The Whiskey Rebel

“I know little of her myself,” he said. “She appeared upon the scene less than a year ago. She is a fashionable lady, a wealthy woman, and a widow. She and her husband traded his soldier’s debt for land out west, where he made something of a success as a whiskey distiller, but after he died she returned to the East. If pressed, she will speak against Hamilton’s whiskey tax on this account.” He shrugged to indicate he had no more to add.

“When did she move to the West?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She mentioned to me once having lived in New York with her husband during the ratification of the Constitution, so it could not have been so long ago.”

I thought about this for a moment. “How did her husband die?”

“She has never chosen to speak of it, and a man is never inclined to inquire too deeply of a dead husband to a pretty widow. There is no shortage of opportunities for a man out west to meet his death, and yet…” His voice trailed off.

“You have the impression that there is some bitterness there,” I proposed. “That she believes there was an injustice.”

His eyes brightened. “That is exactly right.” He looked over his shoulder.

“I see you must return,” I said. “Thank you for your time.”

He wrinkled his brow. “But I have told you nothing.”

I shrugged, and that seemed to be enough for him. We rose and shook hands. He pretended not to see how badly cut and scraped was my hand and went back to his men. As he did so, I thought about how interesting he was. He could not be ignorant of my reputation, of the things said about my past, and yet he chose to attend to me in public. He could not help but notice that hardly a day went by that I did not have some injury. It seemed to me that Burr was a man like myself, one who enjoyed courting a little bit of scandal, so long as it was only a little bit. I hoped this tendency would not lead him into any great difficulties.

In the meantime, though he thought he had told me little, he had in reality explained a great deal. Mrs. Maycott and her husband would not have traded war debt for land had they not been needy, and yet she returned from the West, after only a few years, a wealthy woman. I did not think any amount of success as a whiskey distiller could have produced significant money in so short a span. Either she and her husband had, in that time, inherited a fortune or there was far more to her past than she was making public. One thing seemed certain: Something terrible had happened to her husband out west, and if he had traded his debt for land, it seemed to me likely he had traded, directly or indirectly, with the largest and most energetic architect of these exchanges: William Duer.

I had hired a horse in advance, so I had little to do but pass the time. I dared not sleep, lest I fail to awake in time. I therefore waited impatiently until, when the clock struck one and the rest of the world was abed, I rode out to Greenwich Village and Duer’s estate, where I did some naughty things to make that speculator’s life uncomfortable, and did them without being seen or heard. I returned late, nearly four in the morning. There was no point in attempting more sleep. I would have to begin in an hour or two at the most, so I sat in my room, drank a bottle of port, and rehearsed over and over again what I must do.

Perhaps I fell asleep for a quarter hour or so, but when I heard the watchman call out four of the clock, I roused myself, splashed my face with cold water, and set out to make my mark upon William Duer.

The plan was simple. I would visit Duer’s agents one by one, and then visit Corre’s Hotel, usually a venue for music and now the place where the Million Bank was due to launch. Perhaps I would see Duer there, perhaps not. I did not know which I hoped for. If Duer did not show, perhaps Pearson would not show either. If Pearson did appear, he would see Duer’s plan already in disarray and would refrain from investing. All of which, of course, depended upon my doing what yet needed doing.

So thinking, I headed out into the cold morning.

Speculators are an early rising lot, so it was not yet five when I visited the first of my agents, Mr. James Isser, whose removal I believed would be done without difficulty. He was a young man who lived in a busy boardinghouse on Cedar Street. My observations indicated that many men came and went from the house with regularity, particularly in the early morning hours, so, having secured a key from a chatty maid who did not mind the pockets of her skirt, I was able to enter the premises and ascend the stairs to his rooms without notice.

I knocked upon his door and heard a faint scuffling from within. A moment later the door opened a crack and there stood a small man, a bit too fond, perhaps, of beef and beer for his young age. His eyes were red and narrow and rather dull.

“You look sleepy,” I said, and shoved him hard in the chest.

He stumbled backward into his room, so I stepped in, closed and locked the door, and punched the man in his soft stomach. I did so not to be cruel but to keep him from crying out.

Quickly, I took a burlap sack from my jacket and slipped it over his head. He started to cry out again, and though I had no wish to hurt him, I had my own difficulties to think of, so I struck him once more in the stomach. I did this in part with distaste, for I am not a brutal man, and later, I knew, I would regret hurting an i

“My advice,” I said, my voice even and calm, “is that you not speak.”

I grabbed his arms and tied them behind his back. He hardly resisted, not having any notion of who I was or what I wanted. I believe it never quite occurred to him that he ought to fight me. Having immobilized and blinded him, I now placed a gag in his mouth, imposed over the sack.

“Mrs. Greenhill’s husband has sent me to you, Mr. Jukes. It is a matter of revenge, for it is a cruel thing, cruel indeed, to violate a man’s bed with his wife.”

He mumbled and grunted, no doubt telling me that he knew no Mrs. Greenhill and was not Mr. Jukes. I, of course, pretended I could not understand him.

“You are to leave that married woman alone, you rascal. This shall be your last warning.” Having finished my task, I departed. Upon his inevitable discovery, he would tell his tale, and it would be perceived as a simple misunderstanding. When all of Duer’s agents suffered from such misunderstandings, it would be clear that something more sinister had transpired, but by then it would be too late.

I shan’t describe each encounter, for I used the same technique four times with the four unmarried agents. I had pla

The remaining two agents were married men with children in their homes, and I would not break open their houses and assault them where they lived. To do so would be dangerous and unseemly. Instead, I dealt with each according to his personality.

Mr. Geoffrey Amesbury liked to go by coach each day to his place of work. This day he would take a coach to Duer’s estate, so it was no difficult thing to pay his regular coachman to fall ill and pay a substitute to take him to be robbed. The thieves I hired-a visit to the area of Peck’s Slip was all that was required to find them-would take his money and his clothes and separate him from his coach, but he was not to be harmed.

The final victim, Mr. Thomas Hunt, lived in a large house with his wife, four children, and an elderly mother, so there could be no safe and easy way to detain him at home. Because I could not determine how he intended to get to Mr. Duer’s house, I was forced to deal with him somewhat more creatively.

Mr. Hunt was in the prime of his manhood, tall and well made with thick brown hair and the sort of face that women find pleasing. It is not surprising that a man of his stripe had married a pretty lady, and he was known to be dedicated to his wife, but such was his regard for the gentle sex that his dedication was too large to be contained by a single woman, no matter how worthy. I suspected it must be so, and a little idle coffeehouse gossip confirmed my suspicions.