Mulligan the hip rabble-rouser tells Hamilton without missing a beat, “Oh my God. Tear this dude apart.” This Hamilton does, even “using the same vowels and cadences and talking over him,” as Miranda puts it. This is his particular impressive “superpower” (Hamilton: The Revolution 49). Seabury stands on his podium while Hamilton darts around him criticizing his language, active and cheeky.

On a basic level, the American Revolution was driven by words: fiery statements of principle; charges of imperialist oppression; accusations of betrayal; fine points of governance; even wordy obfuscations to gloss over disagreements that could have sabotaged the country at its start. What better musical genre to tell this tale?

Historically, the Sons of Liberty had burned Seabury’s loyalist essay by “A Westchester Farmer” amid much derision. They even went so far as to tar and feather the copies. Hamilton anonymously published “A Full Vindi-cation of the Measures of the Congress” in response to Seabury’s words, and Seabury then rebutted it. Hamilton shot back with “The Farmer Refuted,” an eighty-page essay published in 1775. “I am neither merchant, nor farmer,” he wrote.