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I thought the same when I saw it in SF, with just one nagging annoyance - the mentions of racial justice felt a bit... token. Abolitionism is mentioned in passing a few times (e.g. Laurens "redefining bravery"), but never really got the spotlight.

I later discovered that there was a third cabinet battle, which was cut from the final script. You can hear a demo of it on the Hamilton Mixtape album. It features the main cast discussing a letter from Ben Franklin asking for slavery to be abolished. On the one hand, I can see why it was cut - 3 might be too many cabinet meetings - but it adds so much to the thematic tragedy to have Hamilton quietly give up his morals for practicality. He starts act 2 with his youth, his career, his family, and his idealism; by the end, he loses the first three, and the foreshadowing was there for him to lose the fourth, but it doesn't have the payoff.




I feel like part of the issue was that the question of slavery just wasn't that important to Hamilton, was it? So tacking it in may have been too fake.




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