Alexander Hamilton Wasn’t Exactly An ‘Anti-Slavery Crusader’
Five years after it debuted on Broadway, the musical Hamilton continues to be an American cultural phenomenon. Lin Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop dramatization of the Founding Father's life based on Ron Chernow’s biography is now more accessible, and streaming on Disney+. To grab a phrase from the musical, you might say, "Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now."
Miranda depicts Hamilton as a talented, resourceful, and self-made immigrant (he grew up in the Caribbean), and throughout the musical, viewers get a glimpse into several key political episodes throughout Hamilton's life.
But as Black Lives Matter protests continue throughout the country, it seems pertinent to ask: Was Alexander Hamilton also a slave owner?
Unlike most of the Founding Fathers, Hamilton was not a slave owner, per Britannica, but he did marry into a prominent New York slaveholding family, the Schuylers. Historians and additional sources note the slave owners among the 10 main Founding Fathers, and Hamilton is never recorded as a slaveholder. He was among three of the main 10 Founding Fathers who did not own slaves.
However, his relationship with the institution of slavery was much more complicated than this indicates. Here's what historians have to say about Alexander Hamilton and his dealings and views on slavery in America.
Miranda portrays Hamilton as an abolitionist visionary in confrontations with Jefferson, a noted slave owner.
On stage, Hamilton delivers lines like, “Hey, neighbor, your debts are paid ’cause you don’t pay for labor,” to Jefferson.
But, historians like Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history and law at Harvard and the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, disagree. “He was not an abolitionist,” she told Harvard Gazette. “He bought and sold slaves for his in-laws, and opposing slavery was never at the forefront of his agenda."
Historians note Hamilton put his personal and professional ambition above his distaste for slavery, doing business with slave owners and marrying Elizabeth Schuyler, whose wealthy family owned slaves. “And while, yeah, Hamilton was anti-slavery and never owned slaves, between choosing his financial plan and going all in on opposition to slavery, he chose his financial plan," Miranda told Billboard in July 2015. "So it was tough to justify keeping that rap battle in the show, because none of them did enough."
Miranda added, "I'm not going to say Hamilton was the anti-slavery crusader when he didn't make his life about it. His friend John Laurens was an ardent abolitionist trying to free slaves and raise battalions of armed free slaves, and was getting shut down at every turn."
When Hamilton's mother died, she left two slave boys to him in his inheritance.
Hamilton was only 12 years old when his mother died and left him orphaned. She gave him the remainder of her property, including two young slaves named Christian and Ajax, according to an article by James Oliver Horton, professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University, in The New York Journal of American History. But, because Hamilton and his brother James Jr. were both illegitimate children, they did not receive their inheritance. The court determined they had no right of inheritance, and awarded her estate to her legitimate son and a cousin, according to Chernow's account The Guardian reported.
Hamilton grew up amidst slavery on the Caribbean island of St. Croix and described the brutality of what he saw, per research from Columbia University. However, Hamilton later took over operations of the entire St. Croix branch of Beekman & Cruger, an import-export business that engaged in the African slave trade and sugar. At a young age, Hamilton participated indirectly in buying and selling human beings, per the The New York Journal of American History.
Hamilton helped create a New York organization that released Black slaves.
Hamilton was one of the founding members of New York's Manumission Society, per the New York Historical Society. The organization worked on behalf of Black New Yorkers, protesting their kidnapping and sale as slaves elsewhere.
The Society also lobbied to pass legislation in 1799 that granted gradual release for enslaved New Yorkers. The organization provided legal assistance to both free and enslaved Blacks suffering from abuse. Still, many members were slaveholders when they joined, and kept them afterward. Members rejected Hamilton's proposal that slave owners had to free their slaves.
Some say Hamilton's views on race were progressive for that time period.
Hamilton urged George Washington, his mentor, to enlist Black men to fight for the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, per a Cambridge analysis. “With proper management,” Hamilton wrote to John Jay in 1779, “I have not the least doubt that the [N]egroes will make very excellent soldiers.”
Hamilton also wrote about Black men, "their natural faculties are as good as ours" in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton.
Additionally, he wrote in A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Congress (a pamphlet defending the First Continental Congress) in favor of equality, "All men have one common original: they participate in one common nature, and consequently have one common right. No reason can be assigned why one man should exercise any power, or pre-eminence over his follow creatures more than another; unless they have voluntarily vested him with it," per a Cambridge analysis.
Some argue that Hamilton was an abolitionist by the standards of the time period, especially in contrast to Thomas Jefferson, Eric Foner, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University and author of Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad, told the NYTimes.
But, Hamilton was also outspoken about his elitist views.
Unlike in the musical, Hamilton was not an advocate for the poor and marginalized IRL. “He was not a champion of the little guy, like the show portrays,” Gordon-Reed told Harvard Gazette. “He was elitist. He was in favor of having a president for life.”
As such, Hamilton “was more a man for the 1 percent than the 99 percent,” Sean Wilentz, a professor at Princeton and the author of The Politicians and the Egalitarians, told the NYTimes. Foner also noted Hamilton’s elitism and dedication to property rights were “more important to him” than fighting slavery.
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