Stuff You Should Know - Alexander Hamilton: Most Influential American?

Episode Date: September 13, 2016

Alexander Hamilton, the "ten dollar founding father," is more than the toast of Broadway. In fact, he just may be the most influential American in history. A brash genius, Hamilton wasn't much of a politician. He was all about policy. Learn all about Hamilton in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And that was Lin-Manuel Miranda in the original Broadway show, Cast of Hamilton. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Great song. Do you listen to that stuff? Um, like Broadway show recordings and stuff. I don't necessarily seek it out or whatever, but I'm not like, ugh, turn it off. You know?

Have you listened to Hamilton? I have not heard a second of Hamilton, even still, because that song was put in in post-production. I've still never heard a second of Hamilton. Uh, I've seen like video on mute, but that's it. Well it is no wonder that show has become a runaway hit because of two things. One, the music is great and the book is great and it looks great. I've not seen it yet because I'm not wealthy. Man, don't you have to be?

Yeah, if you want to get a ticket to a Hamilton that's sold out, yeah, you've got to pay thousands of dollars. You can't do it. And the second reason is because Alexander Hamilton is finally getting his due as perhaps the most influential American in history. Those are big words, buddy. Uh, show me someone else. Uh...

Not saying there haven't been influential Americans, but he, I think, tops them all. Yeah, you know, I can't disagree. I think you're absolutely right. Most controversial founding father, for sure. Youngest founding father, by far. Yeah? Uh, he's an outsider. He wasn't even born in the United States.

No. He wasn't even born in England. He was an immigrant bastard child, which, um, had a lot to do with his, um, how he turned out in life. Oh yeah, he had a chip on his shoulder. He had a chip... Well, yeah, you can put it that way. I would put it like he had extra drive that a lot of those like hoity-toity blue blood

and aristocrats founding fathers didn't have, because they didn't need it. They had a lot of money. They had a lot of opportunity. This guy picked himself up from the bootstraps. Yeah. Like the first American Horatio Alger, I think. Yeah? He thought he was smarter than everyone else?

He... Yes, I get that impression, but the thing is, he was right most of the time. Well yeah, and if someone came out and disagreed with him, he was not... He wasn't a good politician. He was not skilled at being deferential or, uh... Didn't know how to bow. Certainly didn't know how to curtsy. No.

Like he would come out and say, no, you're completely wrong for these 14 reasons. Right, and you're ugly. That's fine at length. Yeah. Um, he'd like poke them in the belly, pull on their jowls a little bit. Yeah. To tear their wig off. Yeah, I saw it.

There was this really great American Experience episode from 1997. I saw it. Okay. PBS? Yeah. Great. Did you notice there were, like, some recognizable actors in there? Oh yeah.

Like one guy was like... I was like, I recognize that guy from Frasier and the Wire and... Yeah, yeah, there were a few dudes that were, uh, played the... Recreated the roles of, uh... Right. But not like, oh, great actor, do you mind daining to be in this American experience? It was like, hey, hungry actor, your agent called us and we have a role for you, because this is like back in the 90s.

Oh, was it 90s? Yeah, 97. I looked it up. Really good episode, though. Yeah, and if you look at the website for it, you can tell it's from 1997, for sure. But it was great. And in it, one of the historians put it pretty plainly. He was, uh, excellent statesman, maybe one of the best that the United States has ever

had. Yeah. Uh, terrible politician. Terrible. One of the parts of being a politician is, um, to have finesse, again, one of the historians called it finesse. Yeah, he had no finesse. He didn't learn it.

No one taught him that. He was orphaned at age, uh, what, 11, no, 13? Possibly 15? Uh... There's some dispute over, really, when he was born and if he lied about his age? Well, yeah, I mean, let's just go back to the islands of the Caribbean. Back to Nevis. Uh, in 1757 or 1755, is that the, uh, the two dates, possibly?

Yeah, if you look at the official records in Nevis, which I did before this episode, I went down there and, uh, it has him listed as having been born January 11th, 1755. He always said January 11th, 1757. And there's actually good reason why he would have fudged his name. We'll talk about that in a minute. Ooh. Tantalizing. I am 48 seconds.

So, uh, his father was a Scottish merchant and his mother, her name was Rachel Fawcett. She was an English-French planter's daughter. Uh, he, dad moved the family to St. Croix and then left his family. Uh, mom died, uh, in 1768 and, um, it's interesting, I was watching this great documentary on Tom Betty and the Heartbreakers. Same thing? Yeah, they were in Bogdanovitch and they, these music historians make a point that there's something about a father who rejects you or a mother who dies, uh, when you're young

and they say in the case of Tom Betty, he had both, but they listed like a list of rock stars like from Bono to Tom Betty. I can't remember. Jimi Hendrix. We either rejected by their dads or mothers died younger both and they said they have something to prove and I was like, dude, that's Alexander Hamilton to a T. Sure. He spent his whole life with something to prove.

Lin-Manuel Miranda just went, mm-hmm. Yeah. He's way ahead of us on this, but apparently we're the only podcast he does not listen to, so. Yeah. Or he politely ignored that. Come on. Yeah.

That's all right. So, um, let's talk about, though, his, his early life, his early situation. Yeah, he's an orphan. He finds himself an orphan. His father abandoned him and he never saw his father for the rest of his life and I was like boo, hiss, right, um, but I saw it elsewhere and I can't, I couldn't find it again, but that, that it was explained that his mother had been married before and even though she was divorced, she was not capable legally of being married again.

So her husband or, um, Alexander's father left her in the family to prevent her from being, um, accused of being a bigamist and possibly going to jail for that too. So maybe that was it, but I only saw that in one place. Yeah. Um, most other people just say the father left and Alexander never saw him again. And as, as a result, he was not able to inherit, uh, any estate. Yeah. His mother's estate.

There wasn't much of. No, but it would have been pretty helpful to have anything, especially when you're 13 slash 15. Yeah. Uh, and apparently had a, uh, a kind uncle who tried to help him out and, and secure the estate, but no, it didn't happen. And it actually went to his mother's first husband. Yeah.

And he moved in with a cousin who then committed suicide. And so he said, he hasn't had good experiences with being taken care of, right? Uh, left to his own devices. He got a job, uh, working for Beekman and Kruger mercantile. And this dude at 14 was running a major company. Not just a major company, a major company on what until the last couple of decades had been the largest income producing colony in, in, um, the English empire. Yeah.

Like it, it made more money from tobacco and then sugar than the other 13 colonies combined. And it was just this little tiny speck of an island. And this kid is running the major company on this major island. So it was, it was even bigger than it seems at first blush. Yeah. He was a child prodigy. Uh, newspaper articles at 14, he wrote poetry, published poetry. And uh, it was clear to everyone at the company, they were like, this kid, but he's going

places. He's going places. So let's start a fund to get him out of here and get him to New York city. Yeah. Because, uh, in New York, you can be a new man. Uh, yes, I'm Broadway. That's from Hamilton. Oh, okay.

I'm going to drop those in. You're not going to know. I'll, I'll struggle to make sense of them, so keep it up. Uh, so they did so. They write, uh, raise some money and, um, he went to King's college, which later became Columbia university. Yeah. And for those of us who saw our UK tour, they remember that Alexander Hamilton shows up

at Columbia university to plead with a rioting crowd. Remember? Yeah. Apparently he did that a couple of times. Yeah. I noticed that too. And that documentary, I was like, he spent a lot of time arguing with like crowds with him and he had torches and pitchforks on the steps of Columbia university.

All right. So it goes to, uh, King's college is doing a studying there. Uh, he really, uh, makes a name for himself in writing, uh, political pamphlets, which was kind of the thing to do in, of that day. There weren't magazines. There wasn't tiger beat. No. So like if you wanted to, if you had a lot to say, you, he didn't have square space.

Right. So he would, uh, that was a free one. Yeah. You like that? Yeah. So he would write, uh, he would write political pamphlets and they became very well known. Yeah. He, um, was railing against the British, uh, monarchy.

Yes. And it was very much in favor of the loose confederation that the colonies had, had, um, created amongst themselves and their, um, their joint suffering at the hands of the British colonies, which were like, or the British crown, which was actively trying to punish them, um, and keep them in line through like taxation, no representation, um, all the Asians that you wouldn't like, right? And, um, Alexander Hamilton definitely saw this as a, a potential for, um, revolution to occur.

And he actually wrote in his journal as a younger man back when he was like 12, 13, 14, that he wished there were a war would happen so that he could prove himself. Yeah. It would be a great opportunity to prove himself. And he probably saw that opportunity in this unrest that was going on, that was being aroused in the colonies and he was fanning the flames of it. Yeah. And he also, uh, and this is just sort of a side note.

He was the most consistent abolitionist of all the founding fathers throughout his entire life. Yeah. Uh, and for very, well, for two reasons. One, he thought it was wrong, but very practically he thought, you know, some of these people might be able to do great things for this country and they're not allowed to, and he's like, that just doesn't make sense to not let people live up to their potential to make America better.

Yeah. But I, at least equally as important, he personally found it abhorrent and despicable. Like he was against slavery from the time he was a kid. Amazing. Yeah. Well, he saw it firsthand too. When his family moved to St. Croix, um, they, uh, yeah, he, he was, he was, he and he encountered it and it had a real impact on him.

All right. So 1776, uh, the revolution is underway. Uh, he joins, uh, as a captain in the continental army and I was amazed at this little factoid from the, uh, PBS thing. His artillery unit that he founded is still around today. It's the only surviving army unit from the revolutionary war. Wow. That's pretty neat.

Isn't that amazing? Yeah. He founded a lot of stuff that's still around today. A lot. Well, in our customs episode, we touch on that a little bit. And our lighthouses episode, he popped up in that too. Yeah. He's all over the place.

No wonder. He's got his fingers in a lot of pots. So, uh, he fought, uh, like a champ in the revolutionary war and impressed, um, George Washington, who was pretty important guy at the time. Yeah. And he said, you know what? I like the cut of your jib, kid. Uh, why don't you join me and he surrounded himself with these young men who as his team

and his family, he called them, that he thought were, you know, bright guys in the future of this country. And he said, you will be my aide, uh, to camp, uh, you'll be my assistant. And I got a lot of good dudes around me. They're great military minds, but you're the only one that can write like you can write. Yeah. Like a mug. He did.

He said that. Yeah. You can write like a mug. Yeah. Is that in the Broadway show? It should be. I honestly don't know. Could be.

It would definitely be in a Hamilton wrap. So, um, what's your name, man? And he said Alexander Hamilton. Okay. That's from the show too. Oh, okay. How about this? Indicate.

It's from the show. I'm making jazz. Okay. You know what? That's, that's the last of them. Okay. So, uh, well, if you want to keep it up, that's fine. But I'll say everyone who hasn't seen the show, Chuck's making jazz hands.

Yeah. All right. And then Jerry will ring a bell post production. Okay. All right. So, he's Washington's, uh, assistant. Yeah. And he actually, um, one of the, again, the historians on that American experience said,

if you look at Washington's, um, writing at the time as correspondence, um, his, uh, diaries, I guess probably not his diary. I don't think he had him write his diaries. Well, his speeches and things. Right. Um, the best stuff is just obviously written by Alexander Hamilton. Yeah. Like indisputably so, right?

Sure. He looked really good and Washington was eternally grateful and he, he also had a, um, uh, definite soft spot for Alexander Hamilton personally and will for the rest of his life. For sure. He stands by him through thick and thin. Yeah. And, um, our own article does a good job of pointing out that he wasn't just some kid that was like, yes, sir, anything you say, like from the very beginning, he's like, you

know what, this army is messed up, it's disorganized. Yeah. And, uh, and like there's a, this is a big mess. Right. They keep killing people. Yeah. And what, and Washington was like, I like hearing this, you know, you don't, you don't want a yes man around.

Yeah. Well, maybe a couple. Right. He needs a couple of licks, spittles to keep his boots clean, licks, spittle. It's a, I never heard that. Mr. Burns used to once. Oh, really? Yeah.

I love that. Um, so Washington, uh, I think actually Hamilton, uh, I think, uh, I think, uh, I think Hamilton was a victim of his own success. Like Washington liked having him around in this position as an aide to camp. Yeah. So much that, um, Hamilton was like, okay, let's, let's keep rising through the ranks. I want to actually get out there and fight. And he really railed against this position for a while.

And then finally Washington was like, okay, fine, fine, go get out there and fight. And he did actually, he really, um, honored himself on the battlefield, particularly in Yorktown. Yeah. And then he led his regiment into battle. Led it. Not like I'm on horseback back here, but I'm leading you like he was the first guy breaking through the lines and jumping on like into the trenches with the British and fighting

them hand to hand. He was like a late teenager, right? Yeah. Well, it was about 20. Okay. So he definitely put his money where his mouth was. Like he wasn't like, yeah, I'm going to get out there and fight. And then when the time came, he was like, I'm going to hang back here.

Right. He got out there and fought. And then I get the impression that he ran through more than one person. Yeah. And he was a little dude too. He wasn't, you know, he wasn't, uh, trying to think of some big tough guy and I'm drawing a blank. Uh, the rock.

He wasn't the rock. He was Kevin Hardish. Who's that? Uh, you know who Kevin Hardish. Oh, Kevin Hart ish. I thought you were saying Kevin Hardish. Like that's a person. He's bigger than Kevin Hart, but yeah, Kevin Hart's like five, four.

Uh, how big was Alexander Hamilton? He's five, seven. Oh, well, he's way bigger. Well, those three inches matter when you're five, four. All right. All right. But Washington, he was a giant. Right.

He was a big dude. Wasn't he tall? Yeah. Uh, so the war is over. That's the quickest description of the revolutionary war ever. Who won? The US won. Okay.

Uh, or America, I guess. And, um, it's interesting too that documentary pointed out at one point, they were like, I don't think anyone gave much thought to what literally they were going to do the day after the war. Mm hmm. They were so like gung-ho for it. And then afterward, like, whoa, we're in bad shape. Right.

Like we're a bankrupt nation. Right. But even more than that, the, the people who were running the show were pretty content with the idea of like their state being an independent country now. Oh yeah. There were two schools of thought. Like Thomas Jefferson referred when, uh, when, when he called, when he said, my country, he was talking about Virginia.

And he was, he was basically, uh, of a similar mind to just about everyone else we would consider a fond, a founding father. There weren't too many people who were thinking like Alexander Hamilton, whose idea was, hey, let's all get together. There's going to be a lot more peace, a lot less in fighting, and we're going to have a lot less headaches with things like multiple currencies and all that stuff. Let's just come together and create a centralized federal government. And all these guys were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, are you nuts?

A centralized federal government, it sounds an awful lot like a monarchy and we just threw those cats off. Yeah. Why would we want to go back to it? So Hamilton saw very clearly that a central, very powerful federal government that was in control and in, as an umbrella over the 13 colonies, turning them into states assembled under this federal government was the best way to help this, these colonies turn states and now turn country to mature, to keep going, to progress forward.

But he had a real uphill battle to climb, um, because there was nobody really who saw things that way. Yeah. And, uh, he knew that the only way to do this was to have a document behind him, uh, pushing him along and he did, uh, he saw the U S constitution is a great chance to do so. Right. And, uh, we'll talk about that right after this. On the podcast, pay dude, the nineties called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of

the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the nineties. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever.

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Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the nineties. Listen to Hey Dude, the nineties called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking.

You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Patrick Curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down.

Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. There's a Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, a lot of people don't really recognize that the Revolutionary War ends in 1776, but it wasn't until 1787 that the Constitution is written, right?

That's right. And between that time, people were just kind of like, okay, what do we do? There was the Articles of Confederation. Yeah, they were great. But they weren't so great actually. I thought they were pretty great. Okay, well, the Founding Fathers thought they stunk. One of the Founding Fathers.

They showed up in, I think, Philadelphia and were called there to say, hey, let's figure something out about this Articles of Confederation. The country is bankrupt, we're going nowhere, everybody's hooked on drugs. We don't know what's going on. Everybody come and let's figure out how to make the Articles of Confederation better. And these Founding Fathers all showed up, these delegates, including Alexander Hamilton, who is a delegate from New York. And they really looked at it and they were like, this is terrible.

Let's just start over. So they crumpled it up, threw it over their shoulder, pulled out a fresh piece of paper, said, okay, debate. That's right. And through that debate, the Constitution of the United States was drafted. Hamilton actually was not there a lot for the debates because of business. And so he wasn't actually a key member in drafting the Constitution. What he was, and of course, the Constitution was the document that indicated a strong central

government and a powerful president. He came into play when it came time for saying, this is the document we're going to go forward with. Yeah, for getting it ratified. They needed nine of 13 states for it to pass. And there was a lot of strong opposition, like you were saying, we just got out from under Britain's rule. Why are we going to draft this thing with these taxes and the central government?

And we like all of our little small states making all their own decisions. And it turned out to be a big deal when he and John Jay and James Madison wrote the Federalist Papers. Right. Forming the Federalist Party and really coming out hard, like, have you ever read, like, even the first Federalist Paper? No. It's amazing.

And Hamilton wrote that, the introduction, and in it, he basically just says, here are all your questions answered, and here's why you are all wrong, and here's why this is the way forward, no questions asked. Right. And I know in it, like, he basically, he and Jay and Madison used it as an opportunity to address every single opposition to the Constitution and the adoption of it, including things like, well, you know, we have a court to interpret the law so that it's constantly evolving and that kind of thing, and just explaining why we needed a powerful executive,

but that it would be balanced out by these other branches of government as well. And it worked. These things were getting published in the papers, and it helped to really change the minds of a lot of people. Yeah. And remarkably, the Federalist Papers have been cited by the Supreme Court of the United States more than any other document, including the Constitution. It's pretty amazing.

Yeah, it really is. I mean, if you think about it, it's just, these guys are saying, here's our opinion of the Constitution and why it works. Yeah. And the Supreme Court says, we're with you, buddy. That's right. So he got married along the way in 1780 to a woman named Elizabeth Schuyler. Schuyler.

Schuyler? Yeah. All right. And a big thing happened in 1788. They had the first presidential election, Washington won, and as his confidant, he appointed quickly Hamilton as his Secretary of Treasury. Probably the most powerful cabinet position of all. Yeah.

And like we said, we were nearly bankrupt from the Revolutionary War. We borrowed money from everyone from, like, they owed money to the Army. They owed money to individuals who supported the Army. They would just go take equipment and money and say, here, we're going to pay you back one day. And they literally owed money to American citizens to the point where they couldn't pay it back. And it was a disorganized mess of records, and Hamilton got in there, and most people

would have shied away, and he was like, this is great. I can really get in here and do what I do best, which is get this on the right track. Yeah. He was a big picture guy if there was ever a big picture guy. And historians now look back at Hamilton and say, they actually say the man who made America. That's one of his nicknames, which is not for nothing saying something like that. He had a vision to where the strong central government could create the nation that the states comprised or composed, and it was based on four points, right?

One was tariffs, which we talked about in the Customs episode. One was a central bank and investment in infrastructure, and then a big one called Assumption, which was taking all the states' individual debts and the federal government assuming it. And that was a big, he had a lot of trouble with that one because a lot of people were like, why would you want to do that? Oh, we understand why. You want to make the central government that much more powerful because we'll owe you now, right?

He said, it's way more than that. Not only will, yes, you guys will owe us, but it's a gesture of goodwill, but it legitimizes this federal government, and it also allows it, once there's an establishment of a national debt, to borrow more money and to issue bonds against those debts, which can be traded on the open market and everybody's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what? He's like, just trust me. And he was faced with that a lot, like where he understood the steps forward, and he faced opposition at just about every turn.

And I get the impression that a lot of it was like from people who weren't getting what he was getting across because- They were radical ideas. Very, like some of them a century ahead of their time. Oh, yeah. There's a panic in 1792, a financial panic where somebody tried to corner the market on treasury bonds and almost collapsed the federal debt, right? Just almost ruined it single-handedly.

And under the guidance of Alexander Hamilton, the national bank that he had established stepped in and became what's called a buyer of last resort, where they were buying treasury bills at less than what they were worth so that you had to be really desperate to go and sell them to them. And that wasn't, I guess, legitimized by economists until a full century after that. This guy was just operating on a totally different level, very much ahead of his time. Well the idea of purposefully creating a national debt seemed crazy and no one understood it. And he came out with quotes like, the national debt will be the cement of our nation.

And basically, like these creditors are going to have to get on board and support the federal government so they can get paid back. Exactly. And it really had a unifying effect. He had a problem getting assumption passed through. It was blocked on almost every level with politicians. And one of his neighbors in New York at the time was one Thomas Jefferson, one of his biggest foes throughout his career.

And he worked out a little deal at a very famous dinner called the Dinner Table Compromise wherein Jefferson wanted to move the capital to essentially what would become Washington, D.C. Yeah, to Virginia. And Hamilton was like, no, I'd like it here in New York City. He said, but here's what we'll do. You can move your capital down there if you throw your support. And Madison was there too.

If you guys throw your support behind assumption and they said, great, that's what we'll do. So he sacrificed New York City as the capital, his own people, because he was like a true New Yorker through and through by this time. But he was a transplant. A transplant. And historians point to that as saying he didn't have the kind of ties that native-born New Yorkers had to it necessarily. But that's why the capital ended up in D.C. and that's why assumption went through and

it changed history. And we also talked in the Customs episode about how tariffs paid for the United States. Like these high taxes on imports, especially imported British goods. But that money didn't just automatically funnel into the infrastructure that built the United States Industrial Revolution. That was directed by the policies of Alexander Hamilton. Yeah, because Jefferson was like, we want to be farmers. I want to be an agricultural society.

Small government. Yeah. And now where it's at is big government and a big industrialized nation. Right. That's how we're going to get ahead. And you can actually trace the two political parties in the United States or actually the fact that we have political parties back to the rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and how they saw things.

Small government, agrarian based and big government and infrastructure based, industrial based. It was the new party was the Republicans and then the Federalists. Nothing to do with Republicans of modern times. Right. Although there is like a whole small government bent that's kind of a big deal with Republicans. So we have these two parties. Things got really ugly.

They weren't afraid to, I mean they weren't nice guys with each other. They weren't afraid to argue and yell and scream about the, I mean this is the direction of the country at very tentative time. You know we could have gone one of two ways. So it was a big deal. Yeah. It wasn't just a matter of passing a couple of laws. It was like what kind of country do we want to be?

Yeah. And Hamilton kind of won. He definitely won. He left public office as 1795 when he resigned as Treasury Secretary but he was far from leaving politics. Right. He was still very heavily involved. Oh yeah.

He kept his thumb on the Federalist party as much as he could. And he actually ended up basically screwing up the party's chances of the presidency from that point on when he became involved in I think the 1800 election, right? Yeah. He kind of destroyed his own party. So John Adams was the country's second president and Adams was a Federalist but he and Hamilton didn't really get along. They didn't see things eye to eye.

They couldn't stand each other. And they were both members of Washington's cabinet and Adams was very much the older than Alexander Hamilton and he kind of got pushed to the side whenever there was in their rivalry is whenever Washington was around because he kind of favored Hamilton more than Adams, right? Yeah. I'm picturing Paul Giamatti shoving around when Manuel Miranda. Right.

Okay. You know, right. One of those guys is cooler than the other. Who? It's Paul Giamatti. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know. Paul Giamatti is kind of a cool cat.

No. He's, in fact, I knew someone who worked on a movie with him locally and our buddy Craig. And he was like, he went out with us a few times like drinking and he was like the coolest guy. That's neat. Yeah. That's what I expect that from them. They're in a tie for cool dudes.

Okay. So Paul Giamatti is like, I don't like you, Lin-Manuel and Lin-Manuel is like, I don't care. Yeah. Suck an egg. And Broadway, he just had an HBO show. Right. Exactly.

So when Adams comes to power, he very much freezes Hamilton out of the Federalist party. Well, yeah, and he said some really nasty things. He questioned his integrity. He called him a bastard, a bastard Creole immigrant. Jesus. Like he was not nice. Okay. So Hamilton doesn't like this.

He starts writing about Adams and just what a terrible person he thinks Adams is. Yeah. He went after him hard. But he didn't go after him publicly. It was actually Aaron Burr, who from what I understand is a pretty big scoundrel. He got a jerk. He got his hands on these private papers, I think private correspondence, and published them just in time for the 1800 election.

And in the 1800 election, John Adams was up for reelection for a second term. And then Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr were running against him, both as Republicans. And with the publication of this basically slander against John Adams at the hands of Alexander Hamilton, it created enough infighting in the Federalist party that they were out of the race. And it was down to the two Republicans. They actually tied and Congress decided who would win, if I remember correctly, right? Yeah.

I think it went to the House and there was a tie there. Then it went to Congress and the Senate. Okay, what? The Senate. Went to the House and then the Senate? Yes. I believe that's correct. Okay, so they ultimately voted for Jefferson.

And at the time, if you were the runner-up in a presidential election, you became Vice President. So Aaron Burr became Vice President. But it just tore Hamilton apart that he had to figure out who to support in this. He didn't like either one of them, but Burr was just a jerk. He was an aristocratic, rich kid who clearly was getting into politics to become more famous, to make more money. He was impure of heart and intention.

And despite how Hamilton felt about Jefferson, I mean, this is his mortal enemy basically. Yeah. Well, one of them. He had a bunch. But despite how he felt about him, he was like at least Jefferson, I think, isn't a jerk and wants good things for America and I can't even say that about Burr. Right. Right.

So like if Alexander Hamilton was a great statesman, terrible politician, Aaron Burr was a pretty good politician, terrible statesman. Yeah. Yeah. So he threw his support behind Thomas Jefferson and against Aaron Burr, so much so that apparently he made a remark at a dinner party about Aaron Burr's character that got back to Aaron Burr. Yeah.

And it was vicious enough that he challenged him to a duel and we'll talk about that right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best

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You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. Lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down.

Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we did a good episode on duels many years ago, and we covered this duel, but we would be remiss not to go over it again.

Hamilton had been challenged to a lot of duels over the years, which is no surprise, because he was not afraid to mix it up. But at the time, duels were like, they didn't often go down. You could almost always talk your way out of a duel by doing a certain amount of apologizing without fully destroying your reputation as someone who stood behind his word. And in this case, Hamilton very much tried to get out of this duel. And so far, it's to almost offer a full retraction, which is a miracle for Hamilton. But a burr was having none of it.

He really wanted this to go down. And it went down. It did. It was at Weehawken, New Jersey, which is along the shores of the Hudson. And three years earlier, Alexander Hamilton's firstborn son, Philip, who the family had put basically all of their hopes and dreams into, was killed in a duel himself there. Yeah, it's the same for his dad. Yeah.

There was a guy who was slandering his dad publicly, and Philip demanded a retraction, and the guy said, no. Through down the gauntlet? So, yeah, Philip challenged him to a duel, and they met at Weehawken, and Philip was killed at that duel. And three years later, at the same spot when Alexander Hamilton met Aaron Burr, historians think this was on his mind. And that he actually purposefully missed Aaron Burr because he saw what can happen

in a duel. But Aaron Burr was like, thanks for the free ride, chump, and shot him in the stomach. Yeah, there are very, nobody knows for sure what happened. There are conflicting accounts of whether or not he purposefully missed, whether he didn't shoot at all and got fired upon, and then accidentally fired his weapon. No one actually saw it go down. They do know there were two shots fired, though, because of the noise. And yeah, he got a bullet through the liver and through his abdomen, and immediately

said to his confidant who rushed up to him, he's like, this is it. He got me. Yeah, this is a mortal wound. And some people even say that he was goading Burr into killing him that day with the way he handled the duel. And like he was taking his time, putting on his glasses. He had a special gun that had a hair trigger, which would make it easier to aim. There's all these weird conflicting accounts.

It's kind of frustrating that no one knows the actual truth, I think. It is frustrating. That's very odd that he would have wanted to die at this point. It doesn't seem like his life was in a good place. Well, I don't think he thought he was going to die. I think he thought he could destroy Burr's reputation by being a gentleman and firing into the air. And then Burr actually shooting him.

He lives and is a bit of a martyr, a living martyr. That didn't happen. No, he died. No. And before he died, his reputation had gone down quite a bit, thanks to an extramarital affair that he had, starting in, I think, 1791, while he was still the Secretary of the Treasury, right? So he met a woman named Maria Reynolds, who showed up on his doorstep in Philadelphia

and said, hey, I am in great trouble. My husband left me with this kid. I'm from New York. I know you're from New York. Can I have some money? And it just kind of went from there, right? So they ended up having, I think, a three-year long affair? Well, he gave her some money and she said, how can I ever repay you?

And he went, well, I have one idea and she said, OK, and that kind of became the arrangement. So again, this went on for three years and it turned out that Mrs. Reynolds' husband was a criminal himself and that this was all an extortion attempt. He hadn't left her at all. They had plotted together and they were extorting money from Alexander Hamilton. When Mr. Reynolds, James Reynolds, was caught in another scandal, he said, hey, get this. You guys should take it easy on me because I got some great information you're going to love.

You know the Secretary of the Treasury? Well, me and my wife have been extorting him. What I can only assume is federal money for years now. So talk to him and they did. That's right. And Hamilton, he had, one thing he couldn't stand for is for his integrity to be questioned and in this case, not integrity as being a faithful husband, but integrity in stealing from the government.

Right. And he's like, I won't stand for that. I'm going to come out and say, you know, I was having an affair and I was making payments and they were for my personal funds, here's the letters to prove it, which was pretty remarkable. He destroyed his political career in the process, but he was like, no one's going to accuse me of pilfering money from the country that I love. Yeah.

And originally he was approached by a delegation of investigators, I think including James Madison who said, or no, James Monroe, I'm sorry, who said, hey man, you're being accused of using government funds as hush money. You want to speak to this? And he produced the love letters that exonerated him privately and Monroe and the other investigators agreed to just keep the matter private because they saw that it was a false accusation that he'd been using his own money to cover the extortion. But he let them walk with the love letters provided they kept him confidential.

One of them gave him to Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson was like, oh, baby, what? Thank you, God, for dropping this in my lap. I hate this guy. He's my political rival. I'm going to see to it that these things are published. And so they got published and as a result of them being published, that's when Hamilton was like, well, I'll publish my own explanation and he did. Yeah.

And he went large with it and went wide and everyone knew. But like I said, at least he was proven out to not be ripping off his government. Right. So everybody was like good for that. But at the same time, you just confessed to an affair in a publication that you published yourself. So that's the part we're going to remember. So his star definitely waned as a result of that.

He wasn't as important in the Federalist Party. He didn't hold any civil office any longer. And by the time he was killed in the duel. Yeah, 49 years old. Yeah. And his finances had been pretty stretched. He built a place called the Grange on 35 acres in what is now Harlem. And it almost bankrupted his family apparently.

Yeah. And he, like you said, he had stretched himself too thin. He was out of the public eye for the most part. And once he died and was not around to vigorously defend himself, people like Adams and Jefferson and Madison jumped on him and started writing these things about, you know, he wanted a monarchy. He wasn't a good guy. He didn't have the best interest of the country, which was really a shame.

And for many years, I think that had a big impact on how he was viewed in America. Sure. Like, you know, he doesn't have a statue in Washington, D.C. Nope. Yeah. He doesn't have a memorial in Washington, D.C. Yet. Are they trying to get one?

I'm sure Lin-Manuel Miranda's like, come on. Well the one guy that one historian is really great at the end, he was like, America is his memorial. Oh, yeah. You're living in his memorial. That was a great line. Pretty powerful. Yeah.

So now scholars have gotten on board and they said, you know what, this guy was actually perhaps the most influential person in our history to the America that we look around at today. Yeah. The Coast Guard. Lighthouses. Lighthouses. That's it.

Well, just the whole, the structure of our economy, the fact that we have a central bank, the fact that the government intervenes in financial crises, he's credited with coming up with the stock market after that panic of 1792. He got the biggest traders around to meet him in New York and say, hey, let's all sign a letter of cooperation and that became the New York Stock Exchange. Yeah. And he's buried steps from the New York Stock Exchange. Yep.

He founded the Bank of New York. That was one of three banks that he founded, two national banks in the Bank of New York and the Bank of New York actually was still in continuous operation until I think 2008 or 2011 when a chemical banker city group took it over. But it had been like operating continuously since I think 1784, right? Yeah. Founded the New York Post newspaper. Yeah.

I had a, what was the original name? New York Evening Post. Yeah. Which became the Post. Right. And he founded that so he could get his word out. Yeah. The newspaper originally.

Yep. A pretty amazing guy. He did quite a bit and yeah, he is starting to get his due recognition. Yeah. And he, you mentioned the Grange. It was the only home he ever owned in New York. He lived downtown for most of his life in apartments, but finally bought that land in the suburb of Harlem.

And in 1889, that home was donated to a New York church if they moved it 250 feet, which they did. And then in the 1960s, it fell into disrepair basically and they said, you know, now it's part of the National Park Service. We need to honor this house. Let's find a location for it and restore it. And it took about 30 years. And then finally in 2011, September, $14.5 million later reopened to the public near

St. Nicholas Park. Pretty amazing. Yep. He was right there behind Trinity Church, around the corner from the Stock Exchange. Yeah. Lasting legacy. He's on Broadway. Immigrant bastard child.

Amazing. Pretty amazing stuff. I wonder if he got a musical written about him. At first, when that first came out, I didn't know a lot about him. I was like, well, somebody write a musical about him. Yeah. And then you read up on it and you're like, oh, that's exactly why. True underdog.

Yeah, he was. He was great. I like him. If you want to know more about Alexander Hamilton, go to Broadway. And you can also type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said Broadway, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this rare shout out. Hey, guys, I know this isn't your usual MO, but I was hoping you'd be able to publicly

thank my friend, Jeff Beverage. What's his name? It's a great name. He's my best friend for 15 years and has been like a brother to me. He's the one that got me hooked on your show. Recently, he has stepped up even more after my family suffered a pretty devastating house fire. We had lots of family and friends reaching out to support us, but he offered to take

in my pet turtle and tortoise that we didn't have room for in our rental house. It's hard to fathom just how we'll be able to repay and thank him for, thank all of our family and friends. I know the best way to thank Bev, that's what they call him, would be a shout out from you guys. Even better, if you would call him a schmump, which is a combination of a schmuck and a chump. Well, I don't know if we should do that.

Well, I mean, it sounds like it would make Bev's day, so. Oh, well, okay. I, for one, will say Bev, sir, you are a first grade schmump. Schmump. What if we just made him cry? I doubt it. I hope you had a great UK tour. We did, and we look forward to hearing some of the tangents from the travels.

You might. Thanks for all the hours of entertainment, and that is from Kevin Barrett. Nice. There you go. Kevin, your wish has been fulfilled. You're a schmump too, Kevin. Thanks for that. Thank you, Bev, for being a top-notch person.

And if you want to get in touch with us, you can hang out with us on Twitter at SYSK Podcast. You can hang out with me, too, at Josh Underscore Clark. You can hang out with us on Facebook. Chuck has his own. Charles W. Chuck Bryant, right? That's right, sir. I've got one called Super Josh Clark. Check it out.

Yeah. Good stuff going on in those places. Yeah. And then, of course, you can hang out the official Stuff You Should Know page at Facebook.com slash Stuff You Should Know. We're on Instagram. You can send us an email to StuffPodcast.HowStuffWorks.com, and, as always, you can join us at our humble abode on the web, StuffYouSnow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change, too.

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