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I disagree with the idea that the musical is painting Hamilton as a blameless hero of the people and glossing over his Federalist policies. For an example off the top of my head, you've got Jefferson (who is not portrayed as a villainous contrast to Hamilton's "goodness" in the musical--not sure how the author came to that conclusion) directly calling him out as an ambitious man vying for Wall Street power in "Washington on Your Side":

    I get no satisfaction witnessing his fits of passion
    The way he primps and preens and dresses like the pits of fashion
    Our poorest citizens, our farmers, live ration to ration
    As Wall Street robs ‘em blind in search of chips to cash in
    This prick is askin’ for someone to bring him to task
The same character calls Hamilton out for not wanting to come to France's aid in "Cabinet Battle #2":

    He knows nothing of loyalty
    Smells like new money, dresses like fake royalty
    Desperate to rise above his station
    Everything he does betrays the ideals of our nation

    [...] do we not fight for freedom?

    Have you an ounce of regret?
    You accumulate debt, you accumulate power
    Yet in their hour of need, you forget
Hamilton is shown as a man who came to power from an immigrant background against the odds. As far as I've been able to read up on him, though, that's historically accurate--and the play goes into the details of his policies and his personality flaws as well. Coming out of it and thinking that Hamilton is a purehearted hero for liberty seems like an overly simplistic and reductive reading of the play to me.
If anything I'd say that the play goes above and beyond what I'd expect to make the other characters look good by comparison. For example take the final song which shows Burr being remorseful about the slaying of Hamilton. In reality he never really expressed remorse. He spoke the words "I would have known the world was wide enough for both Hamilton and me." He was being sarcastic, not expressing actual remorse.
Don't forget the part where it pulls no punches in describing the country's first sex scandal! Not to mention the part where he (in many people's eyes) deliberately put his own career ahead of his family's dignity by outing the whole scandal himself in lurid detail so he could fend off accusations of corruption and maintain his position.

Also being a hothead prone to dueling.

Of course Hamilton will cut parts of history short, modify some and embellish others. It's a work of art that has to cram 30 years into around 3 hours of musical theater. Hamilton was probably an elitist, he also was probably not as strongly against slavery as the musical implies. Then again, the musical doesn't really talk all that much about his views on slavery either, just a few mentions here and there.

Historical fiction need not be 100% factually accurate to powerfully inform. I have read more actual history about this period because the musical made it so compelling than I otherwise would have.

In the end it's remarkable how much of the history it gets right (beautifully summarizing the complicated negotiations around the creating of the national bank for example), and how it shows two sides loathing one another and fighting through energetic political discourse eventually found a way to compromise and/or move on in order to build a nation.

Today we have one political party that seems completely unwilling to compromise and another that's heading that way. Nobody wants to accept defeat, nobody want to accept half-a-loaf to keep things going. We should remember that this country was founded on sometimes good and sometimes terrible compromises, but the country moved forward as a result. Yes the worst ones eventually were resolved by blood, and we're still handling the aftermath, but without compromise we'd never have had the chance to figure out which were the better angels of our nature.

> Today we have one political party that seems completely unwilling to compromise and another that's heading that way.

Perception is an interesting thing. Many of us believe one party has compromised too much and caved, being steam rolled by the party that won't compromise a thing even when their majorities are taken away.

Hamilton actually did a pretty good job at an amazing compromise involving the location of the capital and debt responsibility. Both sides got something of worth, and it probably was a part of keeping the states together.

Trying to scrupulously avoid inflammatory descriptions but I personally believe the Republican Party has become a shadow of its former self by taking a totally uncompromising and childish approach to policy and governing.

I think it's important to have two parties that have strong ideas, even ones I disagree with. It's not ok to have total obstruction and political total war. Total war just leaves everyone worse off, the country deserves better. I would like to know why back then people disagreed at least as strongly with one another but we're able to move forward and today we've totally lost than.

And I personally believe anyone uttering the phrase "I have a phone and a pen" has no interest in compromise or how they shut out amendments when they controlled the Senate, but they get backed by the press. Our country does deserve better, and I'm a bit sick of seeing an obstructionist meme applied to the wrong party.

President Clinton understood compromise and did great things, this President doesn't.

The whole second act of the musical puts Hamilton's worse qualities on display: his over-consideration with his legacy, his centralization of banking power to further his own rise to power, his hot temper and fondness for duels. I think there are some necessary summarizations and a lot of it gets condensed, but I also think Miranda went to great pains to ensure he got the spirit of the narrative down right. Ron Chernow, the guy who wrote the biography that inspired the musical in the first place, as an historical advisor to the musical.

Slightly off-topic, but the genius community is really great at annotating and calling out the details here: http://genius.com/albums/Lin-manuel-miranda/Hamilton-origina...

L-M-M himself comments on the lyrics on Genius fairly often, too.
Warning, unabashed Alexander Hamilton fan here.

It's truly appalling that this article questions Hamilton's dedication to abolition. He did a great deal to actively fight slavery during his life and it's all incredibly well documented. Look at the work he did with the New York Manumission Society or the endless political battles he had over abolition. I can't imagine what Hamilton would have had to do to satisfy these people/

Who are "these people"?
Disregarding "the inherent limits of musical theater as a venue for policy analysis", this is a great look at the underlying issues in Cabinet Battle #1. http://www.vox.com/2015/11/27/9771784/hamilton-cabinet-battl...
If you want to learn more about Hamilton I highly recommend "Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow. (Which I now see was an inspiration for the play, who knew.) One thing I took away was that the world we live in pretty much what Hamilton envisioned. Another thing is that we're still playing out the ideological disputes between Hamilton and Jefferson.
Most of us knew :)

But great suggestion none the less, it really does speak incredibly well to our current political situation and makes the case well that we are living in Alexander Hamilton's america.

I watched the musical in January and I just finished the audiobook version of the Chernow biography of Hamilton (pro tip: listen at 2x speed to save 19 hours) and I have to say the musical stuck VERY close to the biography. A few embellishments for dramatic effect but the substance is all spot on. Unless the biography is flawed, I'd say that ‘Hamilton’ and History are very much in sync.

In case you want to learn more, I posted "Three Timeless Truths Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Alexander Hamilton" earlier today based on what I learned from the biography: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11475047

I'm wrapping up the bio, read, and I gotta say... Chernow's not my favorite biographer (comparing mostly to Ray Monk's bio of Wittgenstein here). On the one hand, the amount of raw material that surfaces is amazing, and I am delighted to have read tons of the Hamilton's own writing and that of his contemporaries.

However, if anything the musical tones down the hero worship from his book, into something more palatable. When he calls Eliza going to the cottage "abandoning" him, and talks about his cheating in terms of him "being too much for her", or his rhapsodizing about him being right about the worthlessness of the French revolution vs. the American one, it starts wearing on you.

edit: Still totally worth a read.

> Alexander Hamilton “was more a man for the 1 percent than the 99 percent,”

Every generation inevitably reinterprets history to fit their own narrative.

Of course. How else could someone understand anything except within the context of their worldview? Adopting a fully alien perspective requires deep immersion, which only few people have time for, and even they can't do t for all perspectives.
> Adopting a fully alien perspective requires deep immersion

Not at all. Reading history from another generation's perspective, which doesn't fit the current generation's politically correct worldview, is simply uncomfortable.

(Every generation has their political correctness, it's just the term that is modern.)

I really like this piece from Jacobin, "Reading Hamilton from the Left": https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/reading-hamilton-from-the...