Hamilton's America Page #3

---

gets off the island.

He literally writes his way

out of his circumstances.

And it's so much the

quintessential immigrant story

of redefining yourself

when you come

to a new place.

And the sense I got,

really early

in Ron Chernow's

Hamilton biography,

was this sense of,

"I know this guy."

The fact that Hamilton

left the Caribbean

to come to New York

to get his education --

I always tell people, "I'm just

playing my dad in the show..."

-[ Laughs ]

-...down to the hair.

Tell me about coming

to New York for the first time.

What brought you here?

-I got a great opportunity

to come and study at NYU.

I left Puerto Rico

when I was 18.

I always thought,

"Puerto Rico is just too small.

I-I got to see more."

I graduated.

Then I was involved in advocacy,

but I realized that I wanted

to do something different,

so I joined

the Ed Koch administration,

mayor of New York City,

in '87.

You know, in my experience,

immigrants are never

the lazy ones.

They're not the stupid ones.

They're the smart, hard workers

'cause they have to work

so much harder

to make sense of their reality

and succeed in that reality.

I always saw my time here

as a temporary thing.

But then I realized

that this is where

I was gonna raise my children.

Then we stay here forever.

-"Bye, Puerto Rico."

And that was it.

And then you were a New Yorker.

-Alexander Hamilton is

in New York

just at the time

as the tremendous ferment

of the American Revolution

is starting.

On the Common,

what is today City Hall Park,

Alexander Hamilton

is delivering fiery speeches.

He also had established

his bona fides

as one of the most feared

polemical writers in New York.

-I really keyed into how much

of a New York story it was.

These blocks

that I've passed all my life

have all along been

these incredible sources

of rich American history.

I don't think a lot

of people know that.

When we think of

the founding fathers,

we think of them

in some room in Philadelphia,

you know, hashing it out.

It's like

a John Trumbull painting.

But they were here.

They were uptown,

like the Grange

in Hamilton Heights

on 141st Street,

which is where Hamilton

and his wife

lived for the last few years

of his life.

-This was Hamilton's study,

and --

-It's the right color.

-Right. [ Laughs ] Money green.

This is a reproduction

of Hamilton's laptop,

or his traveling desk.

He would write

everywhere and anywhere.

He wrote under trees.

He wrote on --

on horseback.

He wrote in carriages.

-I mean, the tonnage

of his writing, it's --

-Exactly.

The sheer amount that he had,

he must have had something

with him all the time

to be writing on

Rate this script:4.6 / 5 votes