The Whiskey Rebel

Joan Maycott

January 1792

There are signs, irrefutable signs, that a moment in history is coming to a head. I was not aware that I knew to look for these signs, and yet, when one manifested, there could be no mistaking them. And so, when I was awakened in the darkest black of night by my landlady’s very agitated serving girl, who moaned, rather than said, that a man was below to visit me, I understood at once that events had accelerated. I had passed through a threshold from one era to another.

I dressed quickly and allowed the girl to lead me down the darkened staircase to the parlor, where candles had been lit hastily and where the fire from the evening before burned low. For all the girl’s rushed attention, the room was still thick with shadow, not at all the sort of place a widow ought to sit alone with a late-night caller. She seemed to know it, and once she showed me in, she lurked behind me, unwilling to leave me unless asked to do so. I, too, was not certain I wished to be left with my caller, but I had no choice and sent the girl away.

Pacing before the low fire, looking drunk and unkempt, was Mr. Pearson. His cravat was loose, his shirt torn and stained with wine, and the right sleeve of his jacket was tattered as though it had been caught in some brutal machine that had mysteriously spared his hand.

I could not pretend to be surprised to see him so. This was the day of the Million Bank launch, and all had gone far better than I could have imagined. I’d known of Ethan Saunders’s plans to sabotage Duer’s efforts to gain control of the bank and had done all I could to make certain he would succeed. Pearson, in his jealousy and cruelty, had almost destroyed those plans, but fate and good fortune had turned Reynolds, that brute, into my ally.

I now approached Pearson and thought to hold out my hands, but I could not summon the energy to pretend to care for him. In his state, I doubted he would notice. “Sir, this visit is most unexpected. I hope nothing terrible has happened.”

“The Million Bank was a disaster,” Pearson said.

“I could not have known,” I told him. “I proposed it because I thought it would subscribe. No one could know how much it would oversubscribe.”

“I did not invest,” he said.

I could not help myself. I clapped my hands together. “Oh, thank the Lord!”

His eyes glistened with moisture, for he mistook my concern for his wife as something meant for him. “We’ve all been foolish. We’ve all arrogantly believed that our cleverness elevated us above the madness of the markets, which no intellect can ever truly predict.”

“I have tried to advise you the best I can, but I am relieved you had the foresight to avoid the Million Bank, even if the rest of us did not.”

“It wasn’t foresight,” he said, rather bitterly. “It was Ethan Saunders. He warned me off, even while I-I was unkind to him. He gave me good advice for my wife’s sake.”

“I hope you will recall my advice regarding the four percents,” I said.

He smiled somewhat bashfully, as though embarrassed to speak on this point. “Already the price has begun to rise. In this matter you were surely correct. But as for Duer, I think we all misjudged him. You see it too, I think. He is about to topple. No one has ever been so overextended as he, because he’d been counting on taking the Million Bank. Now I don’t see how he can survive.”

“I cannot say.” I wanted to choose my words carefully. I did not wish to make myself sound more prescient than I ought to be, nor did I wish to expose my lack of loyalty to Duer. “He has a great many resources, and he is clever. But the failure of his Million Bank plan is a serious blow, and I believe things may have now entered the realm of uncertainty.”

“The only reason I am not now hounded by creditors is because Duer vouches for me. Once Duer falls, I will not be far behind. Given his failure today, it may already be too late for me. I must retreat.”

“To where?”

“I have a house off the King’s Highway between here and Philadelphia. In Brighton.”

“I’d heard you sold it.”

He smiled. “It is what I meant people to hear.”

“How long do you intend to stay there?”

“Until Duer falls,” he said, “or until he recovers unequivocally and can vouch for me or, better yet, pay me what he owes.”

I smiled at him-brightly, I hope-for I was thinking of how events might fall, and a safe haven on the Philadelphia road seemed to me just the thing I needed. “Would you object if I were to visit you there?”

He bowed. “I shall never object to your company.”

I chose not to tell him I was inclined to bring friends, nor that my friends were rough men from the frontier. Best to leave that out for now. When he stood facing Mr. Dalton, I had no doubt Pearson would keep any objections he might have to himself.