How true is ‘Hamilton’ to American history?

“Hamilton” isn’t the first Broadway musical to tell the story of America’s Founding Fathers, but nothing in pop culture has ever done more to get young people interested in the birth of the republic.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s vibrant hiphop score speaks in a language that teens relate to, and the show’s producers are leveraging that with the Hamilton Education Program, aka #EduHam, which brings a hands-on curriculum into Title 1 high schools serving low-income students — and then invites the kids to see a performance for just $10.

“We all wish that this was around when we were in high school, because it has taught us so much,” says Julia K. Harriman, who plays Eliza Schuyler in the national touring production. It opened Jan. 30 at ASU Gammage in Tempe.

“You’re learning about people that you kind of touch on in school, but you don’t really dive into who they are or where they’re coming from,” she added. “The fact that this show is being done the way that it is, with the hip-hop, helps make everything more interesting and is the reason kids want to learn about it.”

But is watching “Hamilton” a good history lesson?

“There are some things it gets very right, and there are some things that it either omits or distorts,” says Peter

The sort-of love triangle

McNamara, an Alexander Hamilton scholar and a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.

“I think the portrayals of (Thomas) Jefferson and (James) Madison, they’re distortions,” he said. “Jefferson was a more serious fellow than the Jefferson of the musical. And Madison, he’s a bit of an exaggeration, but of course he has been known as the father of the Constitution and the father of the Bill of Rights, and he’s just a bit player in this story.

“But there are other things it gets right. It gets right the relationship between Hamilton and (George) Washington, the mentor relationship. The American founding, the Revolution — it was an exciting time. It was young people trying to make a name for themselves. There was romance. There was violence, of course, but it was a great drama, and I guess one of the accomplishments of the musical is just to convey a sense that this was an exciting time.”

Based on Ron Chernow’s acclaimed biography of Hamilton, the musical’s narrative arc spans from the summer of 1776, when the 19-year-old immigrant from the Caribbean talks revolution with the Marquis de Lafayette, to his death 24 years later in a duel with his longtime “frenemy,” Aaron Burr. In between, the show packs in a tremendous amount of national and personal history: the war, Hamilton’s courtship of Eliza, the Constitutional Convention, debates over the national bank and the debt, and even the nation’s first major sex scandal.

It would be impossible to turn all of this into a coherent and compelling story without taking some liberties with the facts.

Numerous articles — most notably Genius.com’s annotation of the complete lyrics — have been devoted to enumerating Miranda’s “errors.”

Here are a few examples:

In the musical, the fiercely independent Angelica Schuyler is attracted to Hamilton but bows out in favor of her sister Eliza, explaining, “My father has no sons, so I’m the one who has to social climb for one.”

In fact, Angelica was already married, and the Schuyler brood of 15 children did include boys.

Broadway Across America: ‘Hamilton’

When: Through Sunday, Feb. 25. Where: ASU Gammage, Mill Avenue and Apache Boulevard, Tempe.

Admission: Available on the resale market. Also, check Ticketmaster for last-minute ticket releases throughout the run. Daily lotteries for $10 tickets via the “Hamilton” app or at hamiltonmusical.com/lottery. Details: 480-965-3434, asugammage.com. However, it’s true that Hamilton had a close relationship with his sister-in-law.

The climactic duel

When Hamilton endorses Jefferson over Burr for president in 1800, Burr challenges him to a duel.

Except the duel actually took place in 1804, when Burr was running for governor of New York.

And despite the wisecrack that “everything’s legal in New Jersey,” dueling was, in fact, outlawed in that state.

The question of slavery

Hamilton is portrayed as a passionate abolitionist, but many historians doubt how committed he was to the cause. There is evidence that he was involved in business transactions involving slaves and may have even owned them at one point.

Without doubt, he was publicly opposed to slavery, but he wasn’t exactly a firebrand when it came to the most divisive issue in American history.

There are other minor inaccuracies, such as Hamilton’s 9-year-old son wishing he had a brother when, in real life, he already had two. John Adams never fired Hamilton as Treasury secretary. Jefferson resigned as secretary of State in 1793, not in 1796, as George Washington was preparing to end his presidency. A duel involving Hamilton’s son is moved backward in time.

More substantive critiques have focused on the musical’s unabashedly patriotic viewpoint, which presents the Founding Fathers as idealistic freedom fighters while glossing over the fraught power dynamics of the age, slavery not least, but also in terms of social class and gender — the show’s few nods to feminism notwithstanding. Indeed, Miranda’s implicit commentary on current social issues may obscure what the early patriots truly believed.

From a conservative perspective, the National Review opined that “just like the progressive Left that reveres it, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical elevates style over substance.”

Yet there is no single definitive version of history. The past is always under constant reconsideration, and anyone who thinks that a high-school textbook is free of distortions is fooling themselves. And so while watching Miranda’s “Hamilton” might not be as complete an education as, say, reading Chernow’s “Alexander Hamilton,” it’s a pretty good start.

The musical dramatically illustrates that the contentious issues of today — about race, about the proper role of government — have been with us from the beginning. And if it’s a somewhat mythologized version of the Revolution, it’s one that focuses on finding common ground.

“Dealing with what’s going on in politics today, sometimes we feel like this is the only time this has ever happened,” says actor Nicholas Christopher, who plays Burr in the national tour. “We feel as though this is the worst the country has ever been — or the best this country has ever been, depending on your point of view. And this just shows that America is strong enough to get through tough times.”