Hamilton actually does adress the āall these people were horrible and had slavesā issue, but it does so at times subtly. Itās not holding your hand about it, itās not there to give you a lecture about the fact that most of the founding fathers owned slaves - because quite frankly you should know that already.
But that doesnāt mean itās ignored. Jefferson singing ālooking at the rolling fields, I canāt believe that we are freeā while being surrounded by his slaves, hit me SO HARD the first time I actually saw the footage bc WOW what a colossal piece of shit.
Laurens interlude hit me equally hard, but not primarily bc of Laurenās death - which is sad - but bc of the line āthe surviving members of this regiment have been returned to their mastersā.
But after that interlude? Alexander says āI have so much work to doā and throws himself into his work and Non-stop tells us about all the millions of things he did - and speaking out against slavery is exactly none of them. Itās what the Laurens we see in the musical was all about and yet Alexander only ever speaks out against slavery either, in Act 1 when Laurens is pushing him to do so, or in Act 2 when he can use it to get a sick burn on Jefferson.
That burn btw? āāWe plant seeds in the south, we createā yeah keep ranting, we know whoās really doing the plantingā nice callout there but you know what happens like 10 seconds later?
āYou wanna pull yourself togetherā
āIām sorry these virginians are birds of a featherā
āYoung man Iām from virginia so watch your mouth!ā
This is subtle, but the fact that Washington tells Hamilton to stop down talking virginia after Hamilton just called the South out on slavery? Itās still telling.
Then thereās Elizaās line in the end āI speak out against slavery, you could have done so much more if you only had timeā. And that has me thinking, again, okay but he was constantly writing wasnāt he? Weāre told and shown repeatedly that Hamilton did, as they say, The Most. He could have absolutely spoken out against slavery more and on that, note? So could Eliza. She names it as one of the things she does here, in the end, right alongside telling the stories of the soldiers Hamilton fought with and Washington.
Hamilton doesnāt hold your hand and walk you through history and tells you āhey these people founded the USA but they were also horrible peopleā. It instead tells you the story of Hamilton and it tells it to you through Hamiltonās and Burrās eyes - deeply flawed people who donāt find all that much wrong with slavery or at least not enough to make it a priority.
So yes. Maybe if you go into it not already knowing that these were not good people, you might get the impression that Washington was really cool and maybe the musical should have done more to make it clear that he wasnāt, thatās not for me to say.
But idk, Iām not entirely sure how to formulate this, but the fact that you can enjoy this show and enjoy it a second time and then finally start catching the subtle and not so subtle ways (and really the having the video along with the audio makes a huge difference) the fact that SLAVERY IS A THING is woven tightly into the background, in the way many of the ensemble members clearly portray slaves, not only during What did I miss, but throughout the second act, the way itās portrayed as āoh yeah itās there but weāre only mad about it when Jefferson does it and even then, not like, a lotā it sickens you, it punches you in the gut, it drives the point home, that fuck, that entire time was fucked up, how was that not all of yāallās first priority, wtf Alex why would you ever let those people be returned to their Masters, Laurens died for this?!?!
Not to mention of course, that Hamiltonās popularitiy inspired a lot of āthis is what Hamilton left outā articles about the historical accuracy of it, that might actually have informed people more about history than they would have otherwise been. Though seriously. Everyone should really already have known that Jefferson and Washington owned slaves (Iād say everyone should have known Hamilton profited from the Schuyler family owning slaves, but letās be honest here, I didnāt know much about Hamilton other than āhe was a founding father of the usaā before this musical and neither did most people probably)
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