Hamilton’s Moral Reckoning

Hamilton is easy to caricature: the brilliant operator, the relentless Federalist, the guy who never stops pushing. But the closer you look, the more the story bends toward something unexpected: a late-in-life moral awakening shaped by pride, collapse, and a real confrontation with faith. We sit down with Dr. Beienberg to follow Hamilton’s religious trajectory from early piety to a long stretch of indifference, then to a period in which he uses Christian language as a blunt political instrument against Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans. 

Along the way, we dig into the sharp irony historians highlight: the years when “religious slogans” are most on Hamilton’s lips may be the years when he is furthest from God. We talk through the 1800 election, Hamilton’s attempts to maneuver power behind the scenes, and the humiliations that strip away his sense of control. Then the conversation turns personal: the Reynolds affair, the loss of his son in a duel, his daughter’s breakdown, and how grief and disgrace can crack open a person who once seemed untouchable. 

What follows is a different Hamilton: reading the Bible, seeking mercy, trying to do right even by political enemies, and wrestling with the idea that politics cannot be an idol. The final moment is the duel with Aaron Burr and Hamilton’s choice not to take a life because he believes it would be unchristian, followed by his urgent request for communion as he’s dying. If you care about Alexander Hamilton, American history, or the role of religion in public life, this one reframes the legend as more human and instructive. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome back to Civics in the year. This is going to be interesting because our topic today is Alexander Hamilton and his late-in-life moral awakening. And we have Dr. Beinberg. And I am interested in this because, again, I've read the Hamilton biography from Professor Stephen Knott, who is one of my favorites. I have read the turnout. I have, you know, I cannot tell you how many times I've listened to the Hamilton soundtrack and also seen the play. And so it makes me giggle. But apparently, Alexander Hamilton and late in life for him, we all know that he was gunned down by Aaron Burr. Dr. Beinberg, I

Hamilton’s Late Moral Awakening

SPEAKER_00 0:49

don't know that you can track me any more than you have during the series because I've learned so much. How is it that Alexander Hamilton has a late-in-life moral awakening?

SPEAKER_01 1:00

And you mentioned Burr getting gunned down. So that'll that's sort of the ending. We'll come, we'll come back to that. Okay. So there's a a lot of this is based on basically a scholarly article back when historians tried to write for normal people. And if you look at the footnotes, it's just like citations to letters and text instead of like endless meta-commentary on what other scholars have written. So it's by a historian Douglas Adair and Marvin Hardy. Adair is one of the big people in founding era in the 50s, 60s. And the article's called, Is Hamilton a Christian statesman? So heavily what I'm talking about is based on that. But um, they basically see four stages in Hamilton's life. They see sort of a young, kind of pious Hamilton, his mentor before he gets to America as a Presbyterian minister. Once he gets to America, his close chums, Elias Bodneau and William Livingston, are about Presbyterians. His roommate, he tries to go to Princeton, which is the Presbyterian school, but he doesn't get in. So he goes to what's now Columbia, then called King's College,

The Four Stages Of Hamilton’s Faith

SPEAKER_01 2:04

where his college roommates remember him very piously and aggressively defending Christianity very passionately. So that's like young Hamilton. And then middle-aged Hamilton basically becomes kind of indifferent to indifference to religion, which is a little difficult because as you may remember from those biographies, his wife is very pious, very, very pious, like sometimes called the saint or something like that. And so then we get to the sort of really interesting contrast and pivot turn. In the 1790s, they describe Derrett and Harvey say he has, quote, an opportunistic religiosity, which is he basically insists that all good Christians have to be members of the Federalist Party. And he pitches himself as a defender of Christianity in the 1790s, basically as a cynical ploy against Jefferson and his allies, partly because Jefferson and his crew are supporting the French Revolution, which is, by its midpoint, like openly anti-Christian, seeking to destroy Christianity in France. But the line, again, I just keep quoting them because their writing is so fun. You all should pull this article up. You can get it for free on JSTOR. It is during these years when religious slogans were so often on his lips that Hamilton seems further away from God than at any time in his whole career.

Religion As A Federalist Weapon

SPEAKER_01 3:18

So he's basically just positioning himself as this so that he can be the effective helping him be the effective leader of the Federalists. And he be he is basically right. He's a leader of the Federalists. He's able to push Adams around as a Darren Harvey, then say, who can blame Hamilton for feeling omnipotent? Who can wonder that by 1799 Hamilton confused himself with God? And so and now the Reynolds affair isn't what breaks him. He actually still continues to have this. It's not the Reynolds affair. It's his complete basically, because that's in like 1796, 797. It's a little earlier. Uh so he he weathers that and still apparently thinks he's he's pretty pretty can do what he wants. But it's in basically after that, 98, 99, 1800, that Hamilton starts to fail at basically everything, going from almost like de facto king of America. So Adams pushes Hamilton, because Hamilton has basically tools in Adams's cabinet. And Hamilton or Adams pushes them out. He basically closes down the big army that Adam, you know, that Hamilton wants to run. Washington dies, which is a blow to Hamilton. And then I assume you remember from the churnout book, Hamilton basically tries to do a legislative coup in 1800, right? Yes. So he tries to convince John Jay basically to block the Jeffersonians from picking the Electoral College. And amusingly, Hamilton very cynically plays on, because Jay,

Political Collapse And Personal Humbling

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Jay, like Roger Sherman, like others, is one of the founders who was undisputably like a very pious evangelical Christian. And so Hamilton says, we have to do this, we have to stop Jefferson because he's, quote, an atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics. Now the irony is Hamilton's preferred candidate is Thomas Pinckney, who is actually an atheist, going back to how cynical Hamilton is being about religiosity here. So he's trying to basically trick Jay to block uh Jefferson for being an atheist and instead promote his guy who is an actual atheist. And so Hamilton's doing all kinds of crazy stuff in that election, right? So he kidney, he wants Pinckney. So he wants to destroy Adams. So he writes that manifesto basically saying Adam, that 58-page manifesto on why Adams is an incompetent idiot. He's hoping to move Pinckney up and Adams down. That gets leaked, obviously, and that's an embarrassment for Hamilton. And then he's obviously trying to stop Jefferson, and then he's trying to stop Burr, right? So he's he's basically in this like cycle here where he's just constantly getting uh defeated on that, and he loses, right? But he does manage to stop Burr, but otherwise, right, he's disgraced. He's basically kicked out, he's powerless in the Federalist Party, his influence has been shown to be weak. His enemy Jefferson is president, and he more or less has a breakdown, which is far more severe, apparently, than the Reynolds affair. And so we have these like almost endearing reflections from his children, almost saying, like, they're not saying they're glad it happened or anything like that, but that like, wow, like he's a good dad now. He just hangs out in his garden and he goes and reads the Bible, and then he says how wonderful it is to be out in God's creation with the garden here. So he he seemingly like has this actual like where he's just despairing and begging for God's mercy, atoning for all the bad things he's done. And then this actually is sort of a and then at this point, obviously his son dies in the duel and his oldest daughter goes insane. And so that sort of helps, you know, incur in a weird way. Again, he's like sort of more despairing and and you know, recognizing he thinks he's calling for God's help and mercy as his life gets tougher. He tries to stay out of politics, sort of, but it's he's too addicted to it. And so at one point he toys with building like a Christian constitution society, which on the one hand sort of has reflections of what he wanted in the 1790s, but seemingly he actually cares about the religious stuff because he's also trying to basically have the Federalists become popular again by doing charital work, charitable work, which is what he thinks will be like doubling doing both. It's good politics and and good and good societal stuff, good Christian service. But he even tries to basically forgive and protect Jefferson because he tries to suppress with his he still has allies in the newspapers, uh, and he tries to suppress the publication of the Hennings affair to protect Jefferson's reputation. Now, I'm not saying Jefferson's a good guy on that, but Hamilton is basically behaving in a very different way than he was before, which is like, here's my political enemy, how can I do right by him rather than like how can I basically libel him and grind him into the into the ground? And so obviously this jumps us ahead to the duel that I sort of teased at the beginning. And so we we have his writing, like he writes about it ahead of time where he basically says, like, you know, I if if I get basically like if I want, I can win this, I can kill Burr. But he says, like, I won't do it, it's unchristian, like, I won't murder this guy, I won't kill him. So if he kills me, I I'll throw my shots. And he does, and he gets shot. And as he's getting hauled back, and he's in the house, and apparently, apparently his wife doesn't know he's been shot for quite a while. That's sort of he it's unclear that she knows he's she doesn't know like why he's ailing, according to some of these accounts. And so he's begging ministers to come give him communion because he hadn't been a member of a church, he'd just been Bible reading on his own. He wants communion,

The Burr Duel And Final Communion

SPEAKER_01 8:51

and they they're initially they're hesitant because usually you have to be sort of a you know a member of that church to get communion. They're not making it hard to be a member, but you gotta at least be a member. But eventually, I I think the Anglican one does uh eventually at the end. And so he sort of dies happy on that sense. But yeah, the the the the striking contrast between like Hamilton is like Bible reading garden guy versus Hamilton reviling everybody else for being an evil atheist while he is himself not actually a Christian and scheming to have his atheist buddies installed is it's kind of wild.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

It's it's so interesting because on our other podcast, the Arizona Civics podcast, we had Andrew Porwanter on to talk about his book, The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton. And it's just a really interesting thing to consider how religion plays a part in who people are and what they do. So, you know, we have the Reynolds affair, his son dies in a duel, his eldest daughter essentially like reverts back to a child. The trauma is so great. Do you think that like the combination of those events really kind of leads him to finding comfort in the Bible and trying to like figure out why?

What Hamilton Teaches About Human Complexity

SPEAKER_00 10:10

I mean, that's losing a child is traumatic, but being involved in like essentially America's first sex scandal, your kid is murdered, and then one of them goes insane. Like, I just do you think that that's like kind of what led him to trying to find like solace essentially in the Bible?

SPEAKER_01 10:32

I think that I think that's I think that's true. Uh, Darren Harvey say the time put the timeline as the sort of political fall. But they're all, I mean, they're all kind of happening at the same time. So it's hard to say, like, oh, it's only this one thing. So, I mean, clearly, obviously, he's got to be sort of despondent at some level from the Reynolds affair, you know, and you know, is uh his wife's obviously quite pious. But yeah, that combination of all those things hitting him, he's trying to basically make sense of the universe and or also recognize like he's kind of been a scumbag. And obviously, you know, one of the one of the themes of the New Testament very much is this possibility of repentance and grace. So obviously you can see why that would be very appealing to somebody who's like, huh, I've been a scumbag, I was bad to my wife, I've been bad to my political friends, I've been worse to my political enemies, I've been a monster, I've had this monstrous ego. So yeah, that combination, coupled with the family stuff, it's not surprising. He would try to find solace in something that's not just an election. That he would realize that maybe, you know, that there's some logic in the render to Caesar, and don't make politics your idol and your God. That maybe you might get something more out of making God God instead of an electoral return.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

It's again, these founders, I think, I think this is why I love history so much, is there is so much nuance. There's so much, you know, that we can uh dig up for a lack of a better word, but to really understand the complexity of the human beings that founded our country. I think often people, you know, rise them up to this level of demigod. But the fact is, is they were men who made mistakes, who, you know, had these later in life moral awakenings after maybe not quite such a moral life. Is there anything else you think with Alexander Hamilton and this later in life moral awakening that we need to know to really understand him as a whole person?

SPEAKER_01 12:41

I mean, he's a complicated guy. You know, you alluded to Poor Watchers thing, right? So who's our our colleague, former colleague? That's sort of a controversial take, sort of his like he grew up Jewish thing, but ultimately, like the he it doesn't but he's clearly interested from the beginning in sort of religious things, but it does I I guess to understand Hamilton kind of working back from the real the religious thing to the sort of the mid-career is like this is a guy it's who is incredibly successful and incredibly powerful, right? Like, you know, he does he's not gonna be president because of the Reynolds affair, but he still is basically like the power behind the throne in so many ways. And you know, these things shall pass. So, in some sense, maybe it's less about what Hamilton teaches, or what we can think about Hamilton, and I don't think that's the worst lesson for sort of other people to just like there's a there's there's there are lessons that we can have from their memory that, as you said, these are people, and so they make good choices, they make bad choices, and that has consequences, but that also has you know examples that we can follow as good or bad, or parts thereof and divided within the same people.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Yes. Professor Beinberg, thank you so much for taking us on this journey with Alexander Hamilton.