My review of David Liss's The Whiskey Rebels is up today on Booksquawk!  This is the only book by Liss I've read so far, but he seems to have carved out a peculiar niche for himself:  historical thrillers based on little guys getting involved in government/Big Business financial policies.  The interesting thing about TWR (this isn't really a spoiler -- or if it is, along the lines of what you'd encounter on the back cover anyway) is that one of the main characters is a casualty of said financial policies (my darling Hamilton's).  Yes, Joan survives (and yes, she eventually prospers, in a gross material sense, due to the same policies), but the destruction of her soul is absolutely, unavoidably linked to the brand-new federal government's line of action (and inaction).

No, no, that isn't the interesting part (well, it's interesting in a thriller sense, of course, people suffering and whatnot):  the interesting part is that, as sympathetic as she is (until she goes BAD), she's portrayed as the human face of a necessary sacrifice.  There wasn't a whole whomping lot Hamilton could have done other than have SOME tax SOMEWHERE; the government had to be funded (unless it were to "live like the chameleon, upon air," to quote an irritated Joseph Plumb Martin, referring to his seven years in the Continental Army without being paid EVER...oh, except once by a visiting French officer who, appalled at this treatment of the troops, dug some money out of his own pocket).  And as for policing the frontier -- well, the yet-mostly-unfunded government simply lacked the ability to do so.

"The greater good" -- even when it is that, and not merely venal acquisitiveness (as seems to be the case in some of the financial...excitements...in Liss's other books) can be pretty hard to swallow when you personally are relegated to the "lesser losses."
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Even as a young boy, Alexander Hamilton always wanted a war.  A war was almost the only path open to him for distinction, given the miserable ignominy of his birth and his circumstances (too dire to go into in a brief post).  He also always wanted to found an empire, which he saw as the path to eternal fame.

But these were far from his only motivations; and although he admired England's government enormously, and thought that Americans were entirely too subservient to the whims of the common people (ouch!), his broad-mindedness, humanism, and willingness to slap around sacred cows are frequently overlooked.  It's his own fault, really; he talked and wrote incessantly, and he seemed blissfully immune to the realization that, say, a four-hour harangue filled with contemptuous rhetoric might actually annoy people every now and then and get them to turn off their ears.

So, plenty of people thought Hamilton was bold enough personally (in fact, staggeringly presumptuous).  But the boldness of his thinking...this they underestimated.  He still gets labeled a conservative for his refusal to reject England and everything about her after the war.  In fact, his views were a mix of what we would call today conservative and liberal (also true of Jefferson).  Take this tidbit from The Federalist Papers:

The world may politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts, each having a distinct set of interests.  Unhappily for the other three, Europe, by her arms and by her negotiations, by force and by fraud, has, in different degrees, extended her dominion over them all.  Africa, Asia, and America, have successively felt her domination.  The superiority she has long maintained has tempted her to plume herself as the Mistress of the World, and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit.  Men admired as profound philosophers have, in direct terms, attributed to her inhabitants a physical superiority, and have gravely asserted that all animals, and with them the human species, degenerate in America--that even dogs cease to bark after having breathed awhile in our atmosphere. 

Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Europeans.  It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach that assuming brother, moderation.

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