The Whiskey Rebel

Then, one afternoon when we were encamped on Harlem Heights, Captain Richard Fleet came to see me. Tall and slender, white-haired, serious, yet with an unmistakable look of mischief in his eyes, he was unlike anyone I had ever known. He was one of those men whom others instantly like, and as determined as I was not to fall under his spell, it took no more than a quarter of an hour before I thought of him as a trusted friend. We sat in a tent while he poured us wine and said he had heard I found some difficulty in settling into the life of a soldier, but General Washington needed men with skills such as I possessed.

What skills were they? I wished to know. Why, I was told, my ability to lie and smoke out a liar. My ability to slip across enemy lines and then back across our own, all without detection. My ability to ingratiate myself with women, with strangers, with men who thought, only a moment before, they found me most detestable. In short, I was a man like Fleet himself, and General Washington wanted me. He wished to make me, the son of a Westchester landowner, into a spy.

I was young and brash and proud of my honor and was not eager to adopt a way of life scorned by gentlemen as disreputable, but Fleet was persuasive. He convinced me that I could not be but who I was, so I might as well be that in the service of my country. Yes, he said, spies have long been despised by gentlemen, but was this war not proof that the world was changing, and who could not say that in its aftermath spies would not be embraced as heroes? The first step, he said, was for us to see ourselves as such.

It was all as he had said. We became heroes, up until the time we were disgraced, up until the time Hamilton had broadcast that disgrace. That man had ruined my life and essentially killed Fleet. And now here was Fleet’s daughter, afraid and desperate. I felt the note that had been slipped to me and swore an oath to myself too primal, too raw, to find form in words.

I walked north to Walnut Street and turned west, moving through increasingly thick crowds of people: men of business, men of trade, women about their household duties and less savory business as well. Carts moved this way and that, hardly knowing how to get past one another and the pedestrians and the animals that crowded the street. In such chaos, I might perhaps have risked taking out my letter and reading it, but I did not do so. I dared not look back to demonstrate that I searched for someone upon my trail, but I felt him there.

Once I reached Fifth Street, I turned north and walked quickly up the stairs and through the front door of the Library Company building, directly across from the Statehouse. It was a new building, envisioned by an amateur architect who had won a design contest, and it was a glorious thing to behold. The massive redbrick structure boasted two stories, columns, and, above the front door, a statue of the late Benjamin Franklin, the library’s founder, in classical garb.

Inside, all was marble and winding staircase and books. Books upon books upon books lined the walls, for the Library Company, though a private organization, had become the official library of the Congress and so considered it its business to acquire virtually everything. Once through the doors I was struck by its stately appearance. In the lobby a half dozen or so men, all of whom were finely dressed, turned to look at my unpleasant intrusion upon their cerebral seclusion.

I had not long, and I hoped it was not a lengthy message or I should run out of time. I turned to the gentlemen staring and said, “Yes, I know I am too unseemly to be here. I do not wish to stay. Give me but one minute.”

So saying, I took from my pocket the note and broke the still-soft wax seal. Inside, in a hasty hand, I found the following:

Captain Saunders,

I am sorry to have sent you away last night, but I had no choice. My house and my person are watched, which is why I could not see you. It has not long been so, and I can only wish you had responded to one of my earlier notes, but there is no helping that now. The die is cast. You must not come again or attempt to contact me. I do not know who they are or what they are or what they want, but they are very dangerous. My husband is missing and I believe in danger, and that danger may extend to me and my children. I wish I could tell you more, but I know nothing other than that it has something to do with Hamilton and his bank. I beg of you to help me. Find my husband and discover the danger to which he has exposed himself and his family.

I have no right to ask this of you, but I know of no one else, and if I did, I would still want you, for I know of no one better. For the sake of the memory of my father, please help me.

Yours &c,

Cynthia Pearson

Nothing could have been more shocking. Jacob Pearson missing, and Mrs. Pearson herself in danger, her house watched? A co

I crossed Fifth until I reached the grounds behind the Pe

“Captain Saunders. A moment, if you please, sir.”

I opened my eyes and saw before me a tall man with long reddish mustaches and a wide-brimmed hat that sat high enough upon his crown to reveal his apparent baldness. He spoke with the thick brogue of an Irishman, and was-I guessed from the lines upon his face-perhaps fifty years of age, but a rugged fifty. He had the look of a man used to hard labor, physically imposing but not menacing.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

“We have not yet met,” answered the Irishman. “But I’ve a feeling we’re to become excellent friends. May I sit?” He gestured toward the bench.

I nodded and moved to give him more room, but I was on my guard and already thinking through my options.

He removed the rest of the snow, sat next to me, and reached into his beaver coat. “I am told that you are a man who enjoys whiskey.” From the coat came a corked bottle, which he handed to me. “It is the best produced upon the Monongahela.”

I pulled out the cork and sampled the contents. It was, indeed, quite good. It had a depth of flavors I had not known before in the drink, a kind of sweetness I found surprising and pleasing. It hit my empty gut hard, though, and a warm feeling built there to near hotness. I bent over hard, holding out the bottle so as not to spill it.

“Too strong for you, lad?” the Irishman asked.