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The bastard was prolific, especially considering the fact that he was also busy being a war hero, attending the Constitutional Convention, founding the US Treasury and Coast Guard, creating the New York Post, practicing law, making eight babies, and even keeping a little something-something on the side. I doubt he suspected it would be Vice President Burr’s bullet that would finally rob him of his language and his life, but having repeatedly survived harrowing circumstances (poverty, disease, hurricane, war) in his youth, this “bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman,” as Lin-Manuel Miranda puts it in Hamilton, did write with a sense of urgency, and even desperation, akin to possession. Of course - and this is a spoiler alert only if you failed eighth grade history - the victim of America’s most infamous political feud was indeed writing against a tragic deadline. “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” his nemesis Aaron Burr asks the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury over a calypso rhythm as swift and sinuous as the flow of Alexander Hamilton’s ink. THERE’S A SCENE in the musical Hamilton (a show now playing on Broadway, perhaps you’ve heard of it) where the titular character is hunched over his desk, doing one of the things he does best: writing.