The Truth About Alexander Hamilton

Don Wildman (0:00)

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Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe to bring the past alive. Quick as the dickens, we round the street corner in anticipation. And there it is, the theater. Gilded, bejeweled, festooned, in glowing bulbs and bright neon, the big names and lights. This is one of the hottest shows of the season, and we're right in the middle of things. Gliding into the gathered hubbub, bustling shoulder to shoulder, people call out to their friends, jockeying for position, everyone searching their pockets and purses for tickets, checking their coats, eyeing the merchandise, downing the last dregs of their drinks.

We clear the lobby, make our way past the ushers, two programs, please, thank you very much, and locate our seats. Whoa, check it out, huh? Front and center, now these are seats. Excuse us, sorry, careful, watch your knees. It's a little tight, but not too shabby, huh? Five rows from the stage, pricey, but worth it. The whole theater is red velvet finery, the orchestra players and tuxes, and we settle in and relax as the lights begin to dim and the show is under way.

It's Hamilton. No, no, not the musical. This is the Hamilton everyone's been waiting to see, the real Alexander Hamilton. Let the play begin.

Good day, listeners. This is American History Hit and I'm your host Don Wildman. If there is a founding father who deserves to be the subject of his own podcast series, it's Alexander Hamilton. So, prodigious a role did the man play in the creation of a new nation, which destiny seems to have designed him for. Well, we are trying, dedicating to A.Ham a series of four episodes. Probably ought to be more. The monumental task of telling this punch bowl of a biography, you're forced to sip where you'd otherwise gulp, or you never make it to the end of his times. And we begin today in the company of esteemed historian, accomplished author William Hogeland, who has written a new and important book, The Hamilton Scheme, An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding. Good title. William, you've returned to the pod and we're so grateful.

William Hogeland (2:48)

It's great to be back. Thanks for having me.

Don Wildman (2:50)

Last time we talked about the Whiskey Rebellion, which will certainly find its way somewhere in this conversation, I'm sure. But I want to start with an article you published or was published back in 2007 I mean, this is long before Hamilton the Musical and everything else we've been living with the last, I guess, 20 years almost.

The title of this article, which was on an online source, you can find it easily Googling, Inventing Alexander Hamilton on the troubling embrace of the founder of American Finance. I bring this up because, A, it's a great article, very interesting, about how this storytelling of Hamilton is its own phenomenon, isn't it?

William Hogeland (3:27)

It is its own phenomenon. And it's funny you bring that article up because it was 7 I guess it's amazing to think about that now. It was in Boston Review.

And, yeah, I was already kind of interested in the Hamilton, what I thought of as the Hamilton cult developing. Not that I could have possibly predicted ever an amazing cultural phenomenon like the musical, Hamilton and American Musical, would have ever come along. I mean, it was, that was an unpredictable sort of earthquake. But if you look back to 2007 and think about what I was talking about then, while the musical was unpredictable, of course, it actually was kind of the cherry on top of something that had been going on for some time, an unpredictable cherry on top. Which was, you know, that Hamilton had had a major vogue, was having a major vogue, kind of in policy circles, like economic policy circles during, that really going past 2007 now and looking back, I mean, things having to do with economics and finance that kind of bind residential administrations together across party lines. I mean, George W. Bush and Obama administration people kind of agreeing on the idea of Hamilton as a model for how the federal government ought to look at finance and economics, that was already going on.

Don Wildman (4:38)

We'll get into the details of that soon, but the broadest notion of this man's storytelling is that he's the founding father who doesn't become president, right? I mean, he's the one who lives in the shadow of Washington Adams, et cetera, et cetera. And that has always kept him out of the limelight a bit in American history storytelling.