Video link: https://youtu.be/fMCKhxv1PdM
The musical starts with the song Alexander Hamilton - an energizing start describing the past of, well, Alexander Hamilton. In this song, we get a glimpse into his childhood life.
Hamilton was born in the Caribbean in either 1755 or 1757 (historical documents weren't able to confirm). 10 years later, his father abandoned the family because of debt, as seen in the line "When he was ten, his father split, full of it, debt-ridden...". This is also why he's referred to as "The 10 dollar Founding Father without a father", which is a little word play by Lin Manuel Miranda to describe the parenthood of the face on the U.S 10 dollar bill, Hamilton.
Picture of modern day 10 dollar bill with Hamilton's face on it
Soon after, his mother died of an illness, and Hamilton moved in with his cousin, who later committed suicide. At this point, he was left all alone, and he realized he could only depend on himself to get through his life. He spent all his spare time reading to become smarter, and even from a young age, he was regarded as a genius, so much, that Burr exclaimed, "there would have been nothing left to do for someone less astute".
He was also a clerk at the import-export trading charter in his town starting at the age of 14. Many of the imports and exports included sugar and slaves - sugar for Europeans and slaves for colonists in the West Indies and Southern America. African slaves at that time was widely popular due to their reliability and obedience, and anti-slavery advocates, called abolitionists, numbered few. Hamilton's abolitionist views later in life most likely stemmed from his first-hand experience seeing the horrible treatment of slaves.
Illustration of a typical slave trading ship - slaves are often mistreated on these ships and many die before reaching America
In 1772, a hurricane hit his town and "our man saw his future drip, dripping down the drain/Put a pencil to his temple, connected it to his brain/And he wrote his first refrain, a testament to his pain". These lines refer to Hamilton writing down the effects of the hurricane on his life in a letter, which he sent to the Royal Danish American Gazette. It was published anonymously, and in response to the letter, residents of his town gathered money to send Hamilton to America for better education.
The bulk of the latter half of the song is talking about Hamilton's arrival to America. New York, a coastal city situated by the North Atlantic Ocean, at that time was a cultural hub, with immigrants coming from all over the world. These immigrants typically came from Europe seeking better economic opportunities and freedom from religious persecution, but there are immigrants from the Caribbean as well, like Hamilton. This is where we get the lines "In New York, you can be a new man" and "Another immigrant/Comin' up from the bottom", which references that immigrants can start a new life not just in New York, but America as a whole, because of how young the colony (soon to be country) is and how many opportunities there are.
Illustration of New York in the late 1700s
Finally, from this song we can also get a picture of Hamilton's personality. He is not only incredibly smart, but also driven and always has a curiosity to learn. We are introduced to 2 of his catchphrases: "Just you wait" and "There's a million things I haven't done". This shows his eager nature to always strive for more, which would work both in favor of and against him later in history and the musical.