David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

I hardly heard the rest, for I wandered from the shop. Why had Leonidas done these things? There could be no other explanation but that he was attempting, by various means, to manipulate me for Joan Maycott. I would either collapse into drunkenness or drop everything to chase the Pearsons to Pittsburgh. All of which meant I would not do what I had threatened in public to do-go to New York and confront Duer.

Now I understood everything, or at least enough. I understood why Leonidas had fled once he learned of his freedom; he could not bear to betray me once he learned I had not betrayed him. I understood why he had been so cruel to me when I visited him at his home-there could be no friendship between us while he served my enemies. Most of all, I understood how much I had been manipulated-how much we all had.

The ground was icy, and the sun had by now set, casting the city in darkness. Still, I ran. I ran past pedestrians and pigs and cows and carts and cart men who shouted at me to watch where I went. I was called a brute and a damned fool, but I did not care. I ran until I reached Lavien’s door, and I pounded and pounded and pounded until the miserable old woman answered and I pushed past her at once without a word.

Lavien sat at dinner with his wife and children and looked up at me in alarm.

“We must go,” I said. “We must go to New York. Now, at once.”

He rose. “What has happened?”

“The whole time we were wrong. We thought to prevent the collapse of the bank, but we have done everything conceivable to bring about the bank’s destruction. It wasn’t Duer, it was us. We are the plot against the bank.”

He set down his knife. “What are you talking about?”

“We were so convinced that Duer was the danger that we did not see the obvious truth. It is Duer’s failure that will destroy the bank. That is why they don’t want me to go to New York. They don’t want me to see Duer, to understand how much in debt he is, how precarious is his situation. If he goes bankrupt, he could well bring the country with him.”

Lavien remained still for a moment. Then he said, “We must see Hamilton.”

Eliza Hamilton made us tea while I sat in Hamilton’s study. He remained impassive while he listened to us. Only a tapping foot gave away his agitation. I explained to him what I had concluded, and why I had concluded it. He understood. He insisted I wait, however. The night was too dark to ride out now, the roads too covered in snow. I would leave, I said, an hour before dawn, and ride by the lights of the city until the sun rose. Hamilton then began to write out another letter, this one for Duer.

“I am explaining all to him,” he said. “I hope to appeal to his better nature. You must do the same. You must augment this letter as best you can, but you must convince him to reverse course. He will have to sell what he can, clear out what debt he can. He will have to sacrifice his dreams of conquest in exchange for an opportunity to avoid complete ruin and ignominy.”

“I cannot imagine Duer accepting such a trade,” I said.

He nodded, his quill still making its methodical way across his heavy sheet of paper. “Neither can I. Nevertheless, it is the choice he will have to make. He must understand the consequences of ruin. He cannot be allowed to be exposed as a bankrupt. He cannot allow the public to know of his debts. If that happens, if he is exposed, he is ruined, and that will produce a chain of events so devastating I cannot endure to think of it. England survived its South Sea Bubble because it was an old and large and entrenched economy, but France, where modern finance was new, never recovered from its simultaneous Mississippi Bubble. If Duer is exposed, we will be lucky to-like France-see no more than our economy ruined and our people pauperized. Banks will fail, so merchants will fail, and then farms. And then starvation. And that is the best we can hope for. I dare not think of how much worse it could become, but the resulting turmoil could put an end to our system of governance.”

He paused in his writing.

I had been staring at the fire, thinking of all those with whom I now knew Leonidas to be involved, but most of all Joan Maycott. I knew she hated Hamilton and had some grievance with Duer, but could this be what she wished? Could that lady and her whiskey-smelling associates truly wish to see the destruction of American republicanism in its infancy?

“You will have to offer him something if he is to agree,” I said. “Duer never acts, not even to save himself, if he cannot see something shining and glittering at the end of it. You may have to promise him some kind of quiet bribe, money with which to live when all is settled.”

Hamilton hastily scratched a few words onto the page and then began to blot. “No. I cannot have it be said, when all is finished, that I paid this man a reward for his work of nearly destroying the nation. Even if Duer understands what he has done to himself, and even if he understands that a quiet reversal is his only hope, he will later feel resentment. He will tell himself he was tricked and bullied into giving up his scheme, and so he will complain of it to all who will listen. I cannot have Jefferson’s republican faction learning that, in essence, I’ve bribed a scoundrel for nearly ruining the nation.” He now looked at Lavien. “You will have to make certain he agrees to everything. You understand me.”

Lavien nodded. “He will agree.”

I understood their meaning. “You don’t think the Jeffersonians will use it against you if you start breaking Duer’s fingers?”

“They will use it against me if I have boiled beef for my dinner,” Hamilton said. “What matters is the force of their argument. The populace will forgive a politician who uses rough means to accomplish a good end. They will never forgive a man who makes secret payments to a villain.”

When the letter was dry, he folded it, placed it in an envelope, and handed it to me along with a letter of credit from the government of the United States. He said I was to do what I must-trade horses, buy horses, it did not matter. Spend any amount to get to New York with all due haste.

“But keep your receipts,” he added, “so the ledgers will balance.”

Even in the midst of crisis, he could not help being himself.

March 1792

Things began to happen not precisely quickly, for events were spread out over several weeks, but certainly with a kind of consistency that, looked at later with the eye of history, would certainly give the impression of rapidity. Duer attempted to proceed with his plan to control six percent securities, but his failure with the Million Bank was a public setback. News spread that Duer’s schemes had failed him, and so finally there was tarnish upon his name.

Soon thereafter the Bank of the United States began to restrict credit, calling in loans, including a number belonging to Duer that were difficult, if not impossible for him to meet. Then the last blow was struck. The Treasury Department itself had conducted an inquiry into Duer’s actions on the old Treasury Board-the ones I had myself discovered-and found the $236,000 he had illegally appropriated. Duer objected and wrote to Hamilton, begging forbearance, but these were only delaying tactics, and now it was but a matter of waiting for the inevitable.

The great speculator no longer made appearances at the Merchants’ Coffeehouse. He could ask none of his agents to do his bidding. All either faced their own ruin or would not be touched by Duer’s new ignominy. Instead, he barricaded himself in his house in Greenwich Village and, I could only imagine, attempted to convince himself that even the most severe of storms would, in the end, pass. A man who had endured as much as he would endure this.