Tag: Alexander Hamilton

The Dark Side of Alexander Hamilton

Today is Independence Day, the day when the United States annually celebrates the approval of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress on July 4th, 1776. (The congress had actually voted to declare independence from Britain two days earlier on July 2nd.)

Coinciding with the occasion, yesterday, Disney released a recording of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton on their streaming service Disney+. My family and I watched it together. I had listened to the soundtrack previously, but this was the first time I had the opportunity to actually see the show in any form.

Hamilton accurately captures some of Alexander Hamilton’s more obvious personality faults: his arrogance, his impulsiveness, his temper, his womanizing, and his tactlessness. Unfortunately, the musical glosses over some of his more troubling faults, most notably his authoritarian political leanings. In this article, I want to explore some of the overlooked flaws of the real-life Alexander Hamilton.

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The Founding Fathers’ Views on Slavery

We have all heard that our country was founded on the idea that “all men are created equal.” That is certainly what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Unfortunately, ideas are often quite different from actions. The vast majority of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America owned slaves and, for many of them, their public statements stood in stark contrast with their own private actions and beliefs. Nonetheless, their views on the issue of slavery were actually quite diverse and many of them changed their views on the subject over the courses of their lives. In this article, we will examine the unvarnished truth of some of the major Founding Fathers’ views on slavery.

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