The Whiskey Rebel

“Precisely,” Duer said. “He is quite perfect for our purposes.”

Duer sent the man a note, saying he wished to meet but that the meeting must be private, lest the world know of their business. Thus it was we arranged to meet in the back room of another tavern, where we could discuss these matters in private.

“Will he not be confused by my presence?” I asked Duer.

“That can only work to our advantage,” he said.

From a distance I’d found Mr. Pearson to be an unlikable person, loud and vain and pleased with himself to an unreasonable degree. In close conversation, I found him even more unpleasant, but because of, not despite, a kind of native charm. A man of a certain fading beauty, he displayed with Duer a self-confident expansiveness, but with me he used a predatory charm. It was the alluring gaze of a predator. I felt at once that Pearson was a dangerous creature-not to us, perhaps, but to those in his power. For myself, I did not fear him, but I did immediately despise him.

To this man, Duer explained that he needed someone to help him alter the market, someone who must buy and sell with his own money. When he profited, he would keep what he earned minus a small commission. When he lost, he would be reimbursed.

Some men, Duer had explained to me, reacted quite harshly to this suggestion, not liking the idea of behaving dishonorably to other traders, but that was what made Pearson so perfect. He was a stranger to the trading community and had no concerns about betraying his brothers. More to the point, he wished to learn the secrets of trade, yet he had nothing but contempt for those who had learned the secrets through the usual slow and persistent means. Duer offered him an opportunity to demonstrate his inherent superiority, wrapped in the protective cloak, so he would believe, of the undisputed master.

It began slowly. Duer had Pearson make a few trades he knew would prove sound, and these enticed Pearson’s appetite. While he profited, Duer also directed Pearson to lose a few thousand dollars on a single trade, and Duer did not hesitate to return the funds with all speed and cheer, demonstrating that he was as good as his word and Pearson had nothing to fear from his losses. Within six weeks, Pearson was making a name for himself on the Philadelphia floor as a ca

P art of the difficulty of attempting to corner a market is that it does not take long for buyers to recognize that someone, even if they don’t know who it is, consistently snaps up an issue when it comes to market. Thus, the prices of six percent securities began to rise, which made them more expensive and harder to obtain. Men who already held them understood an attempt at a corner was under way and so were understandably reluctant to sell.

The best way to bring more issues to market was to convince holders that they did not know all and that someone else knew more. Thus it was that Duer and Pearson executed a simple but effective deception. At the City Tavern, Duer arrived and a

Pearson, per prior arrangement, accepted Duer’s offer to sell. It was a perfect deal, since Pearson would simply return the six percents back to Duer later in the day. Pearson, who had begun to attract some notice, then a

“I doubt the whole lot is worth more than forty thousand,” Duer said to me, “and that is under the most optimistic of circumstances. If Pearson tries to sell them in anything but the smallest increments, he shall drive the price even lower. Of course, much of this will depend on how the other buyer chooses to act.”

“What other buyer?” I inquired.

“I haven’t been able to determine his identity, but there is another trader attempting to obtain four percents. It hardly matters, though. If the price goes down a little or a lot-or even stays high-it is nothing to me.”

“But what of Pearson? Have you not ruined him for more purchases?” I asked.

“Not at all. He is like the drunkard who must have more wine. He has a taste of victory, and he will not let a little loss affect him. Indeed, he does not even know yet that he has lost. I believe I can extract another fifty or sixty thousand dollars of losses from him before he begins to grow suspicious, and by then it will be too late.”

While Duer delighted in his deception, I plotted mine. Duer now trusted me entirely, and soon it would be time for me to lead him to his own destruction.

After the phenomenal success of the initial opening of the Bank of the United States and the wild trade in scrip, a number of other banks began to make preparations to launch, and though they had no real means of sustaining themselves, they hoped that public enthusiasm for new banks would prop up what would be otherwise empty ventures and sustain operations until the banks could become self-sufficient.

The most unlikely of these ventures was something called the Million Bank, as much a political as an economic scheme launched by Hamilton ’s old political enemy Melancton Smith, with the aid of New York governor George Clinton, a fellow Hamilton-hater. I would never find a bank launched for worse reasons by more inept men. Anyone involved would be likely to incur Hamilton ’s anger, and I knew at once it was just the thing I required.

I saw Pearson as the perfect vehicle to lead Duer to the Million Bank, but I was not entirely certain how to convince him of my idea without incurring his suspicion, or perhaps his scorn. I therefore decided I would need to be more intimate with his family and arranged on several occasions to be introduced to Mrs. Pearson. I had anticipated a dour creature, someone cold either from a cruelty compatible with her husband’s or a weakness that made her subject to it, but it turned out that Mrs. Pearson was a pretty woman, with fair hair and blue eyes, lively and full of wit and good humor. Yes, there was an unmistakable sense of sadness in her. Given the nature of her husband, I could hardly be surprised.

Mrs. Pearson soon became my particular friend, and I enjoyed the times I spent with her. It had been a long time indeed since I’d had a close friendship with another woman, and Cynthia was for me the perfect companion: warm and intelligent, but streaked with a melancholy and cynicism that left her with no patience for the empty platitudes that pass for conversation in polite society. She had never known the hardship of the West, but she had known her own sort of hardship and seemed like a sister to me. Yet I lamented the co

One afternoon, while we drank tea in her parlor, I observed that Mr. Pearson was at home, and I had the distinct impression that he was listening to our conversation. I pushed the talk toward private matters, in particular the happiness I had known with my late husband. “Is it not a wonderful thing,” I said, “to have a husband with whom you can enjoy so much likeness of mind? Above all things, it is necessary to contentment that one’s spouse be agreeable.”