Beneath the Powdered Wig
RADICAL HAMILTON: Economic Lessons From a Misunderstood Founder
BY CHRISTIAN PARENTI
Verso, 304 pp., $26.95
INCE LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA’S musical became a Broadway sensation and made the 1804 Burr-Hamilton duel “of the moment,” the field of Revolutionary and early republican American history has found itself caught in the crossfire. For those who prefer it that way, the men in powdered wigs are no longer dead white guys; they’re streetwise. It all sounds new, but it’s not. Every generation has refashioned the Founders in its own image, mixing patriotic lore with filiopietistic tales to enshrine America’s cherished ideals. After his death, George Washington was revered as a demigod and saint, with his Jesus-like apotheosis captured in art and eulogy. New England poet Henry Wadsworth presented Hamilton as the champion of an aristocratic (code for fascist) class. The first secretary of the Treasury stood in for the widespread fear (as voiced by then Vice President Henry Wallace) that self-satisfied industrialists might sell out America for profits. Political theater has long elevated one favored Founder over another.
