"Hamilton: An American Musical"

            Alexander Hamilton – Revolutionary soldier, Federalist, Founding Father, first Treasury Secretary, and…Broadway star?  Browsing the recent headlines on Al Jazeera America, under the US section, I stumbled across a video entitled simply “Appreciating Alexander Hamilton.”  Recognizing of course one of the more famous names of the early American Republic I took pause to watch the brief story.  However, it was not the headline as much as the descriptor that caught my attention – “One of the founding fathers of the US and architect in the monetary system is honored with a Broadway play.”  Following on the heels of the Treasury’s decision to remove Hamilton from the 10-dollar bill, this musical drama emphasizes not only the story of a pertinent figure in American national history, but delivers the content to the public in a manner profoundly different from written texts.

            How exactly does a Broadway musical about a Founding Father have any connection to the expansive category of public American history?  Certainly one imagines first museums or library exhibits, historical sites and tours when discussing public history, or in the case of a renowned Revolutionary figure, letters, papers, or documents such as the Federalist Papers come to mind.  But a musical? Certainly not.  I would argue, however, that given the popularity of Broadway and its prominence within the American cultural niche redefining art and music, “Hamilton” most certainly falls under the category as a use of history in American life.  I would like to briefly discuss here the book The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life, by Rosenzweig and Thelen, and how “Hamilton” meshes within the scope and content of the book’s argument: how Americans are active users and participants in history, and how the past influence their social and cultural values in daily life. 

            The intention behind producing The Presence of the Past was for historians to ascertain how the history profession could hope to connect with larger audiences.  To do so would require examining how those people, those outside the circle of professional historians, understood and used the past in order to build those connections.  The authors and associate researchers followed the methodology characteristic of social historians – with a viewing lens of “the bottom up” – surveying a portion of the general American populace to extract the patterns and values behind what they deemed “popular historymaking”.  Participants were asked questions and to provide values based on four parameters: participation in activities related to the past, trustworthiness of sources of information about the past, connectedness to the past, and most important pasts. 

Perhaps the most constant pattern throughout the book was that “almost every American deeply engages the past, and the past that engages them most deeply is that of their family” (p. 22).  While familial history or ties is a prominent pattern, Americans also sought out histories under the influence of other external sources, such as movies, books, journals, or a desire to collect and preserve.  This produced a spectrum of how people deem the trustworthiness of various historical sources; this spectrum also connected with personal interest to a degree, with museums and historical sites ranking among the top while surprisingly high school history classes tended to be less trustworthy and perhaps the least interesting.  The concluding chapters explored the ways in which individuals (in this case, samples from Euro-Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and American Indians) bridge the gaps between personals pasts and larger historical narratives rooted predominantly in cultural and political demographics.  A trait of social history I personally appreciate is the ability to portray the primary perspective from a primary source, for example how the authors skillfully depicted the “borderland” of Mexican America with the testimonials of Mexican American respondents.  Broadly speaking, the past is present in most, if not all, American lives.  How that past is made present all dependent upon external influences, internal desires, social behaviors and cultural patterns, and an increased desire to remove that sense of self-inflicted historical amnesia plaguing professionals today.

At this point I am sure you’re probably thinking what that brief synopsis of a survey test has anything to do with acting, a stage set, rap battles, and a Revolutionary backdrop set to hip-hop.  Not only did the limited footage depict a colorful and talented musical production, but also, however briefly, spoke to the life and legacy of a real-life national icon and his impact on the American present.  The story, about four-and-a-half minutes long, may be found here: http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/inside-story/2015/9/appreciating-alexander-hamilton.html.  Joseph M. Adelman, writing for “The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History”, states that the hip-hop style production of Hamilton: An American Musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda is interesting in how it acts as a “vessel for conveying history to the general public”.  Additionally, it draws on artistic license to provide an argument about Hamilton’s perspective over the course of his most notable life events. 

Adelman expresses great praise at Miranda’s ability to portray accurate historical detail and approach the truth of a subject in a manner inaccessible to historians.  The confrontations between Hamilton and Jefferson were represented as a series of rap battles, as a way “to convey a really complicated argument in a way that’s easily immediately accessible” and connects with much of the larger audience.  Adelman continued to extol the creativity in depicting historical facts, issues, and problems claiming that “artists who interpret the historical past are sometimes able to tell better or truer stories about the past.”  These praises coincide seamlessly with the general patterns gleaned from Presence of the Past: individual interpretations of the past through a familial or – in this case specifically – a cultural lens, as well as enabling access to larger audiences that are genuinely engaging and not “boring” or “dull”.  To the latter pattern, “Hamilton” does indeed act as an external stimulus to prompt engagement on the part of the individual, for Adelman asserts that the production “makes a really interesting argument, gets the important facts right, and will get people interested in asking more questions.”  Isn’t that one of the foci of Presence, to examine and understand the how and why Americans engage with history?  “As a historian,” he says, “that’s more than I can ask for.”  I can say with certainty that my interest in the production and the subject matter has certainly been piqued.