Measuring Hamilton’s America

How do you measure a man? A nation? Do our mistakes and evil choices define us and discredit us? 

I’ve been watching Hamilton quite a bit this weekend. The first half of the musical highlights many of A.Ham’s admirable qualities and accomplishments as a “young, scrappy and hungry” patriot who played a pivotal role in our nation's beginnings. 

We also see his relentless ambition, outspoken nature, and his reputation for indiscreet tomcatting. The offstage interaction with the bursar who he “may have punched” and the duel he instigates with General Lee show us how Hamilton’s pride reacts to insults of his honor with violence.

Those character flaws bear rotten fruit as the musical draws to its tragic climax. Despite repeated pleas from his wife, Eliza, to accept their life together as enough, his ambition drives him to stay behind to work alone while the family takes a break upstate. Home alone, the former tomcat can’t say no to an encounter with Maria Reynolds and entraps himself into an ongoing affair and extortion scheme. Arrogantly believing he can write his way out of anything, he publishes the details of the adultery and makes a scandal of himself and his family. In the aftermath, his son Philip attempts to defend his father’s honor, and Hamilton gives him fatally bad advice about how to survive a duel. 

Hamilton at this point is held in contempt politically and socially and distrusted by his family. At the scene of Philip’s death, Eliza screams accusingly, “Alexander, did you know?” and in that moment his face crumples silently, reflecting the irredeemable guilt he feels. His double sorrow over the marriage he damaged to the breaking point and the loss of a son in whose death he played a part are unimaginable and perhaps insurmountable. 

In “Quiet Uptown,” Alexander grieves and seeks consolation in prayer and long walks. He humbly expresses that just being at his wife’s side is now enough for him. Eliza takes his hand in hers, offering something even more unimaginable than their shared grief: forgiveness, a “grace too powerful to name.”

And yet, he once again lets his pride lead him to violence, risking a senseless death even knowing the sorrow it would cause to those who loved him. 

In the denouement after the fatal duel with Burr, we are once again reminded of Hamilton’s accomplishments and told how “God in us mercy gave (Eliza) more time” to do humanitarian work he might have done in a longer life. 

Of course, the portrait of Hamilton in the play is fictional and incomplete. It shows some flaws and mistakes while glossing over others. Still, what are we to make of the version of Alexander Hamilton it presents? How can we esteem him and the nation he made in light of hypocrisies and contemptible acts committed by both? 

The answer is forgiveness, accepting the powerful grace of God through Christ Jesus and extending it to others. The alternative is “an endless cycle of violence and vengeance with no defendants” that Alexander feared the Revolution could unleash. 

Alexander Hamilton and all the founding fathers were nothing less and nothing more than human. They were brilliant and noble at times, yet their fallen nature, prejudices and fatal flaws hindered them from living up to the Enlightened men they aspired to be.

The American experiment they began likewise has always been imperfect and full of contradictions. Despite fits and starts of progress, our nation has never fully lived up to the greatness aspired to in the Declaration’s self-evident truths of equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

Knowing there is forgiveness, we can make a clear-eyed reckoning with the injustice woven through our history in the form of mistreatment of indigenous peoples, slavery, segregation, discrimination, and prejudicial and often brutal policing. We can break out of our tribalism and partisanship and unite to answer the peaceful protestors’ call to fundamentally reform and remake our society to better reflect the Declaration’s ideal of equality. 

The humility that comes from knowing we are forgiven people frees us from the need to claim absolute complete knowledge and a monopoly on righteousness. We can welcome and encourage the free interchange of ideas. 

Freedom of speech and a diversity of ideas contribute to the flourishing of liberty. Allowing dissenting voices to be heard and engaged in dialogue carries on the tradition of Hamilton, who outspokenly argued to defend his ideas and attack those of his rivals and enemies. 

How do you measure a man? A nation? Soberly, knowing that we are and will be measured ourselves, and that without the grace of God, no one can stand. We can honor Hamilton as a founding father in need of forgiveness.