In recent years, American civic culture has suffered deep cleavages. Civil conversations have been poisoned by battles over the meaning of America’s past, and which figures we should revere—and condemn. Even America’s Founding Fathers have come under the microscope, but one—Alexander Hamilton—has been spared such judgments by the massive popularity of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s runaway hit musical, Hamilton. Miranda has made Hamilton by far the most popular Founder, at least for the time being.
Hamilton’s new stature is heartening, though it’s unlikely that it has led to a significantly deeper understanding of his contribution as a thinker and statesman in helping to establish the American constitutional order.
Hamilton came to the American colonies as a young immigrant as the tensions with Great Britain were coming to a head in the mid-1770s. He studied ancient and Enlightenment thinkers at King’s College and developed a Lockean political philosophy that prized natural rights and republican self-government.
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