David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

“Why did you not say so before?” he asked me.

“Because you annoyed me,” I told him. “You threatened violence, and then you performed violence. I saw no reason to put you at your ease, but I was wrong, for it harmed your wife, and she had done nothing to deserve it. I was foolish, and for that I am sorry.”

He now stepped even closer and gave me his hand. “I must thank you,” he said. “I wish you had told me sooner, but I cannot tell you the joy this news brings me now.”

We shook hands and Dorland rushed inside, no doubt to see his good lady and apologize in a thousand ways. I could only hope the woman was clever enough to hold her tongue and accept.

I turned to head back to my rooms to prepare to leave the coming morning on the express coach, which departed at 3 A.M. I now had a new dilemma to ponder on my voyage. Even before I had met Kyler Lavien, before I had troubled myself with William Duer, heard from Cynthia, or known of a plot brewing against the Bank of the United States-before all of this, Pearson had been plotting to kill me. It was time to discover why.

Summer 1791

Our little log cabin, despite the damage from the fire, fetched far more than I would have supposed. I was not surprised that Skye’s property, as prim and proper as he made it, brought in a fair amount, but by far the greatest wealth came from Dalton’s share-not his buildings, which were excellent, or his land improvements, which were significant, but his stills, which were, in the West, close in nature to a mint and, for practical purposes, a license to manufacture money. Certainly there were concerns about the new excise tax, but no one truly believed that the distant government in Philadelphia, particularly now that Tindall was gone, would be effective in collecting it or in otherwise hampering the production of Monongahela rye. To make certain, Brackenridge, at our behest, made it clear that whoever bought Dalton ’s land and stills would also buy his whiskey-making recipes.

I will not burden the reader with the details of our return to the East. The money we procured from this transaction did not make us rich, but it gave us what we would need for the scheme. Mr. Dalton spoke to five of his whiskey boys, the five he considered most trustworthy and intelligent, and given that they now had no means of earning their living, they were content to throw in their lot with us, particularly when we could offer them both money in hand now and the promise of more to come.

Thus it happened that we relocated to Philadelphia in the early summer of 1791, renting a small house in the unfashionable but neat Elfreth’s Alley. It was a narrow thing, with no room more than six feet in width, and it could have housed perhaps four comfortably, but we nine frontier folk made do. The men required a bit of abusing if I was to keep things neat. We could not have the neighbors gossiping about a woman living alone with eight men, so we put it about that Mr. Skye was my brother, and no more was said.

The arrangement did not last long. Our news in the West had been woefully behind the times, but soon after our arrival we were well acquainted with the doings of Hamilton ’s bank, which was producing a frenzy upon the streets of Philadelphia. Shares were slated to go on sale on July fourth-did not that alone show the contempt in which these men held American liberty?-and everywhere men schemed how they might best position themselves to obtain their portion. Bank stock was expected to soar almost immediately. It was a mania, a large-scale bribe with which Hamilton tricked people into funding his schemes, making them believe they would be rewarded for doing so.

These moneyed men thought themselves invincible, but I felt certain that destroying their bank would be none too difficult. I took some two weeks to study the matter, consult my books, and take long walks along the river, and so reformulated my plan. When all was in readiness, I presented it to my confederates, and though some finer points were unabsorbed, particularly by the whiskey boys, they agreed one and all.

In a few weeks’ time it became necessary to establish a second base of operations in New York, and though they were reluctant to leave me on my own, I sent Dalton and Jericho, along with two of his whiskey boys, Isaac and Jemmy. Much that would happen next would depend upon their efforts, and I did not think they could possibly succeed for the better part of a year, but within a few months my men in New York had laid plans for the bank’s destruction.

On July fourth, Hamilton ’s bank opened for business at Carpenters’ Hall, and before noon its allotment of shares had been sold out. Soon they were trading at 20, 30, and 40 percent above par. It was reckoned an enormous success by the Treasury Department. The Federalist newspapers crowed with triumph. The poor of the city grumbled and observed in the bank the mechanism of British oligarchy, but the rich refused to see how they made a darling of their own destruction.

In New York, Dalton and his boys had done their part; it was now time for me to do mine. Accordingly, I was obliged to spend more of our little stock of money than I should like upon clothing, but I needed to look every bit the lady. I rented my own rooms in a fashionable house on Second Street, and I began to appear in public. I promenaded about High Street and struck up conversations with other fashionable women. I appeared at concerts and performances, sometimes with a handsomely dressed Mr. Skye as my escort. I let it be known that I was a widow of means, and that was all the recommendation I needed to enter society.

As my men in New York discovered, William Duer had more than a few accomplices in Philadelphia. Some of them were known as his agents, and the world presumed they acted upon his orders. Others, however, were unknown. Should they be discovered, their usefulness would come to an end. Their primary responsibilities were no more than to set themselves up as speculators in their own right with their own reputations, and then, when called upon, to soften or freeze trade as Duer required.

If a speculator wished to get the better of William Duer, he need only discover the identities of those hidden agents, learn their orders, and proceed accordingly. Given Duer’s prominence, given that a sneeze or cough from his lips had the power to send prices soaring or plummeting, I was a bit surprised no one had previously attempted our scheme: to infiltrate the innermost sanctum of his operation and outwit him.

Yes, I suppose it required a singular focus to even think of such a thing, and the truth is, such an operation would be unlikely to yield significant results. Duer might be outwitted once and even twice, but upon the third occasion he would certainly begin to suspect betrayal. It required a unique set of circumstances, such as those belonging to our little band of whiskey rebels, that a single instance could suffice.

We waited until late August, when the worst of the convulsions from the bank launch had passed. On the morning in question, I arrived at the City Tavern in the company of Mr. Skye, whom the general company must have thought to be a trader. It was not unknown for speculators to bring a lady to their trading sessions, perhaps to impress someone of the delicate sex with the manly pursuit of financial chicanery. We took a seat at a table in the main room without attracting overmuch notice. We called for tea, and once we had been served, Skye slipped away, leaving me alone in this room full of panting, sweating, gesticulating men, too bent upon their own pursuits to notice that a lone lady sat among their number.