A Curtain Call that Left Me Cold
A critique on "Hamilton" the musical that will make everyone mad
Over a billion dollars in revenue. Over four million tickets sold. Taking Broadway by storm for the last decade. It has permeated every single corner of pop culture. You've either seen it, streamed it, or at least scrolled past it: Hamilton, written by, and originally starring in the titular role, Lin-Manuel Miranda. The magical, sweeping historical epic. I, too, was complicit in its propulsion to greatness.
I found myself rooting for Alexander Hamilton, the scrappy revolutionary. Inspired by his incessant writing and fighting to prove the chip on his shoulder was more than just unhealed trauma but a burning desire for freedom and relevance in the annals of history.
But the more I sat with the play, a specific line from the musical itself got me thinking.
“Who lives, Who dies, who tells your story?”
Eight words. Eight words that held the key to cracking open the entire illusion. Yes, Alexander Hamilton fought for freedom and relevance, but whose freedom? Relevance for who? The more I listened, the more I realized that this was a celebration of America's founding fathers, and thereby, as most imperialistic western stories do, celebrating or glossing over the wrongs of colonization and enslavement.
Hamilton is in many ways an acapella version of America’s anthem. Catchy enough, but missing the drum beat of truth. For as much of the overlooked history it tries to show, the stories it leaves out are the ones you can’t tell this country’s history without.
I do not mean to tear down a fandom or blindly bash someone’s art. But admiration without interrogation is worship, and I reject the idea of worshiping slaveowners dipped in hip hop culture.
Hamilton is not revolutionary. The musical is a beautiful lie–one that recasts the founding of America as a musical celebration of men who built their legacy on slavery, land theft, and oppression, told by the very people they would have chained.
Let's talk about it.
The Players
Though the list of offenders is rather long, we have neither the time–nor I the energy–to list them all. So I’ll give you the main players. (Their crimes are easily found in history books and internet archives; most are commonly known facts, including by the creators of Hamilton themselves):
George Washington - Enslaver-in-Chief
Historical truth:
Enslaved over 120 people before he was even president. A grand total of 317 enslaved people were residents of Mount Vernon: some owned, some a part of the dowry, and a few even rented.
While he was President and living in Philadelphia, George Washington deliberately rotated enslaved people out of Pennsylvania every six months to avoid the state’s Gradual Abolition Act. That law said anyone enslaved who lived in the state longer than six months would be legally free. Washington sent them back to Virginia just long enough to reset the clock and keep them enslaved while he led the country.
Also while he was President, George Washington used federal officials to try to recapture Ona Judge, an enslaved seamstress who escaped from the President’s House in Philadelphia. He had the Secretary of the Treasury and a customs officer pursue her, and he kept trying to get her back even after leaving office.
Despite public performances of moral unease, refused to free his slaves during his lifetime, only freeing them in his will. This act only included his owned slaves, not the dowry ones.
George Washington used enslaved labor across five farms that together made up his Mount Vernon estate. Enslaved people were the backbone of the operation and generated much of the wealth that funded his home, land, and lifestyle.
What the musical gave us:
Played by Christopher Jackson, an African-American actor. Washington is framed as a noble and fatherly guide to Hamilton in the revolution.
His final solo, “One Last Time,” paints him as a wise, democratic visionary stepping away from power. A picture of restraint and honor.
There is ZERO mention of the enslaved people he owned, pursued, or profited from.
They called him "Father of the Nation", but not for every one living here. Not the Black children born into slavery on his estate. Not Ona Judge, who had to vanish into obscurity just to have a bite at the apple of freedom. Watching George Washington portrayed with grace and reverence by a Black man didn’t feel innovative to me. It felt painful.
Washington wasn’t just complicit in slavery, he protected it with the same vigor he used to win battles. Hamilton asks us to cheer for him without once showing the people he kept in chains.
Thomas Jefferson - Rapist, slaveholder, and architect of American hypocrisy
Historical Facts:
Enslaved over 600 people in his lifetime. Monticello was a forced-labor plantation where Black men, women, and children worked under strict surveillance and harsh conditions.
Began a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, an enslaved girl likely between 14–16 years old, when he was in his 40’s. He fathered at least six of her children.
Never freed Hemings and only freed five enslaved people in his will—all of them members of the Hemings family. The rest were sold to settle his debts.
Wrote “all men are created equal” while buying, selling, and mortgaging human beings—including children.
Argued that Black people were biologically inferior and advocated colonization (removing freed Black people to Africa) in his Notes on the State of Virginia.
Privately expressed moral discomfort with slavery but did little to end it. In fact, he relied on it completely. His entire estate and political standing were built on the labor of enslaved people.
What the musical gave us:
Played by Daveed Diggs, an incredibly charismatic and talented Black actor. Jefferson is portrayed as witty, flamboyant, and morally superior to Hamilton’s cheating on his wife. He’s the stylish comic relief, strutting onstage to hip hop beats in Act II and trading bars with Hamilton in mock rap battle.
His flaws are undersold as personal ego clashes. There’s little mention of Monticello’s slave quarters, Sally Hemings, or the hundreds of Black lives owned, exploited, and sold by Jefferson to preserve his lifestyle.
He gets punchlines and cool cred. But his undertones of selfishness are never solidified by the audience seeing the truth of the plantation he ran or the children born into bondage on his land. Instead, he exits the stage a clever rival, a defeated statesman, and a man of vision.
He is the “Author of the Declaration of Independence,” but what was independence to the Black people born and buried at Monticello? What independence did Sally Hemings have when her womb became property?
Watching Jefferson played by a magnetic Black performer feels like a cruel, insulting joke. Disarming us with charm refurbished as truth. There is nothing subversive about the casting: it is a mask.
Slavery wasn’t just some necessary evil Jefferson tolerated. He calculated it, kept it because it paid. Hamilton asks us to laugh with him, dance with him, applaud his eloquence, without meaningfully noting the lives he erased.
And erasure to music is still erasure.
Alexander Hamilton - Not an Abolitionist. Just an Opportunist.
Historical truth:
While earlier in his career he spoke of anti-slavery, he made compromises and slowly began to avoid publicly advocating against slavery in order to achieve his goal of rising in station. He never argued for the abolition of slavery at the federal level during his political career, and was instead complicit with the practice.
Co-founded the New York Manumission Society, but still supported gradual abolition—a conservative approach that protected slaveowners' interests.
Married into a wealthy slaveholding family (the Schuylers) and evidence has shown that he likely facilitated slave transactions on their behalf (if not for his own household).
Never freed a single enslaved person in his lifetime.
As Treasury Secretary, designed an economic system that, regardless of fiscal progressive implementations, still preserved and profited from slave-based industries, including instituting tariffs on plantation goods.
What the musical gave us:
Portrayed as a scrappy, progressive immigrant genius driven by justice and vision.
He is shown advocating for the freedom and rights of slaves along with John Laurens, but the hypocrisy in his actual actions is never addressed. The show frames him as morally superior to Jefferson and other Southern slaveholders, without acknowledging his complicity.
The musical tells us that Hamilton was “not like the other children,” but a disapproving witness. Yet, he ultimately allowed himself to be compromised in order to prioritize the financial well-being of himself and other white elites over the moral issues he claimed to believe in.
Hamilton in this play is a poor immigrant who rose by his genius, opposed slavery, and helped build the United States, played by a Latino actor whose musical brilliance has been proven to be actually revolutionary in his retelling of stories. But the real Hamilton didn’t fight slavery. He worked around, beside, and within it. He married into it; profited from it. Protected the institution’s place in the American economy. He didn’t act when he had the chance to do so and it mattered most.
Hamilton the musical was a second chance to tell the truth. Instead, the play merely sells us a different version of the lie.
It’s revisionist, and when that revision is sung by the people the system we are called to celebrate would’ve enslaved, it tastes disrespectful: a rebrand of history with a rap song in compliance from its victims.
The Casting Trick — When Representation Becomes Erasure
Lin-Manuel Miranda made it clear from the beginning that he wanted to tell the story of America then, with the voices of now. It is a noble idea. Beautiful, even. The silenced getting a chance to tell the story of America on their own terms, taking back the very story that tried to erase them. Black and Brown actors taking the stage not as themselves, but as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton. Regaling us with our history come to life, set to music and innovative commentary. A historical reclaiming of legacy.
At least, that’s what he tried to do. But that’s the tricky thing with reframing historically ugly stories into modern feel-good dramatic pieces: half-truths to avoid the messy parts are still whole lies. In spite of all of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s effort and unmatched storytelling genius, one cannot reclaim something without first facing it for what it is. This musical sidesteps the blood, the chains, the dehumanization that built this nation. For all its wit, there is no satire, no irony, no real commentary from the perspective of the historical Black, Brown, and Native people in this story. No one speaks truth to power, names their oppression, or calls for accountability. Instead, the production smooths over history with a slick hip veneer, turning rebellion into spectacle rather than a true accounting.
The only irony here is that the play is not used to help us face the truth. Instead, the slaveowners are cast as the descendants of the enslaved, not held accountable.
A Black man plays George Washington, who owned over 120 people.
A Black and Jewish man plays Jefferson, who raped and enslaved Sally Hemings.
An American Puerto Rican man plays Hamilton, who married into a slave-owning family and helped build an economy that relied on forced labor.
While the goal of this casting was to represent actual talent that unfortunately goes overlooked and underpaid all too often because of the unjust system we still live in, the artistic casting does not come across as imaginative. It is a spoonful of imperialistic lies masked as diversity. The play’s creators dressed up oppression in rhythm and rhyme, cast it in melanin, and called the result progress. Aesthetic inclusion that lets the audience feel progressive while erasing the very people who suffered under these historical men’s real lives.
The Emotional Confusion: Applauding Your Own Erasure
What does it do to a person of color to watch George Washington portrayed with stoic dignity and wisdom, knowing damn well he spent years chasing a teenage girl who ran away from his household?
What does it mean to watch Jefferson rap and charm a crowd, while dismissively mentioning his rape victim with the lyric,
“Sally, be a lamb, darlin’, won’tcha open it?”
While Mr. Miranda had good intentions, he only gave true representation half measures (literally). The issue is not about the casting itself, but about what the cast does not say. Or rather what they aren’t given space to say. Once again, we must ask,
“Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story?”
The way that Miranda chose to tell this version of the story convinces people of color that their horrific oppression is less important than the outcome that the rest of the world chooses to focus on, and the rest of the world that if you put a revolution to a hip hop beat, you too can ignore and silence its atrocities.
And still we clap. We grant standing ovations. Play on repeat. Make TikTok trends surrounding the play. Never research the whole history and instead accept this false narrative, becoming complicit to our erasure.
What They Called Inventive Was Just Safe
Embraced by Broadway, the Obamas, and public school curriculums, Hamilton did what all mainstream American media does: it played by the rules. For all its flare and catchiness, the play never comes close to threatening the American myth.
Representation was used not to challenge power, but to make it palatable. To make you more comfortable. To make you feel progressive for applauding POC inclusion, without accepting the real stories these people carry from this historical time period. The play protects the lie that you’ve been told all your life–that all you have in this country was built with ingenuity, resilience, and grit–instead of the truth that all we have was built with extortion, blood and bodies, and the loss of autonomy.
If your ancestors built the system, Hamilton assuages guilt. If your ancestors were buried beneath it, Hamilton tempers your rage. Either way, it becomes a remedy to the uncomfortable truth. If we never look deeper, Hamilton plays a part in the silent agenda to erase our history. This time, it creeps into your soul under the guise of art and beauty, while slowly enabling a falsehood that lives rent free in your very bones.
The Cost of the Lie
“So what, Jared? Why does it matter? Can’t we just enjoy good entertainment?”
You absolutely can. But before you buy the lie, consider the cost. The cost is clarity. The cost is truth. The cost is generations of Black and Brown children taught to admire men who would’ve owned them.
We lose the ability to name the lie for what it is. We trade our historical reality for spectacle, while we raise a generation fluent in performance, but illiterate in actual representation.
When we romanticize the founding fathers, we don't just powerwash history, we teach the future generations to love their oppressors. We show them that accountability and truth have zero meaning as long as it falls under entertainment. We forsake the real power that our stories have to make an impact for a better tomorrow.
Today, Hamilton is taught in schools across the country and used as a way to educate students on their history. A point even more terrifying as Critical Race Theory is obliterated in the classroom. Companies use the play in DEI programs as the model of “diverse storytelling.” Creating a culture that says it’s only okay to tell your story as long as it doesn’t make us uncomfortable.
Hamilton has been praised by presidents and artists, embraced by Broadway, and used as ‘proof that America is changing.’ The work is indeed easy to praise and embrace for its many strengths.
But the biggest lie isn’t being confronted. The biggest truth isn’t being wrestled with. And after all, isn’t that the point of art? To force us to confront ourselves—our strengths, our weaknesses, our failures, and our successes? Hamilton FEELS like a radical conversation, but all it really does is enforce the myth that this country was built by brilliant men with big dreams, not by enslaved people in chains.
The most enraging part isn’t what’s left out (as an artist myself I understand the complexity involved in adapting history to drama) but instead the pride it expects us to take in it. Nothing is born without blood. America is no exception. But Hamilton taken as historical fact allows us to forget the dishonorable spilling of Black and Brown blood. Hamilton was a step forward for dismantling the idolization of the founding fathers as infallible men that the American system teaches us, but it wasn’t a big enough step. Instead of painting these men as perfect, the play only gives them LinkedIn-level flaws—quirky, sanitized, just edgy enough to be admirable. This kind of storytelling isn’t fully honest, and it can be harmful to those who are tempted to accept this partial version of the narrative as historical fact.
A Final Thought on Story
Storytelling isn’t meant to be neutral. It is meant to speak, to be heard, and to be confronted. Being beautiful, catchy, nostalgic, or imaginative does not absolve you from criticism or accountability. In fact, storytelling should be held to the highest standard, and interrogated constantly to ensure that we are staying true to those who lived, suffered and died for these stories to exist. Story is a powerful tool, not “just entertainment” used to pass off perpetuating popular propaganda.
Understand that I'm not saying there's nothing to appreciate here. I'm not trying to shame you or say you are a bad person if you enjoy Hamilton. My goal isn't to make you feel bad about your race or your generational history. But here at
our goal is to use story to dismantle oppressive systems. You cannot dismantle a lie by refusing to acknowledge it. This commitment means we must speak the truth even when it’s uncomfortable or unpopular. You are more than welcome to continue to watch, listen to, and enjoy Hamilton and the play’s creators. But experience the story, and the history the musical recounts, with open eyes, not a comforting lie.I hope to help create a world where we see more stories about history, about what we achieved, and also about what we can be. I don’t seek a world divided, but one where we can sit together and discuss the wrongs and rights we have done to each other and figure out how to build something better. Hamilton missed the opportunity it had to start a conversation that showed that even though terrible things birthed this nation, we can be better. Instead it chose to paint a picture of good ole’ American Mythology.
So when you pick up your pen, storytellers, whether for fiction or nonfiction, ask yourself: What’s the truth, and how can I tell it, even if it makes people uncomfortable?
Because in the war for change, story is one of our greatest weapons. How you choose to wield it will determine who wins.
Do you know how to use story as a weapon for truth in a world addicted to comfortable lies? One Brilliant Arc’s workshop “Tell It Anyway” teaches you how to do just that. You’ll walk away from this 8-week online course with empowered clarity on your narrative ownership, a trauma-informed community of inspiring storytellers, and invaluable tools that will help you accomplish your mission. Because if you want to build something that makes a real difference — a brand, a book, a business, a movement — your honest, human story is the key.