About
Jenn Bregman is a UCLA Law graduate and former Big Law litigator who practiced both in Los Angeles and on Wall Street in New York City where she worked on some of the most notorious financial crimes cases of our time. Published in the UCLA Law Review, she loves to travel, ski, run marathons, scuba dive, and hike giant mountains, having summited 14,265 foot Quandary Peak, “reverse summited” the Grand Canyon, and thru-hiked from Crested Butte to Aspen. She lives in Colorado with her family and sweet Havanese dog Babalu.
The Last Hamilton Author’s Note
I have been fascinated by the Founding Fathers and Mothers for almost as long as I can remember. Why they did what they did. It seemed like they had so much to lose and so little to gain. Most were relatively well off and, while oppressed under the British system, were still getting by just fine. Why did they risk it all? As Benjamin Franklin aptly put it at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: “We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
Were they so different from us? Were they so much better?
Like most of us, I was first introduced to the Founding Fathers in school. Think George Washington and the mutilated cherry tree. Through the years, pieces of Thomas Jefferson, Martha Washington, James Madison, John Adams, and Abigail Adams, among others, found their way into my education. Learning about Hamilton in school, I was impressed by his hard scrabble background, and what he had accomplished. While living in NYC for many years and working as a lawyer in finance, I had run across him on various occasions. Literally running by his statue on the Eastside in Central Park, seeing his grave at Trinity Church, visiting The Hamilton Grange, and understanding the history of our banking system. But while reading Ron Chernow’s iconic Alexander Hamilton fully introduced me to the times and the man, I wasn’t emotionally swept up until I read that both Alexander and his son Philip were shot at the same Dueling Grounds, with the same pistols, and in the same place on their bodies (just over their right hip), that something clicked. Legacy and history, the sins of the father, fate, destiny—all these mystical whispers took flight. There was something mysterious here. More than could be explained with reason and logic. Perhaps something deeper and more profound. The more I delved, the more I understood that the study of Hamilton is a study of humanness. He was flawed and imperfect just as all the Founders were, some quite a mess, and yet they did something amazing. How did they do it? What made them do it? How did they succeed, and can we find a way to succeed too?
Can we find a way to rise up again?
The Last Hamilton answers this question.
