David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

“Your vision of grandeur is too great for small men,” I told him one day. “In any glorious enterprise, in any historic rise to power, there must be men who suffer for the greater good. If you are to show this country, this world, your vision of what financial greatness can be, are you to stop because some lesser men might get hurt? Perhaps on the surface such a sacrifice might seem noble, but if you are truly willing to turn away from your destiny because it makes you a little uneasy, it is cowardly and selfish-and I know you are not those things.”

He nodded. “You are very wise.”

“And once you have achieved your final victory, you can be generous to those who were hurt because they were foolish enough to lie down where you needed to step.”

“It is true,” he said. “I can make amends later.”

I felt nothing but contempt for him as he planned to help later those he harmed now, but I could also not help but wonder if I was any better than he. After all, was I not willing to let Cynthia Pearson suffer now and help her at some future date?

In the meantime, Duer might have struggled with his feelings of guilt, but he also laughed at men like Pearson, men who were ruined and did not know it. Yet, Duer was ruined too, and he did not know it either. He owned more and more six percent issues, but he had borrowed far more than their value, and he continued to borrow. He borrowed from the banks, and when they would give him no more, he borrowed from the moneylenders. When they would give him no more, he turned to the poor and the desperate.

“It’s really quite marvelous,” he said. “I cannot gain control of the six percents or the banks without ready money, so where is it to come from? Why, now I borrow from little people-tradesmen and shopkeepers and cart men. A few dollars here and there for a promise of absurd interest payments. I shall never make good, but that is no matter. Once I have the banks, there will be no one to hold me to account. They may complain about their interest, but it is of no matter. And I am not a bad man, you know. I shall give them back what they lent me, but no more than that, I think.”

This was too much. It was one thing to cheat speculators, men who knew they must go into trade with their eyes open. If they were too foolish to see for themselves what Duer did, they had no one but themselves to blame. They must be devoured by the beast they hoped to ride. But now for him to turn his sights on the laboring poor, to squeeze their pennies out of them so he could keep his operations afloat? It was too much.

“There must be some alternative,” I said.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” he said. “I have thought it through carefully.”

“When you own the economy, the workingmen and women of the city cannot be hobbled with debt. They will be a drag upon everything.”

“You worry too much, my dear,” he said. “And you are all goodness, which I love. But you must trust me on this. The poor shall not miss their pennies, and there are always more where their first came from. They must work a little harder is all.”

I smiled at him to show him my approbation. At what point, I wondered, does silence become complicity? At what point must the enemy of evil take responsibility for the harm done in the fight against evil? I did not know, and I dared not think of it. I would only think of poor Ethan Saunders, whom I had turned into my puppet. He would act as I wished, never knowing it was I who wished it, and he would make certain that Duer failed.

It was during this trip to New York that Mr. Pearson himself came to visit us while we sat in the parlor of my boardinghouse. I do not think he knew I was with Duer when he arrived and he seemed surprised, perhaps even disappointed, to see him. In Pearson’s mind, he could trust me entirely, but Duer was always an object of suspicion-as he should have been. Duer, after all, was an untrustworthy man.

I think my landlady must not have told Pearson I had company, for he strode into the room manfully, but on seeing Duer begin to rise his body slackened. If I had not been watching him closely, measuring any sign of disposition-for it was now how I watched everyone-I might not have seen it, but there it was. The corners of his mouth twisted, his shoulders drooped, his arms dropped slightly, and he bent just a little at the knees.

He and Duer greeted one another-Pearson’s enormous hand circling Duer’s tiny one-but his eyes were upon me. There was something pleading there, but I could not tell what he wished from me. At first I believed he wanted me to dismiss Duer, but I soon decided it must be something else. I think even he, himself, could not have said what he wanted, but he somehow believed I would be able to provide it.

“What brings you to New York?” asked Duer. Pearson was, to his core, a Philadelphia man, and I, certainly, had not known him to travel to other cities. More to the point, I believed Duer considered me, when we were in New York, his exclusively. He did not like to share me, and he would have resented doing so with someone so beneath him as Pearson-a man ruined in everything but his understanding of his ruin.

The men returned to their seats, and Pearson brushed at his breeches. It seemed to be a nervous compulsion rather than a response to any dirt from the streets. “I am having difficulties in Philadelphia.”

I spoke to take charge of the conversation for him, to make him believe I was attempting to mind his interests. “What has happened, sir? Is something wrong?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” he snapped, though not at me. He was looking directly at Duer. “I have sold off nearly everything I own. I have done everything you asked me to do, and I am nearly a hundred thousand dollars in debt. All I have to my name are these blasted four percent securities, and they lose value every day. I would have suspected something ill on your part long ago had there not been others buying them up, but this might have been only some other fools following your lead. They are worthless. I might as well use them to kindle my fires, for all they are worth. And the men I speak to-they say they will never again rise in value-that they long ago reached an unrealistic peak.”

Duer smiled. “Jack, we’ve talked about this. The four percents are nothing. You must regard them as nothing. Your debt is nothing. It shall be paid back.”

“It must be paid back now, Duer. You promised me that if I did as you asked, you would cover my losses. I’ve sold my properties. I’ve borrowed money from the Bank of the United States.”

“And all will be made easy,” said Duer, “but you know we must wait.”

Pearson rose to his feet. “There is no we, Duer. It is I who wait.”

I rose too and put a hand upon Pearson’s wrist. “I know a man such as you, who honors his name in the world of business, must hate to owe what you cannot pay, but you understand that the money is spoken for. Mr. Duer intends to use it to gain control of the Million Bank. Once that bank is launched, he shall take the Bank of the United States. It is hard, but you must be patient.”

He bit his lip like a child and shook his head, but he sat again, allowing me to do the same. “It is not about patience,” he said. “My creditors are after me. I’ve left Philadelphia because Philadelphia is too hot.”

Duer laughed. “That is nothing,” he said. “Send a list of these creditors to my man Whippo. I shall dispatch notes upon the next express explaining that I vouch for you and give my word that you shall make good within the quarter. No one will trouble you.”

It was true enough. A note like that from William Duer was almost specie itself. One more set of debts that would ruin him.

“That answers well enough for the baker and the grocer and the tailor,” said Pearson. “I don’t think it shall satisfy Hamilton.”