It is my pleasure to introduce our keynote session entitled ask the historian, Alexander Hamilton. Our speaker, historian joanne freeman. Dr. Freeman is a professor of history at yale university. She specializes in the American Revolutionary period and Early National american politics and culture. She is the author of several influential Award Winning books. I will mention just two of them. Affairs of honor, National Politics in the republic, 2001. Most recently, field of blood, congressional violence in antebellum america which i found particularly helpful for my own work. If you look at these two books combined, it seems like a reverse echo of the current and contemporary political scene in the United States. From honor to violence. I will leave it at that. Dr. Freeman is also known for her leading scholarship on Alexander Hamilton which she rediscovered, i would say, before broadway did just a couple of years ago. I asked dr. Freeman about her relation with history, and she was kind