Happy Takeover Tuesday. I’m just wrapping up episode one of a two-part series on Alexander Hamilton.

For my newsletter subscribers, I thought I would preview some of my thoughts about Hamilton, why I think he’s America’s most important founding father, and what the musical Hamilton gets wrong about Alexander Hamilton

Hamilton Was That Guy

The above quote was given by Talleyrand, the famous French diplomat who served extensively under Napoleon and the Bourbon Restoration. He had extensive contact with Hamilton while exiled to the United States from France during The Terror.

This is someone who knew Napoleon extensively, and also knew all of the great kings, queens, generals, and statesmen of Europe. And he thought one man was greater than them all: Alexander Hamilton.

This is the primary thing that I think Hamilton the musical misses about Alexander Hamilton: his greatness. In the musical, he comes across as earnest but hopelessly nerdy.

In reality, Hamilton was the man: Charismatic, unbelievably intelligent, effortlessly perceptive, urbane, suave, brave, funny, and handsome. Look at the picture below and tell me that you see all of that in the face of Lin-Manuel Miranda. No offense to him, but he should have cast someone else in the lead for his musical.

Teddy Roosevelt called him “the most brilliant American statesman who ever lived” and I am inclined to agree.

Who Does This Sound Like?

Stop me when you know who I’m talking about:

• Artillery officer

• Spoke fluent, accentless French

• Known to be quite short

• Craved military glory more than anything

• Drew up military plans to invade an exotic country across the sea

• Reddish hair

• Born on a small island off the coast of the country he would one day call his home

• Implemented sweeping reforms to his country’s constitution, emphasizing centralization and regularity

• Unbelievably active and energetic

• Didn’t know when to stop which led to his downfall

• Died at age 49

The answer is Alexander Hamilton, but you could be forgiven for thinking this list was about Napoleon. The only two bullets that don’t describe Napoleon are that he never spoke French without an accent, and he died at age 51, not 49.

Hamilton was a truly Napoleonic figure, a man of titanic ambition and ego. A military genius, and a military hero. He was the kind of person whose sheer force of will could bend the fate of entire nations.

And in fact, I would argue that Hamilton’s impact on the United States was as great as Napoleon’s impact on France, if a little more subtle.

A Little Dose of Monarchy

The American Revolution should have ended up like the French Revolution. And if Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Thomas Paine had had their way, it would have. These were radical Republicans who wanted to abolish all distinction and usher in a disastrous and unworkable ideological program.

But they didn’t get their way, because Alexander Hamilton was the first president of the United States.

Okay, fine, you’re right that it was technically George Washington.

But it was Hamilton who set the agenda, composed the departments, thought up the policies, oversaw their implementation, and cajoled Congress into going along.

It is perhaps a little unfair to call Washington a figurehead president, but not very unfair.

And the thing about Hamilton is that he was, like Napoleon, a natural dictator. He always thought that he was the smartest person in the room and that he had the best solutions (he was almost always right). Command came naturally to him, and he had limitless energy.

Not only that, he had well-known monarchical intellectual tendencies and even argued for an elected monarch at the constitutional convention.

Without Hamilton, the presidency of the United States would have become a secondary branch of government to Congress. That is how most of the founding fathers envisioned it, including James Madison who wrote the Constitution.

They were Steve Jobs at NeXT. They had Utopian dreams of an organization that could function on love, equality, and good vibes. Like do we really even need anyone at the top, man?

Hamilton was Steve Jobs at Apple the second go-round. And he thought America needed a strong CEO. Hamilton made sure that the executive ended up as the premier branch of government. Having the American government largely centered on a single person allowed it to be flexible, responsive, and dynamic.

This centralization saved it from the paralysis and anarchy that destroyed so many French governments after their revolution.

A government isn’t what’s written down on the paper of its constitution. A government is defined by the way it operates in the real world. And whereas James Madison wrote the paper, Alexander Hamilton as the man behind Washington got to define how the American government really worked.

In that capacity, he made it strong, active, rational, and centralized.

By the time Jefferson got his hands on the presidency, it was too late. The constitution had been defined, and he was powerless to undo it.

For this reason alone, I think Hamilton was the most important founding father. He, along with Washington, saved the American Revolution from its worst tendencies and gave the government a much-needed dose of authority and realism.

He wasn’t a pathetic theater kid begging for your attention on stage. He was a genuine great man of history who defined American government for more than a century.

So I’m glad that the musical got people more interested in Hamilton generally, but I’m excited for more people to learn who he truly was.

I know this has been a somewhat rambling sequence of thoughts on Hamilton. For a more coherent and comprehensive narrative, listen to Hamilton Part 1 tomorrow!

Thanks for tuning in. See you next week!

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