That's okay. Others have done a good job honoring his legacy.
In case you only semi-recognize the name, Hamilton is one of America's founding fathers. In order of coolness, I'd put him at 7th, between John Hancock and Patrick Henry. He was not a super-fan of the Constitution in its final form, despite which he was one of its greatest champions. He got James Madison and John Jay to write a bunch of essays with him in defense of the Constitution, collectively known as the Federalist Papers. Yeah - those Federalist Papers. I'd like to imagine the conversation was sort of a Mean Girls-esque peer pressure deal.
Hamilton: Gentlemen! Let us go forth and spread the news of the Constitution to the people!
Jay: I can't go out, I'm sick. *cough* *cough*
Hamilton: Boo! You whore!
...and later...
Jay: He's a life ruiner. He ruins people's lives.
Madison: If only you knew how mean he really is, you’d know that I’m not allowed to wear powdered wigs, right? Yeah, two years ago he told me powdered wigs were his thing, and I wasn't allowed to wear them anymore. And then for Christmas my wife got this really expensive white powdered wig and I had to pretend like I didn't even like it. It was so sad.
...then Hamilton walks in...
Hamilton: Get in (to the carriage), losers. We're going essay-ing.
At a minimum, we're convinced that's how it went down with John Jay, who only wrote 5 of the 81 Federalist Papers. That said, Hamilton's goals were most assuredly more altruistic than Regina George's and his methods significantly more effective. He was a major influence on American history and a controversial and strong voice for his viewpoint. He spoke passionately and eloquently for his viewpoint and was well respected in his home state of New York for it. He was even able to convince the voters of New York not to put Aaron Burr in the Governor's mansion. Which had absolutely no negative consequences for him whatsoever.
Whoops.
Actually, after losing the Governor's race, Burr became aware of some serious smack talk from Hamilton at influential dinner parties, determined that his honor had been impinged and challenged Hamilton to a duel. From evidence in some letters between Hamilton and Burr, it is believed that Hamilton was firing to miss whereas Burr's first shot hit him straight in the gut. Amazingly (and this point makes my nerd sense tingle), their witnesses couldn't determine who shot first.
I'm just going to leave this here.
Seeing as we already live in America and there are no cuisines or festivals for Alexander Hamilton's birthday, about the only way to observe it with the respect and dignity it deserved was to reenact the famous duel. Now, neither Justin nor I particularly enjoy guns and we definitely don't own blanks. So we had to find... an alternative.
Gentlemen! Choose your weapons!
Being ever the chivalrous gentleman, Justin took the bow. As you can see, that severely limited his supply of ammunition. Not only did my marshmallow machine gun hold more delicious, delicious ammo, but it was also designed for rapid shooting. Luckily for Justin, marshmallows don't have the capability to inflict fatalities.
Whoops again.
We went outside for our duel, stood back to back, and then leaned around and kissed each other for luck. Is that against the spirit of dueling? Who cares - maybe if Hamilton and Burr had kissed it out, things would've gone differently. Anyway, then we walked ten paces each. We were going to walk twenty each, but despite their badass design, the marshmallow guns don't have a lot of range. And then we had the coolest, swag-est, most kick ass duel of all time in the history of dueling.
Artist's depiction of our sweet-ass duel.
And then... the moment of truth. We turned, aimed and BOOM! Well, more like a quiet pop. But, quelle horreur, my gun jammed! Why, cruel fate, why?! Justin fired. A little green marshmallow whizzed into my neck. Lime? Et tu, Justin? LIME?! And so there, in the green grass, next to the green mallow that had bounced softly off my neck, I lay there pretend-dying. And this is how it ends... not with a bang, but a soft kind of popping sound.
Alexander Hamilton Day was a delightful good time. We so rarely have justification for a marshmallow duel at 10 paces. This is the wonderful thing about this year so far - we got to be silly and goofy and mess around in a way we definitely wouldn't have thought of if not for the holidays. Today was a great day otherwise, but the moments of irreverence made it even better!
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