HAMILTON

Tonight we watched an original Hamilton cast performance on Disney Plus. We had seen a performance of the Chicago cast three years ago and own the original cast recording, but seeing this performance with Lin-Manuel Miranda and the original gang was extra special.

The musical was inspired by the biography of Hamilton by Ron Chernow and tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first Treasury Secretary. Hamilton was much more than that, however. He was an orphan who fled poverty in the West Indies and came to this country as an immigrant. He worked his way up first as an aide to then General Washington and became a key defender of the Constitution, writing the Federalist Papers. He was driven and the musical talks about how prolific a writer he was and how he "wrote like he was running out of time." He appears to have been one of the nation's original workaholics and always put excellence and strengthening the country first.

Like many ambitious men, he had his failings, including infidelity and was ensared in an affair that culminated in blackmail and secret payoffs. When the payoffs came to light, and Hamilton was accused of embezzling federal funds, he decided to come clean and tell the truth in order to save his public reputation despite the fact that it would tarnish his private and family life. This paradoxical event says a lot about Hamilton's sense of right and wrong and how he valued the truth above all.

If you've not seen Hamilton, check it out on Disney Plus. Here is a performance of the original cast for President Obama at the White House. Enjoy!