Jessica Serfilippi started her groundbreaking and myth-busting research on Alexander Hamilton the way she thinks any historian should — with an open mind, she says.

She was “not looking one way or the other to find something, just seeing where the primary sources led me,” Serfilippi says. “And I cannot ignore where they were leading me.”

The primary sources — including letters and cash books in Hamilton’s own hand — led her to this conclusion: “When those sources are fully considered, a rarely acknowledged truth becomes inescapbly apparent: not only did Alexander Hamilton enslave people, but his involvement in the institution of slavery was essential to his identity, both personally and professionally.

“The denial and obscuration of these facts in nearly every major biography written about him over the past two centuries has erased the people he enslaved from history. It has also created and perpetuated a false and incomplete picture of Hamilton as a man and Founding Father.”

Serfilippi, who works as a historical interpreter at the state-run Schuyler Mansion in Albany, had those words published on the state’s website as part of her carefully researched 28-page paper, in the fall of 2020.

A firestorm followed.

Read the full article at https://altamontenterprise.com/04202022/serfilippi-upended-hero-hamilton-narrative-so-those-he-enslaved-could-take-their-place

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