establish a much
stronger government. So Hamilton, he wasn't the only one, but I think that Hamilton
was very important in terms of coaxing Washington
back out of retirement, starting to kind of tutor him in the constitutional issues, which Hamilton did along
with Madison and Knox. They were all sending him memos beginning to brief him for the
constitutional convention. But also convincing Washington that the American revolution is incomplete without the constitutional convention, and convince him that the constitutional convention was incomplete
without the creation of the federal government
without Washington as president. And so actually when
they come back together at the constitutional convention, the personal feeling between the two men seems to have warmed up again. - [Interviewer] Well
he's not there very long. Hamilton's there in the beginning and talks about how much he loves
the British constitution and he goes home. - When he leaves, he leaves
in July and Washington sends him this letter
I'm sorry you're away, even though Hamilton has delivered this slightly crazy
speech to the convention. I think the fact that Washington was so eager to have Hamilton come back, which he did, of course Hamilton was the only one for New York
that signed the document, that Washington saw
them as kindred spirits in terms of these constitutional issues. So really, at that point from the lead up to the constitutional
convention and beyond, they really never lose contact with each other again and the relationship only grows broader and deeper as time goes on. - [Interviewer] How does it emerge as the tensions between Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton all start to appear. Where is Washington's role in that? He goes from trying to stay above the fray or helping to kind of mediate to shifting over into
one side at some point. - I think what happens is that Washington, although as time goes on it's clear that his sympathies are much
more with the Federalists than with the Republicans or
Jeffersonians at the time, but Washington was a very good president in terms of encouraging a free interplay of ideas within the government. And so he genuinely
wants different voices. He uses the same style of government he used as a general in
terms of canvasing opinion. He would ask people and
then he would slowly ponder. Hamilton said he ponders slowly. Ponders slowly, ponders truly. That was Washington's style. And even when Hamilton and Jefferson start feuding instead of wanting a unified or monolithic voice in his administration, he does want to have these
differences of opinion going on. He's very upset by the feud and he's very upset when Jefferson leaves. Modern president might react and say he's not a member of the team
and we have to get rid of him. He's not sympathetic. But Washington was able to tolerate quite a significant degree of descent from within his own administration. I think that what happens on the one hand, Madison fairly quickly
with the new government goes from being a trusted advisor to Washington on political and
constitutional conventions, he goes to being an apostate and begins to make speeches attacking
Hamilton's financial system. So it's really Madison who begins to exile himself from
Washington's affection. It was very Madison who was
initiating that, not Washington. So Washington starts feeling a sense of betrayal with Madison. And then again, Washington doesn't realize at first the extent which Jefferson, the Secretary of State,
is helping to orchestrate a lot of the congressional and press attacks on the administration. But again, it's Jefferson who was pulling away from Washington. It's not Washington
who's pushing him away. And also I think that one reason that Washington and Hamilton would come so extraordinarily close is that Hamilton showed extraordinary
loyalty to Washington. Was never scheming against Washington behind his back and Hamilton could scheme but not against Washington, so Washington never had cause to doubt the personal and political loyalty of Alexander Hamilton up
to the day that he died. It was an extraordinarily
good relationship. And Washington ended
up feeling quite bitter towards Madison and Jefferson, really didn't speak to them
the last few years of his life. And I was very struck when I came upon the story when I was doing the biography of when Jefferson visited Mount Vernon after Washington died
and Martha Washington said it was the second
worst day of her life, the first being when her husband died. It's a very, very strong statement. - [Interviewer] Chasing down both to the reminiscences of
one of the congressman that was there from 1840 but there's also someone saying that contemporaneously as well one of the people in that party. So it's clear that Martha was
saying these kind of things. - She was fiercer and more militant political personality because-- - [Interviewer] That's the garden perhaps. - Yeah, and how fiercely loyal
to the memory of her husband. - [Interviewer] So the
part of Washington's life that few people talk
about is when he comes back to be the commander
of this quasi-war army, I don't know what else we'd call it. - Provisional army. - [Interviewer] And insisted that Hamilton be his second in command
over John Adams' complaints and even against the
notion of the seniority of somebody like Knox who seems like he would've had the right to be in the second position there. Why was Washington still insistent upon Hamilton in that moment? - Well first of all, in 1798 when Adams pretty much drafted
Washington to become the general of this new provisional army, Washington was 66 years old, quite infirm we know from the Gilbert Stewart photos and paintings of just a few years
earlier that Washington had become stiff and craggy
person who aged considerably. He doesn't when you look at
the famous standing portrait, Washington doesn't look like somebody who'd go out and take the battlefield as a general, and I think he realized this was physically beyond him. Also George Washington's entire life and every time he returns
to his beloved Mount Vernon, there's another crisis and he's pulled back into the maelstrom. And so I think what he
does in that situation, Washington never felt that he could say no to the call of his
country in a situation like that. On the other hand, he
clearly didn't relish it. He did understandably said to himself I'm going to accept this but I'm going to define it in a minimal way
rather than a maximus way. 20 years before he would've defined it in a maximus way, now he's doing
fine in the minimalist way. He lays down this
stipulation that he does not want to actually become the commander in the field until the
war has actually started. Think about it, until the
war is actually started. I think the provisional army was going to be about 10,000 men so who was going to recruit and train and
equip this entire army? It would've had to be someone extraordinarily capable to do it, and Washington was not
prepared to do that himself. He was prepared to, as it were sort of like the batter who comes up, the pinch hitter with bases loaded with two outs in the ninth. He was ready to do that. But a lot of the hard work of actually forging an army would be
done by the number two, the inspector general. And that was Hamilton, and Hamilton, he just felt that Hamilton was more capable of doing that than Henry Knox. Hamilton had probably more
rounded sense of an army. Hamilton was aid to camp, was Washington's military secretary. But if you look at a lot of those Revolutionary War councils,
Hamilton was there. He was colonel and the other ten people in the room were generals. So he was in on all the
major strategy discussions. I think also being on Washington's staff, Hamilton had kind of nuts and bolts sense because he was
involved with correspondence with congress in terms of all of the kind of
commissary and quarter master matters of creating an army, feeding them, clothing them, housing them, all of this, training them, which I don't
know if Knox would've had that. And there kind of been other things that happened with Henry
Knox that would've made Washington and also Hamilton
reluctant to bring him back. So Hamilton becomes the inspector general. Hamilton becomes major general. People don't realize
it, Alexander Hamilton ended up major general, but of course it was as we all know waving a red flag in front of President Adams, and the result was explosive
and unfortunate all around. But Washington must've been relieved that he never actually had to come out. Just one last thing on that. In their letters about
possible war with France, which they took seriously,
they actually took the idea seriously of French invasion. They discussed what form it would take. They felt that when the French landed, it wouldn't be like the British strategy where you occupy a few coastal cities. It would be very rapid and very mobile and they would start
to invade the interior. They would need a fast
moving army in response, and Washington didn't feel that he had the reflexes at that age in order to be the general for that kind
of fast moving campaign. It probably would've been
physically beyond his capacity. - [Interviewer] Washington
really through Hamilton. When did you decide to do Hamilton? - This seems ironic now but in 1998 when I started working on Hamilton, he seemed to be the
neglected and misunderstood founding father and I thought he's the one who's overlooked,
I should do Hamilton. And also I had done a series of books on tycoons of the gilded age and wanted to move away from that, and Hamilton seemed like-- - [Interviewer] If only
he lived 100 years later. - It was the perfect exit strategy for me, the gilded age, because
I knew with Hamilton I would get an enormous
amount of financial history. After all, he creates the financial infrastructure of the country. But it would also lead
me into military history, constitutional theory, foreign affairs and lots of other things and give me a whole new century to move around in. It's funny 'cause I feel starting with the book and now with
Lin-Manuel in the show we know long afterward that Hamilton is the overlooked founding father. - [Interviewer] Let's get to the show because this is gonna be
an extraordinary story. From my point of view,
a story of a biographer and now all of a sudden you're
like a Hollywood producer. How did this come about, your relationship with Lin-Manuel Miranda? - In 2009, I was walking one day in the neighborhood and I ran into my friend Garrett whose daughter had gone to Wesleyan with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Lin-Manuel was
starring in his first show called In The Heights and he told me that Lin-Manuel had read my Hamilton book and made an enormous impression on
him and he wanted to meet me. So I went to a matinee of In The Heights one Sunday and he invited me back stage and I said to him so I gather my book made an impression on you. And he said I was reading it on vacation in Mexico and as I was reading it, a hip hop song started
rising off the page. So I said really? - [Interviewer] This is
what you were going for? - This is not a typical
reaction to one of my books. And he asked me on the spot to
be the historical consultant, and so I said to him you mean you want me to tell you
when something is wrong? And he said yes, I want
historians to take this seriously, which I think they are. So that launched what has been an amazing six year
process working with him. In the early period we would have lunch and discuss Hamilton's
psychology, relationships. He would send me via email
every month one or two songs. I would just hear Lin at
the keyboard playing it. But then what happened once it started to go into various rehearsals
and workshop productions, he would keep bringing
me back in and I would have the opportunity
afterwards to sit down for an hour or two and
give him my comments. The comments, some of the comments were if I had thought something
was factually incorrect, although I have to say he's very well read and he was almost always aware when he was departing from the fact. He had a sound dramatic reason. I'm not sure that, how to put this? I think that there are probably a lot of historians and
biographers who would not be entirely comfortable
doing this because you have to have some flexibility in terms of the requirements of a show. Here we've got to cut an 800 page book to a two and a half hour musical and my involvement with the show made me realize history is long,
messy and complicated. If there's one thing that we all learn as historians is how difficult
it is to generalize it. The more you know, the more difficult it is to simplify some of this. - [Interviewer] I've been telling them at Mount Vernon, I've been there. - A two and a half hour show has to be short and tight and very coherent, and so he would always have, I thought, a very plausible explanation
of why he had change something. I'll give you one 'cause it comes right at the beginning of the show. The show begins right at the start of the American revolution and he has John Laurens and Lafayette in New York a year or two before
he actually meets them. So I said to Lin this is 1775, 1776 but they didn't meet Hamilton until 1777 but he wanted to--one of Hamilton's first friends when he came to New York was a tailor named Hercules Mulligan. I think Lin found the name irresistible, and Lin wanted to start
a series of quartets that run through the first act of Hamilton with his friends Mulligan,
Laurens and Lafayette, which means that with
Laurens and Lafayette he has to introduce them a little bit earlier than they appear. There are moments where you have to scramble the time sequence a little bit. There are moments where you sort of have to collapse different events together. I was always kind of feeling my way, trying to figure out how does one strike the right balance between the historical accuracy and a tightly constructed show? And I hope people who see it, particularly historians and biographers, will feel that we made
the right decisions. So far we've gotten
very, very good feedback. - [Interviews] The reviews
have been really superlative. - And the reactions, of course, people know the story, know the history have come and been I think amazed at how much accurate history
is packed into this show. I think it has real integrity, and I think Lin-Manuel should feel
strength in terms of having a historian hanging around on the fringes of this conversation. Usually someone creating a
Broadway show or Hollywood movie, the last person they want around is someone who's going to tell them this didn't actually happen. - [Interviewer] Right,
they want them there to tell them what buttons
should have on their shirt, not the actual story. - And he did, this was
absolutely delightful for me, our discussions were more
than in terms of accuracy. We discussed the characters,
the relationships and really the entire dramatic trajectory of Hamilton's life, and
it was fascinating for me, as I mentioned earlier,
he said to me one day early on would Washington
have seen Hamilton as a younger version of himself and I said yes and Lin responded to that very powerfully, you'll
see created a couple beautiful songs where
Washington sings to Hamilton let me tell you what I wish I'd known when I was a younger man, and he starts talking
about--he has a name for it, necessity, but he's clearly talking about the incident and for necessity and the mistakes that he
made as a younger man. It's accurate. - [Interviewer] Why are people
so excited about this play? It's great that historians
think it's accurate, but there's something else going on here. - A lot going on. - [Interviewer] Why is
the moment right for this? What is it capturing? - Let me kind of take a
few shots at that one, because I remember the first show I ever saw about the founding
fathers was called 1776. - [Interviewer] Another musical. - I loved it. It was a quaint period piece. A bunch of middle aged white males with wigs and buckle shoes. This is a show about the founding fathers where probably three
quarters of the people in the cast are black,
Latino, Eurasian, biracial. Almost the entire cast is under 35. And so this is a very unusual case, a historical show that's simultaneously showing us who we were back then as a country and who we are today. It has a way of being both about the 18th century and
the early 21st century and even what Lin has
done with the lyrics, he's created an idiom that is a blend of standard 18th century speech
and early 21st century slang and it all comes out sounding a piece-- Did you see the clips? - [Interviewer] I've seen clips on YouTube and that sort of thing. - That'll give you a sense
of the way that he blends it. Even kind of musically the sounds blend the 18th century and 21st century. This young largely black and Latino cast has a very, very special feel for the early years of the republic. I think it's 'cause the
show itself very much casts Hamilton as classic immigrant, as an outsider of the American revolution being created by these people who felt outsiders and became insiders
in creating this new country. And so it has the energy and the fervor and the passion of the period, and it comes closer
than anything I've seen either on stage or screen
capturing that mood. It really is quite extraordinary. I think people are loving it because Lin-Manuel has done
something extraordinary. He made American history hip and cool and airodited at the same time, and only he could've done it because very often, without naming specific examples, when people on stage or
screen do the founding era, they kind of dumb it down. They tend to start out with the assumption this is boring, dated stuff. No one is really interested in this stuff so we better have a lot of action. We better have a lot of cannons booming and muskets firing, try to
spice it up with some sex. But there's an underlying assumption that the contemporary audience
is going to find boring. Lin instead of finding
the history constraining, he finds the history liberating. He finds it exciting, and the more deeply he gets into the history of it, the more dramatic it's gonna be. And I think the audience feels that, so this is like the history class of a lifetime seeing this show. And we've had kids as young as 10, 11 come down to see the show
and just absolutely adore it. And at the same time,
highly literate adults have seen it and took pleasure there. If you don't know
anything about the period, you'll learn an enormous amount. If you do know a lot about the period, you'll pick up a lot of in jokes. I can just give one. There's one moment Hamilton's working on his financial plan and
his wife Eliza is trying to get him to take a rest and go away to the country and so Eliza and Hamilton and Hamilton's
sister-in-law Angelica, and Eliza turns to
Angelica and says Angelica, tell my husband that John Adams spends the summers with his family, and then Hamilton says to Angelica, Angelica tell my wife that John Adams doesn't have a real job anyway. It was interesting because I can remember saying to Lin the
audience--because it hasn't been told to the audience
that Adams is vice president. And yet the audience roars with laughter. It was nice a lot of people realized Adams was the vice president but then also people know the history Adams with his famous line about the vice president. But there's kind of a lot of moments like that where if you have
a certain insiders knowledge, you'll hear these sort of in jokes that he's thrown in for your delight. But even if you sort of don't know what's behind the joke, it's
still often quite funny. And you know, I think that, and this is something I deal with and
something you both deal with every day, that we're
all trying to find ways to reach the modern
audience with the message of Washington's greatness, of the drama of the founding period. And here is somebody who Lin-Manuel has an extraordinary ability
to connect with people of every age and every color
and every ethnic group. The show is very educational and very--
