How does Hamilton affect our idea of Civil Society?
Photo Source: Joan Marcus
Pictured in this image is the original Broadway cast of Hamilton during one of their performances. Lin-Manuel Miranda (Alexander Hamilton) is running across the back of the stage while the rest of the cast sings in a line downstage. From left to right, pictured are Christopher Jackson (George Washington), Betsy Struxness (Ensemble), Anthony Ramos (John Laurens / Philip Hamilton), Seth Stewart (Ensemble), Daveed Diggs (Marquis de Lafayette / Thomas Jefferson), Carleigh Bettiol (Ensemble), Okieriete Onaodowan (Hercules Mulligan / James Madison), Ephraim Sykes (George Eacker / ensemble), Renee Elise Goldsberry (Angelica Schuyler), Sasha Hutchings (Ensemble), Phillipa Soo (Eliza Schuyler), Ariana DeBose (Ensemble), Jasmine Cephas Jones (Peggy Schuyler / Maria Reynolds), Thayne Jasperson (Samuel Seabury / Ensemble), and Leslie Odom Jr. (Aaron Burr). All the members of the non-ensemble cast (excepting Johnathon Groff, who played King George III) are people of color, primarily with Puerto Rican, African, Chinese, and Jewish heritage. Additionally, most members of the ensemble cast are people of color, including those not pictured here. Additionally, about half of the ensemble cast members are women. These actors represent many of the founders of the United States and the early citizens of the United States, particularly those in New York City.
This image is from the musical Hamilton, premiered in 2015, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The story follows Alexander Hamilton from his childhood in the Caribbean, through the Revolutionary war, and to Hamilton’s political career and death. The musical focuses on Hamilton’s complex interpersonal relationships, including his relationship with his wife, Eliza, and his exclusionary, backroom, political deals which eventually led to his death. The musical also emphasizes Hamilton’s abolitionist views (while ignoring evidence that he also owned slaves) and his political endeavors, aspirations, and viewpoints (Secretary of the Treasury, national bank, Reynold’s Pamphlet, Federalist etc). Overall, Hamilton provides a relatively accurate, if dramatized, portrayal of Alexander Hamilton’s life, his contributions to the founding of the United States, and the social context of the Revolutionary War and early years of the United States.
In The Civil Sphere, Jeffery Alexander discusses the idea that civil societies categorize all things into civil and anticivil categories, each with opposing qualities like rational vs irrational or equality vs hierarchy. He continues to explain how each society separately defines what is civil and what is anticivil based on space, time, and function. By function, because civil societies are independent by nature, that independence also creates vulnerability in that society. Functional differentiation can make a society stronger by fostering interdependence, but different institutions have different goals, and may become more or less civil to obtain those goals, which may cause anticivility within a society over time if these institutions become too powerful. By space, that which is within the territory of a society becomes civil, and all that which is outside that society’s territory becomes anticivil. Alexander also states that “Just as civil societies are always created in real space, so they are always created in real time”, meaning that, despite the idea of a timeless ideal of civility in any given society, each society was created by specific people at a specific time. The founding is then immortalized and periodically revisited in ritual celebrations to establish the sacredness of that time, those events, and those people. Since specific people, he claims, are associated with the rise of civil society, the characteristics of those people are believed to be the reasons for their success at building a democratic or civil society. The language, race, gender, and other characteristics of the founders of a society become considered the pure, or civil, characteristics to that society, and all opposing characteristics “insofar as they differ from the founders’ own, should be equated with the impure categories of this civil discourse in turn.” Such, the arrival of new groups labels them as anticivil, at least until an extended time within the territorial boundaries of that society purifies the characteristics of the new group into a variation on civil characteristics, instead of anticivil ones.
In United States history, all of the recognized founders of our society are white men, most of them British, most of them born in the American Colonies, and most of them Protestant Christians. As such, in the United States, the civil, pure group is usually considered to be white, protestant men. This is exemplified by our presidential history; only one president has not been white, only two have not been Protestant Christians, and all have been men. However, over time, more groups have become accepted into the pure, civil group of United States society, including women and, to varying degrees, people of color and people practicing different religions. Hamilton, through its casting choices, explores the complex role of people of color and women in the history of the United States, helping to add their stories back into the history of the United States. King George III, played by Johnathon Groff, is the only non-American character portrayed in Hamilton and is also the only principal character played by a white actor. This reflects the historic and current colonial relationships of the world, where predominantly white (and usually European) countries exploit and oppress people of color. In Hamilton the non-white cast struggles for freedom against the white colonizers (symbolized by Groff). While the United States does have a history of colonization and oppression of other peoples, before and during the Revolutionary War, it was a colonized and oppressed place (if not to the extent of many other colonized countries and peoples). By casting mostly people of color, Hamilton draws parallels between the colonial relationship of Great Britain and the newly emerging United States of America and the still existing colonial relationships between (predominantly white) first world countries and (predominantly non-white) formerly colonized, third world countries. This parallel emphasizes the spatial categorization of the United States. There is a clear, civil “us”, the people living in the first world countries, and a clear, anticivil “them”, comprising all people outside who cannot be trusted and can be exploited. Additionally, by casting a large number of people of color, Hamilton emphasizes the role that people of color (mostly people of African or native descent) played in the Revolutionary War and the early years of the United States, a role which is often ignored in history education. There are also moments where the musical acknowledges the contributions of people of color to the Revolutionary War, like when John Laurens expresses his wish to “sally in on a stallion / With the first black battalion", a line which references the military group that Laurens did form and fight with during the Revolutionary War. Furthermore, while the role of women in Hamilton has been criticized for its depiction of the three principal female characters (Eliza, Angelica, and Maria seemingly representing three stereotypes of women, “the good wife”, “the gold-digger”, and “the whore”, respectively), it also does not differentiate in the role of men and women in the ensemble roles. Frequently, women in the ensemble play soldiers, jury members, and unnamed political roles. Hamilton also emphasizes the roles of women in United States history, especially that of Eliza Hamilton. A large portion of the final song is dedicated to her activism and research as she tried to reconstruct the events during and after the Revolutionary War (fundraising for the Washington Monument, interviews with soldiers, abolition activism, founding an orphanage), which helped shape our picture of history. Through these inclusions, Lin-Manuel Miranda emphasizes the forgotten importance of people of color and women in United States history, adding them back into the temporal categorization of the United States society. While it remains true that the widely recognized founders of the United States were white, Protestant, men, mostly born in the American Colonies, Hamilton criticizes the exclusion of women and people of color’s characteristics from the civil characteristics of the United States and criticizes the treatment and lack of perceived civility of people living outside the spatial boundaries of the United States.
Bibliography
Marcus, Joan. 2020. “Untitled 1” From backstage.com. Retrieved April 2, 2026 (https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/cd-behind-historys-hamilton-9584/)
Miranda, Lin-Manuel. 2015. Hamilton: An American Musical. New York: Atlantic Records.
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