“Make ’em Laugh”

Why History Cannot Be Reduced to Song and Dance

NANCY ISENBERG

Whether professional scholars agree or not, the musical

Hamilton has been widely praised for its historical value. Jody Rosen
(who is not a historian) asserted without qualification in The New York
Times Magazine that the musical was a “rigorously factual period
drama.” The Huffington Post credited the historical Hamilton for envi-
sioning the United States as a “unified nation, a strong federal govern-
ment and an urban, industrial society—all things Democrats embrace
today,” as opposed to Jefferson’s “rural utopianism.” Caught up in the
dramatic personality of the play’s protagonist, these writers downplay
the fact that Hamilton’s major (and not so hip) constituency—the “one
percent”—were wealthy speculators. Theater lovers on the Internet
ardently defend the production as a genuine article of history. When he
interviewed Lin-Manuel Miranda on CBS, Charlie Rose insisted that the
show was not only history, but something that should replace all tradi-
tional historical interpretation. Miranda demurred, but that didn’t stop
the seemingly earnest Rose.1

Nancy Isenberg is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at

Louisiana State University, and author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold His-
tory of Class in America (New York, 2016) and Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron
Burr (New York, 2007). She is coauthor, with Andrew Burstein, of Madison and
Jefferson (New York, 2010). For her op-eds on Hamilton, Isenberg received the
2016 Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award from the Before Columbus
Foundation.
1. Jody Rosen, “The American Revolutionary,” New York Times Magazine
(July 8, 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/08/t-magazine/hamil
ton-lin-manuel-miranda-roots-sondheim.html; “Anti-Slavery Hamilton Gets
Pushed Off the $10 Bill, While Genocidal Slaver Jackson Stays on the $20,”

Journal of the Early Republic, 37 (Summer 2017)

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Publicity for the musical has centered on Ron Chernow’s hero-

worshipping biography of Hamilton. The same strategy was used for
HBO’s John Adams, a television mini-series that claimed it was based
on David McCullough’s biography. Yet as Jeremy Stern meticulously
demonstrated in his articles for History News Network, the earlier televi-
sion production was riddled with problems. No one questioned Stern’s
careful survey of the many flagrant errors of fact in John Adams. It’s not
nitpicking to call out historical errors when they’re as massive as they are
in the Hamilton musical.2
I see the musical as far less original than others claim it is. As I have
written elsewhere, Burr’s character relies on a well-established device
used by his political enemies (and later fiction writers). The plot device
in the musical is unduly simplistic: Burr’s behavior is traced back to the
loss of his parents, which supposedly led to him to lose his moral com-
pass. The lyrics are explicit: The cunning Chesterfieldian flip-flopper

Huffington Post, June 18, 2015 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/18/

andrew-jackson-20-bill_n_7608904.html; also see a humorous parody of all the
exaggerated claims for Hamilton’s accomplishments, Alexandra Petri, “Save
Alexander Hamilton. Dump Andrew Jackson,” Washington Post, June 18, 2015,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2015/06/18; on defending
Hamilton as “grounded in a commitment to historical accuracy,” see Sadie
Bergen, “On Hamilton and Learning to Think Historically,” AHA Today: A Blog
of the American Historical Association, Oct. 26, 2015, http://blog.historians.org/
2015/10/hamilton-musical; Charlie Rose’s interview with Miranda aired on “Sixty
Minutes” on Nov. 8, 2015 and Jan. 10, 2016, and I watched it the second time it
was aired. The published script is incomplete; see the full video of the interview
at “Into Dangerous Hands, The Collider, Hamilton,” http://www.cbsnews.com/
videos/into-dangerous-hands-the-collider-hamilton.
2. Jeremy Stern, “What’s Inaccurate about the New HBO Series on John
Adams,” History News Network (Mar. 18, 2008), http://historynewsnetwork.org/
article/48493; Jeremy Stern, “What’s Wrong with HBO’s Dramatization of John
Adams,” History News Network (Oct. 27, 2008), http://historynewsnetwork.org/
article/56155; on the skewed portrait of Hamilton in Chernow’s biography, espe-
cially his effort (as Andrew Schocket has argued) “to elide or defend Hamilton’s
mistakes, excesses, and questionable actions,” see Schocket, “Ron Chernow’s
Alexander Hamilton Is Not Throwing Away Its Second Shot,” Process: A Blog
for American History, http://www.processhistory.org/schocket-chernow/; for
Chernow’s total lack of objectivity in always painting Hamilton as “principled,”
“[i]ncorrigibly honest,” and guided by his “supranormal intellect,” see Andrew
Burstein, “Flawed Giant,” Chicago Tribune, May 16, 2004 http://articles.chicago

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 Isenberg, “MAKE ’EM LAUGH” • 297
waits to see “which way the wind blows.” Of course, we call this kind of
predictability typecasting. It may make for good opera, but the historical
conditions that shaped the relationship between Hamilton and Burr are
entirely irrelevant in the imagined world of the show.3
The musical’s most flagrant bias is stripping Hamilton’s personality of
its less than desirable qualities. Miranda has been quite open in saying
that Hamilton is “my man.” Americans have always had a knack for
turning the founders into modern-day heroes. Some call it “Founders
Chic,” and it can extend to an unquenchable desire for myths to sustain
patriotic pride. Every generation reinvents the founders in its own image.
One reason why Hamilton is so popular is its powerful mixture of inno-
cence and recklessness as channeled through Hamilton’s character. The
theatergoer is treated to vigorous youth, brazen sex appeal, macho
brashness—and it is all somehow completed in an ingenious mind. It’s
an endearing and whimsical portrait of a Hamilton who “tells it like it
is” in the pounding, non-stop rhythms of hip-hop. But the real Hamilton
was far more calculating. To get his way, he could be utterly vicious. He
had no love for the unwashed masses. But that side never appears
onstage, because it undermines the heroic storyline.4

tribune.com/2004-05-16/entertainment/0405150021_1_flawed-giant-revolu
tionary-war-sarcasm.
3. Nancy Isenberg, “Liberals Love Alexander Hamilton. But Aaron Burr Was
a Real Progressive Hero,” Washington Post, Mar. 30, 2016, https://www.washing
tonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/30/liberals-love-alexander-hamilton-but
-aaron-burr-was-a-real-progressive-hero/; also see Nancy Isenberg, Fallen
Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York, 2007), 138–39, 212, 231, 247–49,
254–55, 407–12.
4. I develop the theme of “Founders Chic” and heroic founder myth-making
tradition in greater detail in Nancy Isenberg, “Burr Slur: Broadway’s Hamilton
Doesn’t Tell It Like It Is,” Saturday Evening Post, July/August 2016, http://
www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/06/27/in-the-magazine/trends-and-opinions/
burr-slur-broadways-hamilton-doesnt-tell-like.html; also see David Waldstreicher,
“Founders Chic as Culture War,” Radical History Review 84 (Fall 2002), 185–94.
Adam Gopnik argued that Miranda’s Hamilton is “a hero, first to last.” See
Gopnik, “Hamilton and the Hip-Hop Case for Progressive Heroism,” New Yorker,
Feb. 5, 2016, http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/hamilton-and
-the-hip-hop-case-for-progressive-heroism. Theater critics in love with the musical
call Miranda’s performance “endearing,” which is why his Hamilton is so whimsi-
cal and lovingly portrayed. See Jil Picariello, “The ‘Hamilton’ Founding Fathers
Move On–Will We Love Their Replacements?,” Huffington Post, June 30, 2016,

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298 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Summer 2017)

As David Waldstreicher put it, the spirit of Hamilton allows Ameri-

cans to overcome their disillusionment with the founders over the embar-
rassment of slavery. Though it is clear that Hamilton purchased slaves,
and his father-in-law, Phillip Schuyler, owned as many as twenty-seven
slaves, his northernness, his Carribbeanness, is somehow conflated with
abolitionism. This sleight-of-hand is what makes the play considerably
less progressive than it appears at first glance. As Waldstreicher summed
it up, it desires to offer a “subaltern view” but really is offering a “sub-
altern envelope” for Founders Chic.5
Miranda’s goal was not to rewrite history. Indeed, his play has more
to do with contemporary politics. His Hamilton is a symbol for the age of
Obama. The political analyst Nate Silver, writing for Esquire, described
Obama in 2009 as the first president to come across as “unmistakably
urban: pragmatic, superior, hip, stubborn, multicultural.” Miranda’s ear-
liest performance of his founders rap took place in the Obama White
House. As a consequence of this act of transference, his Hamilton is
given Obama-like qualities: He is superior (a genius), pragmatic (con-
cerned with finance, credit, and banks), stubborn (unrelenting and con-
tentious); his most far-fetched attribute is that of a hip, multicultural pop
star. By this calculation, if Hamilton is Obama-esque, then the American
Dream is possible.6
We also have to seriously evaluate the medium. The world of theater
relies on emotion, creating a fantasy world in which the past is wrapped
in the warm glow of illusion. It is more manipulative than fact-based
historical prose, because its goal is not to be objective, but to make

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zealnyc/the-hamilton-founding-fat_b_10718784
.html.
5. David Waldstreicher’s comments come from private correspondence.
Though Chernow does everything to defend Hamilton as an abolitionist, even he
has to admit that his father-in-law owed numerous slaves and that Hamilton pur-
chased two slaves for either himself or Angelica and John Barker Church. See Ron
Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York, 2004), 210–11.
6. Nate Silver, “How Obama Really Won the Election,” Esquire, Jan. 14,
2009, http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5496/how-obama-won-0209/;
Adam Gopnik has called Hamilton the “musical of the Obama era,” see Gopnik,
“ ‘Hamilton’ and the Hip-Hop Case for Progressive Heroism”; also see Jennifer
Schuessler, “Starring on Broadway, Obama and Alexander Hamilton,” Artbeat
(blog), New York Times, July 18, 2015, http://artbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/
18/starring-on-broadway-obama-and-alexander-hamilton.

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 Isenberg, “MAKE ’EM LAUGH” • 299
the audience repress rationality and indulge in the seductive power of
playfulness. The fantasy is that Hamilton has come back from the dead;
or as one theater critic declared, Miranda is “Hamilton, right down to
his very DNA.” Dancing and singing invites the audience to reclaim the
naı̈ve wonder of a child. As the harsh reality of the early republic is thus
hidden, it is recast as a fairytale world. The founders are America’s ver-
sion of King Arthur’s Camelot, and campy versions have been around at
least since the early twentieth century. Have we forgotten the smash hit
musical 1776? I grew up loving tap dance. I took tap lessons. Eleanor
Powell, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and the Nicholas Brothers were my
favorite dancers, and still are. But I never would confuse Singin’ in the
Rain with an accurate history of early Hollywood.7
I am also deeply troubled by the faux-feminism of the Schuyler sisters.
Broadway’s Hamilton is not an embrace of women’s history. Miranda
has transferred the more credible, more genuine eighteenth-century
“feminism” of Aaron Burr, his wife, and daughter to the highly conven-
tional Schuylers. The reason is fairly obvious. Miranda’s Hamilton must
always be the progressive icon. His script dismissively refers to Burr as
warming Theodosia’s bed; his future wife is reduced to an adulterer and
a mistress. The same device is used to depict Sally Hemings, who is
merely brought up to attack Jefferson. So my question is this: What
could possibly be less progressive than to trash the women as a means
to bring down their men?8
The larger difficulty is that this fake feminism fits a common pattern:
It is what I call the “Molly Pitcher syndrome.” Instead of talking about
real feminism, or describing women as they really were, popular writers
invent a fake heroic female character. Or, as in the HBO John Adams,
the female lead is given qualities she never had. TV’s Abigail is learned
in Latin (which she was not); she is knowledgeable enough in the law to
tell her husband how to revise his defense strategy when he represented
the British officers put on trial for the “Boston Massacre.” She has to be
strikingly beautiful and witty enough to captivate Thomas Jefferson in
France. The storyline that smart, beautiful women held their own with
their male counterparts makes feminism look easy. It ignores the tremen-
dous resistance in this era when it came to treating women as intellectual

7. Picariello, “The ‘Hamilton’ Founding Fathers Move On.”

8. On the uniqueness of Aaron Burr and his wife’s and daughter’s feminism,
see Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 55, 72, 74–75, 77–83, 236, 388–89, 413.

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300 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Summer 2017)

equals, and it sanitizes the retrogressive thinking of most of the founders.

Why do we need Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Lucretia Mott if the found-
ers had the problem licked? Why did it take nearly a century-long cam-
paign to secure the female vote if the women of 1776 were “hip” power
players?9
I strongly urge all to revisit Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures
(1791), in which the treasury secretary was quite clear that the classes to
be exploited as factory workers were women and children, even children
of a “tender age.” Why? Because they were “idle,” and contributed
nothing of value to the economy. So, yes, Hamilton did anticipate our
modern industrial economy, but it was one built on the backs of poor
women and children. I ask again: What could possibly be less progres-
sive than advocating child labor? This is why the eighteenth-century
Hamilton cannot be dragged into the twenty-first century without recog-
nizing how much unpleasant baggage he carries.10
Several scholars interested in the racial optics in Hamilton have
argued that Miranda is erasing the history of slavery. I would take the
argument one step further. He is erasing all power dynamics: race, gen-
der, and class. Hamilton was no abolitionist. He had no desire to chal-
lenge the existing social hierarchy. Hamilton had to marry into the
Schuyler family to secure his class reputation. His most powerful allies
in New York are either minimized or erased from the musical, most
notably his father-in-law, Philip Schuyler, and his British brother-in-law,
John Barker Church. Angelica’s “wealthy” husband isn’t named. Elite,

9. As I argued in a Washington Post op-ed (see note 3), the musical puts fem-
inist words in the mouth of Angelica Schuyler that she wanted to tell Jefferson to
rewrite the Declaration of Independence to include women. This is taken from
Abigail Adams’s famous “Remember the Ladies letter” of 1776. I would add that
it invokes a scene from The Adams Chronicles (1976), in which Abigail Adams (in
person!) challenges Thomas Jefferson on ignoring women; and it prefigures what
Elizabeth Cady Stanton actually did in her draft of “The Declaration of Senti-
ments” (1848), in which she rewrote the “The Declaration of Independence.” See
Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein, “The Adamses on Screen,” in A Compan-
ion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams, ed. David Waldstreicher (Malden,
MA, 2013), 487–509.
10. See “Alexander Hamilton’s Final Version of the Report on the Subject of
Manufactures,” [Dec. 5, 1791], in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold
C. Syrett (27 vols.; New York, 1961–87), 10, 253. Child labor was legal in the
United States until 1919.

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 Isenberg, “MAKE ’EM LAUGH” • 301
ambitious New Yorkers built family dynasties, and Philip Schuyler loved
both of his sons-in-law–perhaps more than his daughters. He needed
Hamilton and Church to advance his political and economic interests
in state and federal politics. That is what drove Hamilton—not some
progressive agenda. The musical completely fails to address Hamilton’s
undisguised elitism and militarism. Party differences did matter in the
1790s and early 1800s, and yet the Federalist Party in the musical stands
for nothing at all. If Hamilton is to be the “Everyman” of the American
Dream, then he can’t be what the real Hamilton was: a virulent party
man.11
The election of 1800 is distorted beyond recognition. The main point
of the musical is that Hamilton determined the outcome of the election.
He supposedly “voted” for Jefferson, which led to the Virginian’s “land-
slide” victory and Burr’s defeat. In fact, Hamilton did not determine the
election (or break the election tie). James Bayard of Delaware is the only
person who had that kind of influence, and he didn’t listen to Hamilton.
And what happened to all of Hamilton’s underhanded efforts to defeat
John Adams? The musical calls Hamilton an orphan, bastard, and son
of a whore, but never identifies that it was Adams who gave him the
ignominious title “bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar.” Hamilton’s power
grab, and his self-interested actions in attacking Adams, are virtually

11. See Annette Gordon-Reed, “Hamilton: The Musical: Blacks and the
Founding Fathers,” National Council on Public History (Apr. 6, 2016), http://
ncph.org/history-at-work/hamilton-the-musical-blacks-and-the-founding-fathers/;
Lynn D. Monteiro, “Review Essay: Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of
the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton,” Public Historian 38 (Feb.
2016), 89–98; and Ishmael Reed, “Hamilton: The Musical:’ Black Actors Dress
Up Like Slave Traders . . . and It’s Not Halloween,” Counterpunch (Aug. 21,
2015), http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/21/hamilton-the-musical-black
-actors-dress-up-like-slave-tradersand-its-not-halloween/; on the importance of
class and Hamilton’s relationship to his father-in-law Philip Schuyler and brother-
in-law John Barker Church, see Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 86, 97, 109; and Nancy
Isenberg, “Corporations, What Are they Good For?,” Common-place: The Inter-
active Journal of Early American Life 16 (Spring 2016), http://common-place.org/
book/corporations-what-are-they-good-for/; on the omission of Hamilton’s ideas,
his militarism and elitism, also see Ken Owen, “Historians and Hamilton: Found-
ers Chic and the Cult of Personality,” The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American
History, Apr. 21, 2016, https://earlyamericanists.com/2016/04/21/historians-and
-hamilton-founders-chic-and-the-cult-of-personality/噛more-14350.

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302 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Summer 2017)

written out of the story, because their messy relationship would com-
pletely undermine the noble (and tragic) portrait of Hamilton. As obvi-
ous, the unrelenting anti-immigrant policy of the Federalist Party is
absent from the score so as to allow Hamilton—born a British subject,
like nearly everyone else in the founders’ circle—to be the immigrant-
made-good.12
A more accurate musical about the immigrant experience would be
named Gallatin. Here is the story of a Swiss émigré mocked for his
French accent and hounded by the Federalists who, with him in mind,
crafted a constitutional amendment that aimed to deny immigrants the
right to hold public office. Despite the abuse he suffered at the hands of
Hamilton’s party, which denied him his Senate seat, he became Jeffer-
son’s and Madison’s long-serving secretary of the treasury. Isn’t this the
history we need to know? He was no less instrumental than Hamilton.
His statue stands outside the Treasury Building, next to the White
House.13
Historians should always contest the obvious biases. Yes, history
should be about dislodging misconceptions, not entertaining students.
At what point do we surrender to popular culture and reinforce the
irrelevance of professional history? Many scholars, I think, will conclude
that it is already too late to undo the damage. The musical Hamilton is
much bigger than the Broadway show; it is a cast album soundtrack and
a best-selling book, and its meaning is shaped by the larger discussion
in newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other online sites that are largely
divorced from the knowledge and expertise of professional historians.
The issue is one of power: Professional historians might want to
believe otherwise, but they are not the most influential sources of knowl-
edge. We live in a media-saturated universe in which Hollywood, Broad-
way, powerful news outlets like The New York Times, and television

12. Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 97, 203–205, 213–14, 219–20; on the troubled
relationship between Adams and Hamilton, see Peter Shaw, The Character of John
Adams (Chapel Hill, NC, 1976), 182, 226, 240, 248, 250–67, 295; and Joanne
Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven,
CT, 2001), 105–13.
13. See Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 131–35, 171–75, 226. Federalists in Con-
gress also proposed bills to deny naturalized citizens the right to hold office or
vote, see Douglas M. Bradburn, “ ‘True Americans’ and ‘Hordes of Foreigners’:
Nationalism, Ethnicity and the Problem of Citizenship in the United States, 1789–

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 Isenberg, “MAKE ’EM LAUGH” • 303
shows have a much greater reach than any single historian or historical
organization has to shape the contours of public debate. The marketplace
of ideas is not a level playing field. Despite these obvious obstacles,
professional historians must do everything possible to avoid being mar-
ginalized. It is our job to make the cultural producers of popular history
more accountable, and to take a more active role in defending our craft.
Rather than celebrate, or grudgingly tolerate, compromised attempts at
history, we should use this moment to teach the public about what dis-
tinguishes real scholarship from popular versions. We must preserve
(and clarify) the necessary divide between fiction and nonfiction. Our
trademark area of expertise is historical criticism, which can be used to
penetrate and dispel all the noise that drowns out those who don’t want
to merely be “fans” of Broadway revisionist pseudo-history. Americans
ought to feel uncomfortable about their collective past. We look foolish
otherwise, as cheerleaders of American exceptionalism.14
Let’s stop calling it history when it’s entertainment. The Broadway hit
is a fictional rewriting of Hamilton’s life, plain and simple. Does that
admission detract from its entertainment value? No. Enjoy the music,
laugh at the jokes, and appreciate it as a social commentary on our cur-
rent political environment. A fictional, heroic Hamilton and his predict-
able foil Burr steal the show. But the historical Hamilton and the
historical Burr are present in name only.

1800,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 29 (Spring 2003), 19–41, esp.

34–35.
14. Possibly the most dismissive approach to historians’ critiques of Hamilton
is that of Aja Romano, who, argues that it “is a postmodern metatexual piece of
fanfic” that reclaims the “canon for the fan.” Romano insists that Hamilton “hews
extremely carefully to the facts,” and comes “spot-checked” by Chernow, and
many lines “come to us direct from the mouths of the Founding Fathers them-
selves.” From this perspective, Miranda’s ahistorical musical is a radical reclaiming
of the outsider, which means facts don’t matter; and when he does adhere to the
facts he is purportedly as careful as any historian. See Aja Romano, “Hamilton Is
Fanfic, and Its Historical Critics Are Totally Missing the Point,” Vox, July 4, 2016,
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11418672/hamilton-is-fanfic-not-historically
-inaccurate.

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