patriotic enterprise

B. signed up for a month on Disney+ so that we could watch H.Milton, as the display ads stylize the title. I didn't much like it.

It's not on historical accuracy, for which I'd give it a reasonable ranking. It's the waywardness, incoherence, and inconsistency of the storytelling, particularly in the first act. I watched it in half-hour chunks, which is why it took until the next day to finish; I think if I'd been forced to hear an entire act at once, it would have given me a headache. That's one reason I'm glad I never saw it in the theater. Also, about two minutes in I rewound it to the beginning and turned the close-captioning on. I think that in the theater I'd have had even more trouble making out what anybody said. The music, when it was music, was not nearly good enough to compensate for these problems.

Exception to both considerations is the Election of 1800 scene. It accurately conveys the bottom line - forced to choose between Jefferson and Burr, Hamilton went for Jefferson because he trusted his integrity more - but the show completely mauls the circumstances that led to that point. On the other hand, I can't imagine how they'd have told a more accurate story on stage in less than four minutes. And it was a terrifically dry and incisive piece of writing and stagecraft, vastly the most enjoyable thing in the show.

Then there's King George's song in act 1, less amusing in context than out of it. This does not convey what the real King George was like at all. It is, however, an accurate picture of what the revolutionary colonists thought he was like. His later reappearances have nothing to do with King George either way, and may be thought of as a mocking chorus to give a different perspective on events.

But of all the tiresomely ornate, overdramatized, overrepeated, and overemotional things in the earlier part of the show, the most puzzling was the repeated line from act 1, "I am not throwing away my shot." What exactly does this mean? Obviously it's some sort of expression of determination, but what? Does it mean generally "I am not giving up," or "I am not wasting my effort on a goal I can't achieve," or "This time it's a goal I can achieve," or literally "I am not firing my gun in the air in a duel" or all of these at different times?

Anyway, now I've been here and done this.

the stage where it happens

Hamilton depicts the presidential election of 1800 as evidently a three-man race among Jefferson, Burr, and Adams, with Adams a sure loser.

That's not what happened at all, though it does set up the story's historically authentic dilemma in which Hamilton is forced to choose between Jefferson and Burr, and supports Jefferson.

Let me see if I can explain briefly what did happen.

In 1796, the parties had been disciplined in their vote for President (same as in 1800, Adams v. Jefferson), but their votes for VP had been scattered. But, as the show notes, officially the electors' two votes were undifferentiated for office. As a result, though Adams had been elected President, no running mate had more votes than Jefferson the opposition presidential candidate did, so he had become VP.

In 1800, both parties were determined to do it better. Each agreed on a ticket and stuck with it. The Federalists, Adams for re-election with C.C. Pinckney for VP; the Republicans, Jefferson for President and Burr for VP. As the show notes, Hamilton loathed Adams, and he went to some trouble to try to arrange a situation where Pinckney would get more electoral votes than Adams and become President instead if the Federalists won. But none of the other Federalists much liked the idea of deposing the incumbent, and Hamilton's idea went pffft.

The Republicans were aware of the problem of an equal number of electoral votes for the ticket, but Jefferson and Madison were reluctant to offend Burr by withholding any votes from him. They just hoped it would happen in some state that voted Republican but that they didn't have any control over. But it didn't. Everybody stuck to the ticket.

Incidentally, only a few states chose electors by popular vote. In most states, they were chosen by the legislature, making legislative elections the popular vote proxy for presidential ones. The New York legislative election earlier that year, then, was when Hamilton and Burr as party managers faced each other down at the street level, even running into each other at polling places. Burr was victorious, and that's what made Republican victory in the presidential race likely, though it was by no means assured. Despite the show's claim, the Federalists were still very much a live option.

Once Jefferson and Burr had equal electoral votes, the election by constitutional rule moved to the House of Representatives to break the tie. The Republicans stuck to Jefferson. Though Hamilton announced for Jefferson, the Federalists in the House ignored him and voted for Burr. But, despite the show's claim, at no time did Burr openly campaign for President against Jefferson. He merely said he would abide by the result, neither campaigning nor withdrawing. He might have been doing much behind the scenes, but we don't know.

Neither candidate had a majority for several ballots, because they voted by state delegation and some were tied. Eventually the Federalists realized they weren't going to get Burr into office against firm Republican support for Jefferson, and gave up.

And that's how Jefferson became President. It wasn't Hamilton who did it. He had very little influence in this election, even with his own party. But he did earn Burr's enmity, so there's that.