David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

I kept my gaze hard and cold. “You cannot know what it is like to be labeled a traitor, and so you cannot understand why I want it left alone.”

“I think I understand,” said Lavien. “You have proclaimed your innocence, and I believe you. That means there can be only one reason you do not wish the past unearthed.”

“And why is that?” I asked, though I wished I hadn’t.

“Because you believe your friend, Captain Fleet, was indeed a traitor. He, your best friend, father of the lady who is now Cynthia Pearson, whom you intended to marry-it was he who sold secrets to the British. That is what you know-or what you believe. It is a great and noble secret that allows you to revel in your own suffering, for each time someone marks you as a traitor, you know that you bear this burden for love-not once but twice.”

It is not an easy thing to be laid bare in this way by a man who is little better than a stranger, a stranger to whom you are indebted and whom you have wronged. He had seen things as they really were, and had done it at once.

“You must let it alone,” I told him. “When Fleet died, the world chose to forget his part in these crimes. His name was allowed to be spoken without taint.”

“You allow your name to remained blackened for her sake?” he asked.

I nodded. “For her, and for Fleet. I do not say he was guilty, but if he was, it was trivial. Empty secrets were sold-lies and worthless information only. Whatever the truth, Fleet was a good man, a hero who did a thousand courageous things for his country. I’ll not have it said about him now that he was a traitor.”

“It is said about you.”

“I am here to defend myself. He is not.” I stood up. “I have asked you to leave this alone. I will say no more of it.”

“Sit down, Captain. I am sorry if you feel imposed upon, and I shall heed your words.”

I sat. I wanted to press him into more vigorously worded promises but at this point I observed Leonidas enter the tavern. I waved him over, and he called for bread, butter, and small beer. I finished my ale and called for another.

After a moment, Lavien excused himself, saying he had things to do, and wished me good luck with Hamilton. He and Leonidas shook hands, and I watched the little man leave. Once he was gone, I informed Leonidas of all that had happened since I last saw him-being cast out by Mrs. Deisher, the note from Cynthia, and the encounter with the Irishman.

Leonidas listened, nodded, but said little. Finally, he commented upon the most practical of matters. “What shall you do about lodgings?”

“I have not yet made a determination on that.”

“Do not think you will come live with me. I’ll not have it.”

“It would only be for a few days.”

“No.”

“It is really unkind,” I said. “I would not have thought you so unkind.”

“I must have a place that is mine.”

“And I must have a place,” I said.

“That is your business and none of mine. However, if you would be so good as to free me from bondage, as you promised to do, I would happily lend you the money to get your things out of surety and to rent a new set of rooms.”

“Why, that is the most villainous blackmail I have ever heard,” said I.

“Ethan, do you mean to hold me forever? You are not a man to keep a slave, and I am not a man to be one. I know not what you mean by it. You agreed to free me when I turned twenty-one, which was six months ago.”

“I agreed to free you when you were twenty-one. I didn’t mention anything about the specific moment of that year. I wish you would attempt to be a little patient, Leonidas. All this casting about for favors does not become you.”

I could not free him. That was what he did not know and could not understand, though the reason would have surprised him. I could not free him because he was already a free man. I’d simply neglected to inform him.

It was really no more than a curious series of events. Once Dorland began stalking me, I grew concerned for Leonidas’s future. I owed him his freedom and thought it best to secure it at once. Accordingly, I’d gone to a lawyer and paid ten dollars to have the appropriate papers drawn up, freeing him not simply upon my death but immediately and irrevocably. As I sat across from him, Leonidas had been a free man for nearly a week.

If Dorland had killed me, he would have found out then. He was to be freed in my will, but I arranged with the lawyer to contact Leonidas and make sure he knew I had freed him before I died. I did not die, and I surely would have mentioned all of this to him, but then I’d heard from Cynthia, and suddenly there were more complicated issues requiring my attention.

Were I to tell Leonidas that he was free, he would likely continue to help me, but perhaps he would not. There was so much about his life I did not know. I should have liked to have taken the chance, and if it were merely my life, my happiness, in the balance, I would have done so. I would not take that chance when Cynthia Pearson told me she was in danger. Leonidas would have to believe himself a slave for a few more days-or weeks.

Do not think this decision was an easy one. I could imagine the joy of leaping up there in that tavern and informing him that I had already freed him and required no more of his pestering to do what was right. But as much as I yearned to be open with him on this matter, I dared not. I therefore sacrificed not only the immediate relation of the news of his liberty but my own chances for obtaining a place to live.

We walked to the offices of the Treasury upon Third Street at the corner of Walnut. Leonidas was clearly still harboring resentment over our conversation, but my thoughts were already elsewhere. All around us hurried clusters of men who appeared too big for their suits. Walnut Street was the center of finance in Philadelphia, and of late it had been a place where clever and ruthless men could easily fatten themselves a little further.

Hamilton had launched his bank the previous summer, using an ingenious system of scrip-certificates that stood not for bank shares but for the opportunity to purchase those shares. Scrip holders could later, on a series of four predetermined quarterly dates, buy actual bank shares, using cash for half the payments and already-circulating government issues for the other half. These issues-six percent government loans-had been performing poorly in the markets, attracting little interest, so Hamilton’s method promoted trade in the six percents, since scrip holders needed to acquire them in order to exchange their scrip for full ownership of the bank shares. In addition to strengthening a market for already existing government issues, Hamilton’s scheme created a frenzy for the new Bank of the United States shares; the act of delaying gratification fueled the mania, and in a matter of weeks speculators were earning two or three times on their investment. Then, just as manically as the price soared, it crashed to earth, producing a panic. Hamilton had saved his bank only by sending his agents to the major trading cities- New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Charleston, as well as here in Philadelphia -to buy up scrip and settle the market. Many unwary investors lost everything they had, but clever men made themselves richer.

No harm done, one might say, but there were those who thought otherwise. Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State and Hamilton ’s great enemy, argued that this mania proved the bank was a destructive force. Jefferson and his republican followers believed that the true center of American power must be agriculture. A national bank would empower merchants and traders and turn the nation into a copy of Britain -that is, a sink of corruption. I’d been inclined to side with the Jeffersonians on this point, though in truth I’d not given things too much thought. I merely chose to be opposed to anything that Hamilton desired.