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
Between the Revolutionary War, the fight over the Constitution, and his infamous deadly duel with Aaron Burr, Hamilton found time to father eight children with his wife Eliza.
Ever since the opening of the “Hamilton” musical on Broadway, interest in the life of our first treasury secretary has soared. This attention has not been entirely positive, though, as some of late have disputed whether Alexander Hamilton deserves the label of abolitionist, a title he never sought.