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Act 2: What’d I Miss
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hamilton, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Collaboration, Disagreement, and Democracy
Stories vs. History
Ambition and Mortality
Immigration and Diversity of Influence
Honor
Summary
Analysis
Hamilton and Jefferson face off about whether or not to create a national bank. Washington moderates the debate. Jefferson chastises Hamilton for moving money around, claiming that “in Virginia, we plant seeds in the ground. We create.” Hamilton retorts, “keep ranting / we know who’s really doing the planting.”
In this cabinet debate, modeled after a rap battle, Hamilton turns Jefferson’s words and ideas against him. Hamilton’s reference to “planting” is also the show’s way of addressing that Jefferson, despite writing the Declaration of Independence, was a prominent slaveholder. A lyric in “What’d I Miss?” even hints at his affair with Sally Hemings, an enslaved Black woman at his estate in Monticello.
Themes
Hamilton and Jefferson continue to trade barbs. When things get a little too heated (“turn around, bend over / I’ll show you where my shoe fits”), Washington shuts the battle down.
Washington knows that there is value to debate, but only up to a point: go too far, and animosity will get in the way of real governance.
Themes
Hamilton is frustrated that Jefferson and Madison are ganging up on him, but Washington is firm that the only way to create a national bank is to get Congress to vote on it (“winning was easy, young man. Governing’s harder”). Hamilton worries that Madison will block his proposal—and worse still, that if his proposal fails, he may be ousted as Secretary of the Treasury.
Just as Washington urged Hamilton to remember that “dying is easy” but “living is harder,” he now pushes the younger man to see that ambition is not the same as success. In other words, Hamilton cannot execute his ideas by himself—he will need other people, other votes, in order to turn his ideas to reality.
Themes
