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The question persisted on the edges of Alexander Hamilton’s pop culture ascendancy: the $ 10 founding father, celebrated in the musical “Hamilton” as a “revolutionary manumission abolitionist,” did he actually have slaves?
Some biographers have approached the matter cautiously over the years, often in footnotes or passing references. But a new research paper released by the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site in Albany, NY, offers the most striking case to date.
In the article, titled “Like a Hateful and Immoral Thing”: The Hidden History of Alexander Hamilton as Ensave, “Jessie Serfilippi, historical interpreter at the mansion, examines letters, account books and more. documents. Her conclusion – about Hamilton, and what she suggests is wishful thinking on the part of many of her modern admirers – is straightforward.
“Not only did Alexander Hamilton enslave people, his involvement in the institution of slavery was essential to his identity, both personally and professionally,” she writes.
“It is vital,” she adds, “that the myth of Hamilton as an ‘abolitionist founding father’ comes to an end.”
The evidence cited in the document, which was quietly published online last month, is not entirely new. But Ms Serfilippi’s compelling case has caught the attention of historians, especially those who have questioned what they see as her bloated anti-slavery credentials.
Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of history and law at Harvard and author of “The Hemingses of Monticello,” called the article “fascinating” and the plausible argument. “It just shows that the founders were almost all involved in slavery in one way or another,” she said.
Joanne Freeman, a history professor at Yale and editor-in-chief of the Library of America’s edition of the Hamilton writings, said detailed evidence remains to be assessed. But she said the paper was part of a welcome reconsideration of what she called the “hero Hamilton” tale.
“It is fitting that we take Hamilton’s status as an assailant into account at a time that makes us realize how vital it is for white Americans to take into account – seriously – the structural legacy of slavery in America, ”she wrote in an email.
Ms. Serfilippi’s research “complicates its story and in so doing better reflects the central place of slavery in the founding of America,” she said. “It also more closely reflects Hamilton.”
But Ron Chernow, whose 2004 biography calls Hamilton an “uncompromising abolitionist,” said the article presented a lopsided and negative view.
The document, he said in an email, “appears to be tremendous research work that expands our sense of Hamilton’s involvement in slavery in a number of ways. But he said he was dismayed at Hamilton’s relative lack of attention to anti-slavery activities. And he questioned what he sometimes called “bald conclusions”, starting with the claim that slavery was “essential to his identity.”
“I don’t blame Jessie Serfilippi for her scrutiny of Hamilton and slavery,” he said. “The great figures of our history deserve such rigor. But she omits all information that would contradict her conclusions.
Hamilton married into the powerful Schuyler family in 1780. Slavery was common among the elite of New York State, and the Schuylers were among the largest slave owners in their area, with over 40 people enslaved to the Albany mansion and other estate over the years.
In recent years, the mansion has done extensive research on “servants” (as house slaves were commonly referred to), which have been incorporated into its tours. The fact that the Schuylers are slaves doesn’t necessarily shock visitors, Ms. Serfilippi said. But the extent of Hamilton’s ties to slavery is another story.
“There are people who come here knowing he wasn’t exactly an abolitionist,” she said. “But there is some surprise when I talk about the details of the research.”
Travis Bowman, the senior curator of the New York State Bureau of Historic Sites, who oversaw the internal review of Ms Serfilippi’s document, said the relative lack of slave research in Hamilton’s home reflects in partly the overall scarcity of scholarships on northern slavery. And the complexity of progressive abolition (the New York Progressive Abolition Act of 1799 eliminated slavery over decades) makes it particularly difficult to track slaves and clearly determine their status.
“It’s a very strange time,” Bowman said. “A lot of people were giving half freedom. If the slaves went away, they did not pursue them.
The idea that Hamilton stood out from the institution dates back to his earliest biography, by his son John Church Hamilton, who claimed in 1841 that his father “had never owned a slave.”
This claim has been categorically contradicted by Hamilton’s grandson, Allan McLane Hamilton. In his 1910 biography, he called it “fake,” noting that Hamilton’s books of accounts included entries showing him buying slaves for himself and others.
But the idea of a decidedly anti-slavery Hamilton has endured and has become more pronounced in recent decades. It is certainly an image that appeals to contemporary readers looking for a founding father relatively spared from slavery.
In her article, Ms. Serfilippi challenges what she sees as lingering myths, starting with the repeatedly-repeated claim that her childhood exposure to the brutalities of slavery at Sainte-Croix left her what Ms. Chernow, in his biography, calls “a settled antipathy for slavery.”
“To this day,” she writes, echoing other researchers, “No primary source has been found to corroborate” the idea that Hamilton’s childhood instilled a hatred of slavery.
Hamilton criticized slavery at different times in his life and, compared to most white contemporaries, had educated opinions about the capabilities of blacks. He was also an early member of the New-York Manumission Society, founded in 1785 to advocate progressive abolition and encourage the voluntary liberation of slaves. (A number of members, including Philip Schuyler, his stepfather, were slave owners.)
But Ms Serfilippi also notes documented cases of Hamilton consulting with legal clients on issues relating to slavery. Hamilton probably wouldn’t have been hired for such a job, she says, “if he were known among his peers as having only abolitionist leanings.”
The fact that Hamilton helped legal clients and family members, including his sister-in-law Angelica Schuyler Church, buy and sell slaves, has been noted by biographers. But whether Hamilton enslaved people in his own home is a murkier question.
Some modern biographers, notes Ms. Serfilippi, address the issue, although often briefly. In his biography, Mr. Chernow writes that Hamilton and his wife, Elizabeth, “may have owned one or two domestic slaves ”, citing“ three oblique clues in his papers ”. But she offers a more definitive reading, arguing that a range of primary sources “prove Hamilton bought slaves for himself.”
His case relies heavily on notations in his cash books and in family letters. For example, in May 1781, six months after his marriage to Elizabeth, Hamilton wrote to George Clinton, mentioning the expectation of a sum of money “to pay the value of the wife Mrs. H[amilton] Mrs. Clinton had.
Some historians, she writes, have interpreted this as paying for the value of her work. But Hamilton, says Serfilippi, “was clearly exchanging money for the woman herself.”
She also cites a number of similar references in other letters, corroborated, she says, by information in the cash books. For example, in an August 1795 letter to Hamilton, Philip Schuyler referred to “a Negro boy and woman engaged to you.” In March 1796 Hamilton’s cash books recorded a payment of $ 250 to Schuyler for “2 black servants bought by him for me”.
Ms Serfilippi also cites several letters from Philip Schuyler referring to “chambermaids” traveling with Elizabeth and the Hamilton children at a time when Hamilton’s cash books, she argues, show no records of women’s wages. room – an indication, she said, that they were enslaved.
In another entry in the cash book, from June 1798, Hamilton records receiving $ 100 for the “term” of a “black boy.” The fact that Hamilton could rent him out to another person – a common practice – “absolutely indicates that Hamilton enslaved the boy,” writes Ms Serfilippi.
And the Hamiltons, Ms. Serfilippi claims, appear to have enslaved people until Hamilton died.
It shows a piece of paper included near the end of the cash book, giving an inventory of Hamilton’s property apparently made after his death in the duel with Aaron Burr in July 1804. The inventory lists his house (valued at £ 2,200) and his furniture and books (300 books). There are also “servants” worth 400 pounds.
Hamilton’s own inventory, which he took shortly before the duel, makes no reference to minions. But Ms. Serfilippi thinks that the posthumous inventory, drawn up to settle her affairs, is more likely to be accurate.
“The Hamiltons were in debt,” she said. “It would make sense to include whatever is in their possession.”
It remains to be seen whether Ms Serfilippi’s firm conclusions will be widely accepted by academics. For her, what’s at stake is more than how we see Hamilton.
“When we say Hamilton didn’t enslave people, we erase them from history,” she said. “The most important thing is that they were here. We have to recognize them. “
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