What Alexander Hamilton’s Deep Connections To Slavery Reveal About The Need For Reparations Today

History professor Nicole S. Maskiell writes for The Conversation about how Colonial-era figures like Alexander Hamilton fit into America’s long history of enslavement, and how slavery fueled networks of power that have lasted through the ages.

Alexander Hamilton has received a resurgence of interest in recent years on the back of the smash Broadway musical bearing his name. But alongside tales of his role in the Revolutionary War and in forging the early United States, the spotlight has also fallen on a less savory aspect of his life: his apparent complicity in the institution of slavery. Despite being a founding member of the New York Manumission Society, which sought gradual emancipation of New York’s enslaved population, Hamilton benefited from slavery – both personally and by association.

As a historian of early America and Northern slavery, I study how Colonial-era figures like Hamilton fit into America’s long history of enslavement, and how slavery fueled networks of power that have lasted through the ages.

A life entwined with slavery

By Hamilton’s time in pre-revolutionary America, wealthy Northerners like him not only benefited from and propagated slavery, but enjoyed centuries of generational wealth built on the labor and lives of enslaved people.

Hamilton’s father-in-law had among the largest slaveholdings in the North. His mother-in-law was the daughter of Johannes Van Rensselaer and Angelica Livingston, both members of two of the largest slaveholding families in the North.

After Hamilton moved to New York in 1773, he remained closely tied to slaveholding elites. His sister-in-law’s house, where he was married, was served and maintained by enslaved people. The house where he died, belonging to his close friend William Bayard Jr., was also staffed by enslaved people.

Today’s debate about reparations for slavery dates back to Hamilton’s era. Except in the past, reparations were actively sought out by the owners of enslaved people.

Some Loyalists – those who opposed the American Revolution – received compensation from England for losses during the war. There is also the American Civil War’s Field Order No. 15 issued by Union Gen. William Sherman in 1865. It is popularly remembered as promising “40 acres and a mule” to formerly enslaved people freed along the coast of Georgia – though it was quickly overturned and did not originally include a mule.

In recent years, universities and other institutions with ties to slavery have undertaken initiatives to uncover past atrocities, or established scholarships for descendants of enslaved people and other underrepresented groups. Georgetown University students demanded a reparations fund in 2019 to atone for the school’s ties to slavery.

Some cities, including Evanston, Illinois, and Asheville and Durham in North Carolina, are establishing their own approaches to reparations, and are working to define guidelines for the use and distribution of funds.

Yet the show is not without its critics, specifically as it relates to the exclusion of historical people of color who populated the world of Alexander Hamilton. These include noted spies Cato and James Fayette, Black brigade fighter Col. Tye and antislavery activist William Hamilton, purported to have been Alexander’s son with a free Black woman.

Historical and contemporary representation in popular tales like “Hamilton” is increasingly being used as a step toward correcting the imbalances from slavery’s legacy. And the key questions posed within the musical’s “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story” number are some of the same questions being asked within the reparations movement today.