Introduction: Slavery and Hamilton Today

For over two hundred years, during Hamilton’s lifetime and after his death, writers and antebellum antislavery agitators and abolitionists seldom emphasized his connection with the abolition of slavery. Recent historical studies of Hamilton and slavery, following in the footsteps of Ron Chernow’s popular biography and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s record-breaking Broadway musical, depict the New Yorker as an ardent friend of the poor and immigrants and an opponent of slavery. Other Hamilton biographers preceding Chernow likewise perceived Hamilton as an antislavery icon and foremost leader of the New-York Manumission Society. Reputable historians like Forrest McDonald and Willard Sterne Randall stressed Hamilton’s alleged antislavery credentials, although like Chernow and Miranda, they provided little solid evidence. Hamilton apparently died a slaveowner. With access to virtually all of Hamilton’s extant letters, a legacy from his mother, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, Hamilton’s son, John C. Hamilton possessed sufficient resources to make an argument for Hamilton’s antislavery convictions, if such an argument could be made. Unfortunately for Hamilton’s antislavery reputation, most of the scattered references to enslavement presented in Hamilton, Jr.’s historical biography did not manifest his father’s hostility to the institution.