The Whiskey Rebels

David Liss’s historical fiction novel The Whiskey Rebels was inspired by the short-lived 1974 Whiskey Rebellion, which occurred in the newly-formed United States. Published in 2008, the book tells the story of two people who find themselves on opposing sides of the divide between the financiers led by Alexander Hamilton and the whiskey barons operating on the Western frontier of the young nation. Featuring cameos from many historical figures of the time, the novel mixes thriller-like adventure with explanations of the economics of speculation and the first national bank.

The historical context that opens the novel revolves around the central conflict between founding fathers Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. In 1791, Hamilton establishes the Bank of the United States, a central bank that he hopes will create a strong credit system to prop up a country rebuilding after the revolution. Meanwhile, Jefferson strongly opposes the idea of concentrating large amounts of money—or power—in the hands of speculators. He worries that they’ll be able to sucker less knowledgeable investors.

The Whiskey Rebels is split into two separate story lines that eventually merge. In alternating chapters that are narrated in the first person, we learn about the lives of Ethan Saunders and Joan Maycott and the way in which both eventually find themselves in Philadelphia during the climactic events leading to the revolt.



During the American Revolutionary War, Ethan Saunders was one the most skillful spies in General George Washington’s secret service. But then, after an operation that went awry and ended in the death of his partner, he was falsely accused of treason and thrown out of the army in disgrace. This failure then led his fiancée, Cynthia Fleet, to leave him for another man. Now, in 1791, he is a borderline degenerate drunk hanging around every watering hole in the nation’s capital, Philadelphia. Sometimes he steals to get by, but he is still handsome and charming enough to constantly seduce the willing wives of less exciting men. His only company is his brave and reliable slave, Leonidas, whom Ethan won in a card game.

However, in 1792, as Ethan is about to hit rock bottom, the lost love of his life, now named Cynthia Pearson, recruits him to find her missing husband. Ethan uncovers the sad story of Cynthia’s marriage: Pearson isn’t just a cruel and manipulative speculator but is a domestic abuser as well. The more Ethan researches where the man could have gone, the more he pieces together a plot to take over the bank created by Hamilton. Ethan is faced with a dilemma since helping Hamilton would mean working for a man he has hated for a long time.

We meet Joan in 1781, when she is still an unmarried teenager named Joan Claybrook. Growing up on a farm in Albany, New York, the 17-year-old is deeply intelligent and self-taught, and she aspires to write the first world-class American novel. A few years later, she marries Andrew Maycott, also a veteran of the Revolutionary War. Because the fledging government of the U.S. isn’t able to pay soldiers for their trouble, the solution is to offer veterans the chance to homestead on the frontier by giving them free land. Joan and Andrew decide to risk everything and move to the wild outpost of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.



Frontier life is extremely physically demanding and mentally taxing, even before the Maycotts realize that they’ve been tricked into becoming tenant farmers rather than land owners. Despite this, the Maycotts make a solid go of it. Eventually, they seem to have found the answer: Andrew invents a new way to distill whiskey for less work and greater profit.

The problem is that in entering the whiskey industry and becoming successful, the Maycotts unwittingly solve a problem that has been troubling Alexander Hamilton. His Assistant Secretary, the real-life figure William Duer, has been speculating so recklessly and trying to corner the whiskey market in an attempt to gain control of the National Bank that when his investments fail, he sparks a financial panic—the Panic of 1792—and the catastrophic collapse of the emerging stock market of the time. In order to prop up the national bank during this financial crisis, Hamilton decides to tax whiskey producers in Western Pennsylvania.

When Andrew confronts the men who deceived him, he is killed in the resulting fighting and Joan is left homeless after her house is burned down. Joan, and a small group of whiskey rebels including the poet Skye, sets out to avenge those who have wronged her, leaving Pittsburgh for Philadelphia.



As Ethan and Joan try to manipulate events on their sides of the conflict, the reader gets to see other historical figures like the frontiersman Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Jefferson partisan and writer Philip Freneau, the beautiful socialite Anne Bingham who convinced Jefferson to create the Bill of Rights, and Maria and James Reynolds who seduced and then blackmailed Hamilton.

When Ethan and Joan’s paths cross, they meet to discuss the powerful people whose actions are affecting their lives: Hamilton and Duer. Ethan can see the difference between the two men. Hamilton is trying to set up the bank as an insurance policy for the U.S., while Duer is trying to control it to enrich himself and his cronies. But for Joan, any attempt to increase federal power at the expense of private citizens’ incomes, such as through taxes, is wrong. In the process, Ethan learns about the plans of the whiskey rebel gang.

Joan kidnaps Ethan in order to prevent him from telling Hamilton what he has learned. But with the help of Leonidas and Lavien, a Jewish man who fights like a ninja, Ethan escapes and is able to pass along a message that temporarily stops the whiskey rebels. Since the novel ends in 1792, it doesn’t discuss the actual Whiskey Rebellion that took place in 1794. Nevertheless, Duer is stopped, and the Bank, as well as the country’s economy, are saved.



The novel delivers happy endings for everyone. After a conversation with Lavien and his wife, Ethan decides to stop being a drunken self-pitying wastrel and eventually reunites with Cynthia. Meanwhile, Joan ends up with Skye, the whiskey rebel and writer who accompanied her on her quest.