Back in April I wrote in my weekly column about the history in the smash musical Hamilton.  In case you missed it, here it is.

Last week [April 18] was the anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride.  Few events in American history have as much drama his racing through the night to warn colonists that British soldiers were on the way.  Much of our romantic interpretation of it comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1860 poem that begins with the famous couplet “Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.”  Today, critics note that it’s a farrago of historical inaccuracies, but it transformed Revere into an American icon.

Also last week, the current Broadway sensation “Hamilton” added a Pulitzer Prize to its numerous accolades. As a historian I’m often asked how accurate “Hamilton” is. Is it good history?

The musical is based on historian Ron Chernow’s excellent biography of Alexander Hamilton which Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Hamilton’s” creator, read on vacation and by which he was immediately captivated. It helped cure my initial skepticism to learn how determined Miranda said he was to get the history right.

And he largely has. Among many other things, it accurately portrays the centrality of George Washington, most of the details of Hamilton’s financial plans, and his work on the Federalist Papers. Many of the songs directly quote his letters. It’s both artistic and accurate to have Washington explain his decision to retire from the Presidency by singing “If I say goodbye, the nation learns to move on/ it outlives me when I’m gone.” It’s also accurate to have King George III doubt someone would willingly step away from power. “I wasn’t aware that was something a person could do,” he sings in one of his three hilarious songs.

But there are factual errors, too. It implies that Washington’s Farewell Address and Thomas Jefferson’s retirement from Washington’s cabinet are much closer than they are. It’s also wrong in saying that President John Adams fired Hamilton. Do these things matter?  On a test, yes. Here, not so much. It’s not the facts that make the musical work so well.  It’s the truth behind the story.

But some critics are determined to rake it over the coals not just for factual inaccuracies but because it doesn’t square with current political ideas. One writer complains that Hamilton’s policies “were not necessarily as in tune with contemporary progressive values as audiences leaving the theater might assume.” After having listened to the soundtrack constantly over the past weeks I can say there are few things apart from his opposition to slavery that would give any audience reason to assume that he was “progressive,” unless you define progressives only by their desire to have a strong national government. (Or unless you just assume that any story of an immigrant these would be a progressive parable.)

Another criticizes the play for not including identifiable African-American roles (as opposed to African-Americans playing the all main historical parts), while another grouses that the play glorifies Hamilton, who “was more a man for the 1 percent than the 99 percent.”

David Marcus’s essay “Hamilton haters are why we can’t have nice things” offers the best response I’ve seen to this. In our relentlessly politicized culture, some demand “works of art must not merely be entertaining and insightful, they must be constantly investigated…to find the ways they cross the boundaries of political correctness.” But in reality the “best you can hope for from historical art is that it will develop a framework and spur an interest in a subject that leads audiences to deeper learning.”

This is just what “Hamilton” does, and it’s the best thing that a study of history, whether in the form of art or not, can achieve.