Alexander Hamilton Archives

Podcast

The Ten-Dollar Founding Father

Episode 55: Historian William Hogeland on Alexander Hamilton, debt, taxes, visionaries, and his new book, The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding

June 5, 2024 • by Claire Potter

There is so much in William Hogeland's book, whether you are a Hamilton fan, love the complexity of Early America, or (and I know some of you are out there) whether you are just a finance nerd and think nonstop about the national debt....

Finance

History Rhymes

As history’s pendulum swings back, the problems and promises of globalization’s fragmented frameworks become almost too evident

February 22, 2023 • by Rana Foroohar

The neoliberal thinking that has defined globalization in the West since the eighties decrees that state involvement in the economy is verboten-but that’s actually antithetical to America’s origins....

North America

All the President’s Lawyers

Mitch McConnell’s desire to reign in the impeachment spectacle clashes with Donald Trump’s love for a political circus

January 18, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

Ever since it became clear that the House would vote to impeach Donald Trump, the White House and Senate Republican leaders have struggled over the Senate trial. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not want the Senate to devolve into the circus that the House did. There, GOP representatives worked ...

Feature

Did Hamilton Write Too Much For His Own Good?

The publication history of the Federalist

November 9, 2017 • by Joseph Adelman

You probably know that line about the Federalist from the Act One finale of Hamilton, “Non-Stop,” in which Aaron Burr repeatedly asks Hamilton, “how do you write like you’re running out of time?” In the musical, his indefatigable pen is treated as a virtue (and yes, I have at times listened to ...

Feature

The Whiskey Rebellion, Political Crisis, and the Sociology of Elite Interpretation

From the early modern to the contemporary USA, part 2

May 10, 2017 • by Isaac Ariail Reed

Among the grievances that fueled the rebels we can include an early modern version of a bailout. Government issued bonds had been used to pay the soldiers in the Continental Army during the revolutionary war. During the economic depression of the 1780s, speculators had bought these up for pennies on ...