Alexander Hamilton not a slave owner!
DOUGLAS Hamilton — the fifth-greatgrandson of Alexander Hamilton — is ready for pistols at dawn. Figuratively speaking, of course. While statues are being bulldozed and controversies rage over whether schools bearing the monikers of former presidents should be renamed, the 70-year-old Westerville, Ohio, resident told The Post (which Hamilton founded in 1801) he is worried that social justice warriors will try to “cancel” his forebear next: “I refuse to let my ancestor be written out of the past,” he says.
Douglas’ resolve was fortified after a research paper by self-taught historian Jessie Serfilippi claimed that Hamilton bought, sold and owned slaves.
Serfilippi concludes in her paper, which has been embraced by some “woke” historians, that Hamilton’s “involvement in the institution of slavery was essential to his identity, both personally and professionally.”
But Douglas said Serfilippi’s writing is “riddled with errors, omissions, assumptions, speculations and mis representations. There are a number of factual mistakes.”
“There is no truth at all to her claim that he based his personal and public life all around slavery,” Douglas said. “It upsets me because Hamilton was driven by fame, recognition and the call to public service.”
Serfilippi, 27, is a fiction writer living in Delmar, NY. Her 2019 paper was published as a booklet and sold by the Schuyler Mansion in Albany, a partially statefunded site where she is employed as a part-time “historical interpreter.” In 2020, it was published on the Web site of the New York State Office of Parks.
It was also picked up by several media outlets, including The AP and The New York Times. While that coverage merely reported on Serfilippi’s findings and didn’t offer any opinion on the matter, it was enough to prompt Douglas’ fears that Serfilippi’s claims could be taken as truth — and that Hamilton’s name could be removed from institutions or that his face could be taken off the ten-dollar bill.
Douglas and an experienced group of historians (under the collective name Philo Hamilton) responded with the essay “Opening a Door to Their Emancipation: Alexander Hamilton and Slavery,” published on enthusiast sites like DiscoveringHamilton.com. It claims there is a lack of definitive evidence that the Founding Father ever owned or traded slaves.
Douglas points to records from the 1800 Census that state the Hamilton household included four “servants.” According to Douglas, Serfilippi may have confused the terms “servant” and “slave.” He claims the employees were likely free men and women unburdened by the yoke of slavery.
Douglas is also concerned that schools might stop teaching about the good Hamilton did for the burgeoning United States as a signer of the Constitution, a military general during the Revolutionary War and the first secretary of the Treasury.
“The people who want to destroy the culture of this country have got to start somewhere, so why not him?” said Douglas, a retired IBM salesman. “The mission of cancel culture appears to be the complete elimination of all our history prior to the 1960s.
“[It intends to] wipe out any memory of the progress made, inch-by-inch, to realize the reality of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal.”
Douglas, along with historian Michael E. Newton, believes that, beyond mixing up “slaves” and “servants,” Serfilippi also misinterpreted handwritten notes in Hamilton’s personal cash book. She presented the difficult-to-decipher numbers as the final confirmation that Hamilton had purchased slaves for his own needs.
Douglas insisted that the notes show Hamilton likely acted as an accountant, not a purchaser or a lender, on two occasions when his inlaws bought and sold slaves.
He cited his ancestor’ s writing against slavery, as well as his advocacy for the education of black children and early membership in the abolitionist New York Manumission Society, as evidence of Hamilton’s true intentions.
“He cannot defend himself, so it’s my duty to speak out on his behalf,” said Douglas
He also suggested that the provocative title — “As Odious and Immoral a Thing: Alexander Hamilton’s Hidden History as an Enslaver” — of Serfilippi’s paper was a low blow: The first six words are a direct quote from a 1795 pamphlet written by Hamilton condemning the practice of slavery.
BEING a Hamilton descendant is a huge part of Douglas’ identity. He first met Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the wildly popular Broadway musical “Hamilton,” around 2013 at a run-through of some of the show’s songs.
“I introduced myself to Lin and told him I thought the production was going to be a big hit,” recalled Douglas. He also attended the 2015 Broadway premiere of “Hamilton,” and 11 years earlier took part in a reenactment of the fatal duel between Alexander Hamilton and political rival Aaron Burr. It marked the 200th anniversary of Hamilton’s death; Douglas’ “opponent” was a distant Burr descendant.
At the home Douglas shares with his wife, Debra, and where they raised their two children, family heirlooms take pride of place. Among them: a gold mourning ring, containing strands of Hamilton’s hair, that the statesman’s widow, Elizabeth “Eliza” Schuyler, wore for five decades after his death.
“It’s important to keep in touch with the past, even if it’s sometimes painful,” said Douglas. “It’s one of the reasons I object to the canceling out of history.”
Serfilippi wrote that her findings of Hamilton’s slave ownership were “a rarely acknowledged truth.” She slammed “nearly every major biography written about him over the past two centuries” for their collective“denial and obscuration of these facts” — including Pulitzer-winner Ron Chernow, author of the 2004 biography“Alexander Hamilton”on which Miranda’ s“Hamilton” is based.
Separate of S er filip pi, some historians have claimed that Chernow’s book overplays Hamilton as a supporter of emancipation — and several Twitter users have even called to “cancel” the musical, now streaming on Disney+.
While Harvard Law School professor and Pulitzer Prize winner Annette Gordon-Reed
There is no truth at all to her claim that he based his personal and public life all around slavery. — Douglas Hamilton on Jessie Serfilippi
has not directly called for the show tobe canceled,she has been out spoken in her criticism of it, saying Hamilton was “not an abolitionist” as suggested in the musical. In response to S er filip pi’ spa per, she tweeted: “Historians have to accept this if the documents are true.”
Miranda has tweeted that the Hamilton criticisms are “valid,” but noted “the sheer tonnage of complexities & failures . . . I couldn’t get” into a “2.5 hour show.”
Asked by The Post for comment, Serfilippi only said: “Schuyler Mansion and NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation declines to comment.”
The Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site where she works is the former residence of Hamilton’s fatherin-law.
Philip Schuyler, a Revolutionary War commander and US senator, was indeed a prominent slaveholder in the late 1700s. Last June, as Black Lives Matter protests took place in upstate New York, Kathy Sheehan, the mayor of Albany, ordered a statue of Schuyler removed from outside its city hall. Douglas lobbied the mayor with an idea that, he believes, would help society learn from the wrongdoing rather than erasing it. He suggested Albany replace Schuyler’s nameplate with citations of the 36 AfricanAmericans who fought in the Revolutionary War.
In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson said that Mayor She eh an is“convening a committee of local community members to help lead a discussion about . . . the appropriate historical context that should accompany” the statue once it is relocated.
Douglas readily admits that Hamilton himself deserves closer examination, even if it’s not all positive. “I’ve never said Hamilton was perfect,” he added. “He certainly made mistakes, such as his scathing writings about John Adams or his own extramarital affair with Maria Reynolds” — a scandal that ruined Hamilton’s chances of becoming president.
“I’m all for finding out the truth about Hamilton,” said Douglas. “But Jessie’s research is the opposite of the truth. Hamilton did a lot of good things against slavery but she mentioned none of them. Instead, her method was to take a few select ‘facts’ and twist them to suit her agenda.
“I am absolutely convinced he did not support slavery and that Jessie’s research is a lie. I am not going to back down from correcting her distortion of Hamilton’s record,” he added.
“You need to keep the past in order to understand it. You can learn from it but, at the same time, look forward and say: ‘How can we do better?’ ”
Douglas took part in a 2004 re-enactment of the Hamilton-Burr duel, facing off against a Burr descendant.