I have always been a fan of the hit Broadway show Hamilton. The show created by the award winning boundary breaking Lin-Manuel Miranda, follows the life and ultimate demise of Alexander Hamilton. The Advanced Placement United States History (APUSH) course gives background knowledge on this founding father, but the play expanded on who he was and how he is remembered. In APUSH, Alexander Hamilton is only a snippet of the whole textbook. I remember sitting in class learning about his Federalist papers and his idea of a National Bank. Though his name might only be mentioned in one chapter of the extensive textbook, his legacy left on America is everlasting.
In the song “Non-Stop,” Aaron Burr speaks to the crowd, describing Hamilton’s contributions to the Federalist Papers, which were essays written by Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. As the music grows more intense, Burr’s voice rises as he states, “John Jay got sick after writing five / James Madison wrote twenty-nine / Hamilton wrote the other FIFTY-ONE!” Reading in APUSH class, I never grasped the true ambition and “non-stop” work ethic of Hamilton. But in this song, as Burr questions how Hamilton works so passionately and quickly, I fully understood how this founding father became engraved in our history. He could never be satisfied with the work he’d finished; he continuously looked to the future to see how else he could ensure his legacy was secured.
Another thing the reading materials in APUSH doesn’t convey was the complicated relationship between Burr and Hamilton. I remember being excited to read about the infamous duel between friends turned political enemies in the APUSH textbook, but there was only a small section dedicated to it, maybe one or two sentences. The songs in the play explicitly show the contrasting character traits: Burr sings “Wait for it” as he avoids taking any extreme stances on any issue; Hamilton sings “My Shot,” which describes his hunger to prove himself to the world. The textbook does an okay job at showing the culmination of their rivalry. For example, in the election of 1800, Hamilton chose to endorse his political enemy Thomas Jefferson as president, just to ensure Burr did not win. The textbook deems this election the “revolution of 1800,” but just touches on the surface of the relationship between Burr and Hamilton, rather focusing on the defeat of John Adams. However, the musical reveals that there were a multitude of incidents between the pair’s first meeting and their fateful duel. In the song “The Room Where it Happens,” it is clear to the audience that Burr is jealous of Hamilton’s position, and in “Schuyler Defeated,” Hamilton finds out that Burr took his father in law’s seat in the Senate, signaling the official end to their friendship; in “Washington on Our Side,” Burr, Madison, and Jefferson announce their mission to expose Hamilton’s illegal government spending; finally, “Obedient Servant,” reflects a letter exchange just before the duel and shows that Burr blames Hamilton for everything that went wrong in his career.
The textbooks solely paint Burr as a villain, a heartless murder. The second to last song in the play, “The World Was Wide Enough,” shows the remorse and guilt Burr felt for killing Hamilton. He sings, “But I’m the one who paid for it / I survived but I paid for it / Now I’m the villain in your history / I was too young and blind see / I should’ve known, I should’ve known the world was wide enough for both Hamilton and me.” The textbook displays Burr as the antithesis and killer of Hamilton who eventually kills the man who was the creator of the National Bank and the defender of the Constitution. The musical, on the other hand, divulges that Burr made a mistake (although duels were illegal, they were rarely prosecuted) and greatly regretted it.
What the textbook and the play both agree on is that “You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” Both recounts of history are correct. One is strictly factual, with Hamilton and Burr’s story present in just a couple of the textbook’s 500 pages. The other allows the audience to get to know the characters, to understand and sympathize with them. Miranda’s musical reminds us that history is not just a series of events, but a complex web of stories and perspectives waiting to be uncovered.
