Historian Shares New Look at Founder Alexander Hamilton

The writing of history is always in flux, as scholars uncover new sources, re-investigate evidence, and apply their own unique lenses. GFS students and teachers explored this process in depth last week with historian William Hogeland when he came to campus to share his experience writing "The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding."

The book delves into Hamilton’s fight to establish debt as means of securing our burgeoning nation’s footing in the world. It’s an aspect of Hamilton’s legacy only touched on briefly in the popular “Hamilton” musical which, along with Ron Chernow’s biography, has brought the founder massive modern day attention.

“Hogeland was invited as part of our pre-election education to help us look at the complexities and tensions over democracy that have existed in our country from the beginning,” said Director of Academic Program Carol Rawlings-Miller. 

“He’s one of America’s most prominent intellectuals in a larger public conversation that’s taking place right now about the origins of our nation and its political system,” said History Department Head Rob Goldberg.

His work is also immensely readable. Goldberg likens it to the best fiction: “page turners, filled with casts of colorful characters, drama, and plot twists.” But, as he underscored for students, Hogeland’s work is deeply researched history, which included the letters and papers of Hamilton and others, from which he formulates new and thought-provoking ideas and arguments.

After a packed lecture in Loeb and a lively conversation with students, with a number of questions focused on class warfare—Hogeland’s book illuminates the tensions between the elites and working class of the times—the author met with history faculty in the Friends Free Library for a seminar. 

“We wanted to learn about his original scholarship and experience as a historian of the founding era with a view toward bringing his insights and discoveries into our classrooms, such as helping us identify lesser known sources or stories that could advance our study of African American History and United States History,” said Goldberg. “It was a rich and inspiring conversation.”

In working with original sources, Hogeland described the dearth of Native American history in mostly European-authored materials, as well as the sometimes intentional disposal of materials that illuminate women’s experiences of the time, primarily letters. 

As Goldberg shared in his introduction of Hogeland, he is a prolific writer, authoring five books, most of them on the founding era. He’s a leading scholar of Hamilton and Washington, but also lesser known leaders, like Little Turtle of the Miami people and Blue Jacket of the Shawnee, who resisted U.S. colonization, and lesser known protest movements, like those of white working-class farmers who fought for more democracy and spoke truth to power both before and after the revolution. With the release of “The Hamilton Scheme,” he was interviewed on NPR last spring.