The Whiskey Rebel

Ethan Saunders

The watchman had only finished crying out three in the morning when Lavien and I presented Hamilton ’s letter at the government’s stable. We were given two stout well-fed beasts and, a bit earlier than agreed, we began to make our way. We rode in silence; the cold and the dark and the urgency made talk seem trivial. When dawn trickled orange into the eastern sky, we quickened our pace. The horses were sure-footed in the melting snow, and we rode hard.

We traded horses in Princeton and were at the ferry in New Jersey by two in the afternoon. Once upon the New York side of the river, we took the Greenwich Road to Duer’s mansion. It had not snowed there, and the roads were dry, so we made good time. When we arrived there was a gathering of people outside Duer’s palatial estate-maybe as many as a hundred-and they looked angry. Some appeared to be Duer’s brothers of the speculation trade, dressed in fine suits and handsome coats, their own excellent carriages parked nearby. Alongside them were poor women in tattered dresses, their hair covered with rags. A boy with a dirty face clutched the hand of an angry father. A Negro man in homespun looked somewhat dazed, as though he’d been struck in the head. Some stared at the house. Some shouted at it. One man, aging and one-armed, with the look of an old soldier, held a rock that he clearly meant to throw.

Lavien and I exchanged glances, but we did not speak. We did not need to. We had come prepared to do what we must to make Duer see reason, to make him begin reversing course. We were prepared to make him, through kindness or cruelty, begin writing letters to creditors and merchants and traders. We had not come prepared for this. We had come prepared to stop his ruin. We had not come prepared merely to witness it. It seemed we were too late.

We rode around to the stables and were admitted by the liveried servant once we showed him Hamilton’s letter. I did not know if he could read, but he seemed impressed with our earnestness. Once inside, we demanded to see Duer, and if the servant we spoke to was put off by our haggard looks or the dirt of the road upon us, he did not comment. He seemed to have troubles aplenty of his own and absently led us to the parlor.

I helped myself to some wine from the sideboard, while Lavien gulped from a pitcher of water flavored with oranges. Duer, however, did not keep us waiting long. He pushed into the room after we had been there for less than ten minutes. His suit was rumpled, as though he had slept in it, and his hair was wild. Streaks of redness shot across his eyes.

“This is all the result of your meddling,” he said. “You and Hamilton and the rest of you. Have you no idea what you’ve done?”

“What is happening?” Lavien asked. “It may be we can reverse things.”

He could not have believed it, but it was something to say. I felt a chill run through me, for I heard something in Lavien’s voice I thought unimaginable. I heard fear.

“How can you not know?” Duer sneered at him. “Word of this absurd lawsuit has gotten out, and the rumor is I am to be ruined. Now my creditors gather like starving birds, ready to pick at me until there is nothing left.”

Lavien began to pace back and forth. He put a hand to his temple. “How vulnerable are you? How much do you need to make this go away? Can you placate some of your creditors and thus make the others leave you be?”

“How vulnerable am I? I am entirely exposed, that is how vulnerable I am. And you know full well that no creditor will be satisfied until he is paid.”

“Can you not even cover your most immediate debts?” I asked.

“My debts were never designed to be covered,” he said. “I am engaged in business. But now that the government has seen fit to interfere, all is falling to ruin. Your drawing back the bank’s credit, and now, with the absurd suit for money I supposedly owe, Hamilton has pulled the rug from under me.”

“What is the difference between what you have and what you owe?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Not too much above eight hundred thousand.”

I walked over to Duer and shoved him so he fell back into his chair. “Listen to me, you greedy turd. You had better think of a way to escape bankruptcy. There are some very dangerous people who wish to see you fail, and we cannot let them have their way.”

Perhaps because he sensed an opportunity, he appeared unconcerned by my violence. “I cannot avoid it unless you know of some source willing to give me the money. The bank, perhaps. Yes, that’s it. The bank can lend me the money. Give it to me outright, perhaps. It is a great deal of money, I know, but surely it is worth it to save us from such confusion.”

“It cannot happen,” Lavien said. “Lending you that money would be as good as ruining the government. Once word escaped, Washington and his administration would be seen as no better than corrupt British ministers raiding the treasury for their friends.”

“We had better think of something,” I said. “The crowd sounds angry.”

Outside his window, we heard angry calls-We want Duer! He has got our money!-over and over again. One group had started a poetic cry of Put Duer in the sewer, hardly euphonious but certainly concise in its meaning. I peeked out the window and saw an old woman, bent over at the waist, leaning upon a walking stick and looking upward. “I want my five dollars!” she cried.

“Good God, man,” I said to Duer. “You borrowed five dollars from a stooped old woman? Have you no shame?”

“She would have had no complaints when I paid her what I owed.”

“You were never going to pay,” I said. “You never could pay.”

“How could it have worked when the government itself is against me?” he demanded. “Hamilton pretended to be my friend, but it was he who has brought this upon me. Hamilton restricted the credit. Hamilton prosecuted me about old debts. If my fall brings about the ruin of the nation, it will be upon Hamilton’s head.”

“You are like a murderer who blames his victim for provoking him,” I said. “Hamilton restricted credit because there was too much of it, prompting greedy men like you to abuse the aberration. He has prosecuted you for your crimes because to do anything else would be dishonest. If Hamilton is to blame, it is for not crushing you sooner and harder. Perhaps then you would never have had a chance to attempt a scheme foolish beyond reason.”

“But it made such sense,” he said. “And she convinced me it would work.”

“She? Joan Maycott?” I asked, but I believe I already knew this was her treachery.

“Yes. I know what you will say, I ought not to have taken advice from a woman, but she seemed to know what she spoke of. So charming and clever. How could I know she hated me, blamed me for her husband’s death? Whippo pushed me toward this too, and where is he now? He’s abandoned me, that’s where. He stole as much of my silver as he could carry and then slipped out in the night just ahead of the crowds.”

“You’ve been manipulated, Duer,” I said, “and we along with you. Now I want you to collect your ledgers for me.” I turned to Lavien. “You’ll need to determine how much he owes and to whom. Maybe we can put it out that he has the means to repay his debts. If we can but calm the crowds, we can perhaps calm the markets before they panic.”

“I’m no money man,” Lavien answered. “I may understand some of how these mechanisms work, but I can’t speedily interpret such things.”

“I’ll help you,” Duer volunteered, “in exchange for a promise of government assistance and an end to this absurd lawsuit, of course. Yes, we must forget about that.”

“No,” said Lavien. “You won’t bargain your way out of this. We will have to bring in a few clerks from Treasury to review your books, and the best we will be able to do is see to it that you pay first those who need it most. I don’t know if that will accomplish anything, but we must try.”

Lavien’s words were punctuated by the sound of shattering glass. A rock flew into a window in a room above us, then another to our left, and then in the room we currently occupied. We could now hear clearly the cries of the crowd. “Bring us Duer! Our money or his head!” Several angry men waved muskets. One held a blazing torch.

“Christ,” I said. “They could burn the building down.”

“We’ve got to get him someplace safe,” Lavien said.

“Where?”

“There’s only one place,” Duer said. “I’ve known it all morning, but I would not say it to myself until this threat of violence. I cannot see Lady Kitty burned out of her home. You’ve got to take me to jail. Debtor’s prison is my lot now. The mob must see me taken there so they will leave my family in peace.”

And so we did. We ushered him out of the house and drove him south to the City Jail on Murray Street, which also acted as the city’s debtor’s prison. During the stretch of the journey we were followed by an angry mob, which called after us with withering insults. Duer sat tight-lipped, his eyes clenched almost shut as, I could only imagine, images of his failed aspirations paraded before him. We were strange pied pipers, for as our coach progressed, it drew larger and larger crowds, and when we reached the prison, I feared we must be arrested for orchestrating a riot.

Duer’s crossing the threshold of the City Jail seemed to act as some sort of signal-his ruin was complete so no restraint was now required. Men rushed into the Two Friendly Brothers’ tavern across the way to fortify their indignation with strong drink. Accordingly, food began to fly in our direction: eggs and apples and oranges, oyster shells, and old hard rolls. Lavien and I made it inside the jail without much harm, but Duer was struck in the forehead with an old egg. The sulfurous yolk, rotten and reeking, trickled down his face, but as we led him inside the stone edifice, he did not bother to wipe it away.

O utside the prison, stones and dead animals and fruit continued to strike the walls, a dull cannonade of impotent rage. Duer was ruined, worth less than nothing, and yet not without assets or ready money, and he had little difficulty in securing for himself the finest accommodations in the building, a pleasant suite of rooms upon the third floor. The turnkeys behaved like obsequious publicans and were rewarded by Duer for their courtesy. He sat on a chair in his little sitting room, head in his hands, his face now cleaned of the earlier yolk.

“I shall pay them back,” he said. “Every last one I shall pay back.”

“With what money?” Lavien asked.

“I shall pay them back,” Duer said.

I rubbed my face, rough with beard stubble. “Yes, yes, when the money fairies visit you in the night and dust your bed with banknotes, you will pay them back. I understand. But what will happen to the markets now that your ruin is under way?”

He stared at me as though slapped. I don’t believe he had fully accepted the truth, even though he had been struck in the face with a rotten egg, even though he sat at that moment in City Jail, vowing to pay his creditors. Until I said the word, I do not believe he fully understood that this was not merely an unseemly diversion on the road to triumph. This was, indeed, the road’s end.

Duer looked at me. “I told you if you ruined me, you would ruin the country. Did I not say so? Go now to Merchants’ Coffeehouse, and what shall you see? Men scrambling to sell their bank scrip and government issues. The prices shall plummet, and as I am made to sell off my holdings, six percents will plummet too. You men have ruined me, but not only me. You have ruined all of us.”

“There it is,” Lavien said. “This is what they wanted from the beginning and we have given it to them. Now we must ride back, as fast as we can. Our only hope is to reach Philadelphia and make certain Hamilton gets the information before the news hits the markets. Things were always much farther along than we suspected, and there is nothing we can do here. It is up to Hamilton. He can position his men to buy, and buy at decent prices. He can use the power of the Treasury to prevent a complete disaster. What happens in New York will be harmful, but the center of finance in this country is Philadelphia. If word of this reaches the Philadelphia markets before we do, it may be too late for Hamilton to stop it.”

“To stop what?”

“The collapse of our economic system,” Lavien said.

“Everything but four percents,” said Duer, who appeared to be relieved of his misery for a moment in order to lecture us on money things. “They’ve been undervalued, and I believe the collapse of six percents will revive them.”

“Is that enough to keep the markets from collapsing?” I asked.

“No. Oh, the irony of it. I had thought to ruin men like Pearson by having them gorge themselves on four percents, but if he now sells at the right moment, he shall be rich and I shall be penniless.”

I hoped, for Cynthia’s sake, Pearson would know that right moment, but we could wait to hear no more. We were out the door and pushing our way through the angry crowds. They had no knowledge of who we were and how or if we were connected to Duer, but they were angry, and only by holding ourselves erect and pushing back when assaulted, did we manage to get to our carriage unscathed.

There was no time to return to Greenwich for our horses, so we found the public stables and, using Hamilton’s credit, gained access to the best horses we could find. From there we made our way to the ferry and waited to make the interminable passage to the New Jersey side.

We sat astride our horses on the flat ferry, listening to the waves of the river lap at the sides. While icy winds blasted us, Lavien looked at me. “You have never been comfortable doing precisely what I say. Not without argument or debate.”

“Still, you have a certain regard for me.”

“I hope you prove it merited. We have been watched and followed all day-to Duer’s mansion, to the stables, to the ferry. There are at least three of them, and by their rough look I believe them whiskey men. They did not take the ferry with us, which is too bad, for I should have knocked them into the river and been done with it. They will find another boat across, however. Are you prepared for violence?”

“Certainly. Just as long as it is not visited upon me.”

He nodded grimly. “You will have to do as I say. It is no longer a question of strategy. I believe it is one of survival-ours and the nation’s. Above all else you must keep that in mind. This is as important as any intelligence you ran in the war. If we do not reach Hamilton before the news, I cannot guess the devastation that will befall this union.”

We came off the ferry, riding hard under a sky hooded with gray clouds foretelling not snow or rain but merely a kind of gloom. The road was free of ice, and I thought we started well. I was mistaken, for we had not gone more than five or six miles before we heard the sound of men behind us. Three of them, bent over, spurring their horses to catch us.

“Whiskey men,” I shouted, but it was not necessary. Lavien must have recognized them, for he already had taken a primed pistol from his pocket; now he turned and fired off a shot, all done seemingly without thought or exertion. It could not be, I thought, that such a shot could find its target, but one of the men threw up his hands-I know not if in pain or from the impact-and fell from his horse.

I took out my primed pistol and fired too. I was never much of a shot from a moving horse, and aiming behind rather than forward made matters even more difficult, but I was determined to fire true. I turned to glance at the riders to see who would make the better target. There were two men, one far taller than the other, and it was then that I recognized him. The taller one was Duer’s man, Isaac Whippo. I aimed at him rather than the other, purely out of irritation, but the shot went wide. Distant as he was, I saw him glower at me cadaverously.

Lavien returned his pistol to his pocket and drew a knife from his belt. From his moving horse, he took the blade between his fingers and tossed it with a hard thrust from his arm. Shooting out, it twirled like a whirligig, spiraling through the air until it struck the shorter of our pursuers in the sternum. Even above the roar of thudding hooves, I heard his groan, less a cry of pain than an exhalation of despair, the sound of a man who knows he is to die.

I had fallen behind Lavien, so I spurred my horse forward, ignoring the smoking of my spent pistol in my saddlebag, and dared another look behind me. Isaac Whippo had slowed somewhat, perhaps dispirited and no longer liking his chances quite so well as he once did.

I turned to Lavien. “He may lose heart. We’ve all but gotten away.”

It was not to be, however, for though he kept his distance, he did not leave off the pursuit. I could only presume that Lavien had no more guns or knives about him, for he did not attempt to lose this last man. Then I saw why this third man remained in pursuit even though we had bested his fellows. Up ahead, a quarter mile down the road, were two more whiskey men, their horses blocking the road. We were trapped.

“S top,” Lavien called, and he pulled up on his reins. The men in front and Whippo behind were at enough of a distance that he would have time for at least a brief conversation before they were upon us. We brought our horses to a pause by the side of the road. Following his lead, I quickly tied mine to a tree, and then dashed into the woods behind him.

“That was Duer’s man,” I said. “He was with the whiskey men.”

“I know,” he said, in a breathy low voice as he half ran, keeping his pace both swift and stealthy. “There is a clearing in the woods. I saw it through the trees maybe half a mile back. We’ll make for that spot, keeping out of sight of the road.”

“What if they kill our mounts?”

“There are always more horses,” he said. “Their own, for instance. They won’t need them once they’re dead.”

I did not know why we should want a clearing, of all things, and I did not want to abandon the animals, but here was a situation in which I knew Lavien to be my superior, and I would not argue.

I ran hard. Unused to continuous physical exertion, almost at once I felt a stitch in my side and a burning feeling that rose in my throat and extended to the tip of my tongue. The blood pounded in my ears, and my eyes darted back and forth for any sign of danger, but as near as I could determine we were not yet seen. More than once I almost fell over in exhaustion, but Lavien continued to run hard, and I would not be the one to drag us down. Somehow I found the strength to keep pace-nearly, for I lagged ten or fifteen yards behind-until we came out in the clearing that Lavien had seen from the road.

It was perhaps a fifty-foot circle of flat earth pocked with mounds of dirty snow. There were signs that men had slept here recently-footprints and the bones of a small animal, perhaps a rabbit or a chicken-and a stink that suggested they had not wandered far to use the necessary. Nearly at the center was a small stone circle in which they had made a fire, and there were still pieces of wood there, some but blackened coal, others reasonably fresh.

I stood still, panting and holding my side, which now flared and fired and set forth cannonades of pain.

“Good,” said Lavien in a low voice, as he stooped to examine the stone circle. “This will do. There’s enough wood left to burn well.”

He handed me his pistol, took a tinderbox, and began to relight the fire. “You’ll find powder and balls in my travel bag. Prime the weapons.”

“Are you mad? They’ll see our smoke.”

“Captain, that is what I wish. We haven’t time for evasion. We’ve got to get to Philadelphia, and that means we need to fight them. If we want to do it quickly and without fear of sharpshooters, we must engage them on our terms. We will draw them here.”

I readied the firearms, though I did it slowly and clumsily. My hands shook from the exertion of the chase and the running, and I kept searching the woods for any sign that the whiskey men had found us before we wished them to. There was no point in doing so. These were border men who stalked bears naked and slept in trees for days, waiting to pounce upon deer. If they knew we were here and wished us dead, we would be dead already.

Lavien quickly lit the fire, poking at it until it burned vigorously. He then went over to the nearest tree and broke off several small twigs, which he put upon the blaze.

“They’re moist, and will make the fire produce more smoke.” He gazed about him and took one of the smaller pieces of wood from the fire, a rounded branch not more than a foot long, and narrow enough to easily hold in the hand, and lifted it like a torch. “This way,” he said, gesturing away from the road.

“Why do you want that?” I asked.

“You will see why,” he answered, in a grim tone that suggested confidence but no satisfaction. “We must not let this fire go out.”

I followed him out of the clearing. We moved back several feet, that we might not be seen, or not seen easily, from the vicinity of the fire. He held his torch behind a tree and squatted, his other hand in his bag, his eyes wide and unblinking.

“Let us hope they are as rushed as we are,” he said quietly. “These Westerners are good hunters, as stealthy and deadly in their own way as the Maroons of Surinam.”

“I understand,” I said.

“If we die, we do not get our message to Hamilton.”

“And we’ll be dead. That is undesirable in itself.” I felt tension, urgency, and anxiety for what must come next. It was not precisely fear, though there was fear in it. I am not one of those men who go into battle with nothing but courage in his heart. I felt fear aplenty, but enough other things that it was merely one flavor of the stew.

“I’ve no doubt,” he continued, “that they have good shots among them, and they could pick us off, if they choose, before we even sensed they were near.”

“I said I understand, damn you.”

He grinned at me. “Just making certain.”

He muttered something under his breath. It sounded like a prayer, and it sounded like a foreign language, though I know not know if it was Hebrew or the heathen Maroon tongue.

Then he was silent and there was little else but silence, the silence of the woods in winter when men have come tramping through moments before. There was a rustle of dead branches and birdsong, sporadic but distant. I heard the click of speedy animal claws not far away-perhaps a hearty squirrel that had not slept for the winter or had awoken early.

In a few moments one of our pursuers walked into the clearing. He was an older man, missing an eye, of average height but thin build, with fair hair and pale skin, somewhat blemished with freckles and the scars of smallpox. His clothes looked several sizes too big for him, and he comported himself with the shambling attitude of the habitual drinker.

The one-eyed rebel looked at the fire and then turned back the way he had come and let out a whistle, the kind that sounds precisely like a man trying to sound like a bird. In a moment, Whippo and the third whiskey rebel walked briskly into the clearing. Soon the trio was circling the fire, speaking in low tones, attempting to make sense of it, read some logic into its presence, some indication of our location.

Whippo turned, not precisely toward us but close enough, facing a deep thicket of wood. Hands upon his narrow hips, he called, “I know you’re in there, Saunders. Why not come out and talk things over? You’re taking it all a bit hard. I suppose it’s our own fault, making you think us so ruthless. We’re not violent men, just clever ones. We need not be at odds.”

Lavien looked at me and put a finger to his lips, as though I would need to be told.

“It’s been but a game,” Whippo called out. “You and I being enemies, Saunders-I never felt it. If you knew who we were, and the wrongs we’ve suffered from Hamilton and Duer, you would join with us. We know you’re no aristocrat like those fellows. The violence that’s been done today is our fault. I’ll own it. You come out now, and we’ll talk. We’ll parley. We’ll lay down our weapons.” He squatted to the earth and set his gun upon the hard ground.

I watched him with such intensity that I did not at first see Lavien pull his hand out of the bag. Only when he held his object against his little torch did I see it and understand. It was a ball of cast iron, as shiny as silver, a bit larger than an orange, with a pair of decorative horns molded onto it, as though it were a bull or a devil. From between the horns rose a wick.

It took me a moment to recognize the object, for I had not seen one since the war. It would appear that Lavien had thought to bring with him a grenade.

He held the wick to his torch and let it burn. And then he held it in his hand. My eyes must have registered concern because he looked at the wick and then at the men, to tell me he dared not toss it too soon.

That wick seemed to me the slowest ever made. It felt as though we waited for long minutes, though it could only have been a few seconds. I lived in fear that the men would see us and come running, they would lose interest and wander off, or sense a trap and flee. I feared that Lavien would misjudge and wait too long. Indeed, the wick grew shorter and shorter, and it took every bit of self-control I possessed not to shout at him, to tell him to throw it, for love of God.

It burned with a fiery glow and a faint hiss, and when it seemed to me that Lavien had waited too long already, he tossed the metal ball so that it landed just before the fire, bounced slightly, and came to rest within the little blaze. I knew not if I should be more impressed with his aim or his cleverness. Had the ball landed before them, they should have seen it and fled. Instead, the three men looked at the fire, certain they had seen something move, yet unable to find any sign of aught new upon the scene. The one-eyed man squatted down and peered into the blaze, bringing his face in very close.

Then came the flash.

The grenade burst in terrible cry of fire and heat and screaming metal. It sent out a rain of fire and dirt and broken branches. Leaves and wet lumps of snow fell from the skies. Birds took flight. Unseen animal feet scurried. I turned away and threw myself to the ground, though Lavien did not move or turn away. He must have known, to the inch, the grenade’s range. When I turned back, Lavien was already standing.

“Give me the pistols,” he said.

I did so, and he walked toward the clearing. Two of the men were dead, beyond any doubt. One body was entirely without its head, another nearly torn in two, missing an arm not to be seen anywhere. The dirt had turned a mottled black, and little mounds of snow were spotted pink with blood.

Astonishingly, Isaac Whippo was still alive. The grenade must have blasted away from him, for he sat upright, holding one arm, dangling and clearly broken, in the other. His face was wet with blood, and one eye was injured and closed, perhaps ruined. I had mocked this man, sought to belittle and humiliate him, and now he rocked back and forth, slowly, deliberately, like an old man with his pipe.

“He might yet live,” I said softly.

“No,” said Lavien. “He won’t.” He raised his pistol and fired it into Whippo’s head.

I turned away, though I saw the flash of the powder and the smoke of the barrel. When I turned back, Whippo’s body lay upon the ground, folded and still. A staggering revulsion coursed through me, for what I had seen and for Lavien, this little fount of heartless violence.

Lavien stepped to me and took me by the shoulders. He made me face him, made me look into his dark eyes, small and hot. “Understand me,” he said in a low voice. “I have now murdered a wounded man. That’s how important this is. It isn’t about money or pride or power. It is about the future of the most audacious experiment in human liberty ever attempted. I do not want this government to do what I have just done. I take it on myself.”

I swallowed. “You Jews have a fine history of taking sins upon yourself.”

He looked in the general direction of the road. “You’re a funny man. Let’s go.”