On-screen text: The words spoken by the actors in this film are taken from letters, diaries and documents of the time.
Narrator: On a warm morning in July 1804, a boat is rowed across the Hudson River to Lower Manhattan. In the boat lies Alexander Hamilton. He was a hero of the American Revolution, architect of the country's financial system, and, under President Washington, the most powerful man in the United States. Wounded and bleeding, he is near death.
Gouverneur Morris is called upon to give the funeral oration. He is one of Hamilton's closest friends.
Gouverneur Morris (as portrayed by actor): He was vain, indiscreet and opinionated. These things must be told to give a full measure of his character -- but I must do it in such a manner as not to give offense to the mourners. This is not going to be easy.
Narrator: Morris, the man who had penned the words, "We the People," is having severe writer's block. No founder had done more to shape the character of the country than Alexander Hamilton, yet no founder was more controversial.
Gouverneur Morris (as portrayed by actor): The first point of his biography is that he was of illegitimate birth. Well, I'll have to pass over that one in some clever way. I'll mention, of course, his share in forming the Constitution. But then again, there's his domestic life. I have to say something about his wife -- but then, there's a small matter of infidelity that he foolishly published to the world.
Ah! His administration of the country's finances. Yes, but many are still very hostile to it. I must somehow reconcile all this.
Dueling. In principle, he was against dueling. But he was killed in a duel. Not only is this subject impossible to write, but I shall still have to memorize it. The corpse is already putrid, and the funeral must take place tomorrow.
Ron Chernow, Biographer: The story of the life of Alexander Hamilton is a story that the most gifted novelist could not have invented. Too much of it would seem implausible in terms of what happened to this man in the space of forty-nine years. I mean, it's just better than any novel.
Willard Sterne Randall, Writer: Hamilton's the only one of the Founding Fathers who was an outsider, an orphan, an immigrant, a scholarship boy, a college dropout.
Richard J. Payne, Historian: It's hard to explain Hamilton because what you're trying to explain is genius. How do you explain genius?
Ron Chernow, Biographer: He's so capable, so kind of self-consciously brilliant in a way, that he makes an amazing number of enemies.
Karl F. Walling, Historian: Hamilton, in many ways, is a tragic figure, because the love of honor -- which is the source of his greatness, I would argue -- is completely consistent with Greek tragedy, also, the source of his downfall.
John Adams (as portrayed by actor): That bastard brat of a Scottish peddler! His ambition, his restlessness and all his grandiose schemes come, I'm convinced, from a superabundance of secretions, which he couldn't find enough whores to absorb!