The Whiskey Rebels (18 page)

W
e walked to the offices of the Treasury upon Third Street at the corner of Walnut. Leonidas was clearly still harboring resentment over our conversation, but my thoughts were already elsewhere. All around us hurried clusters of men who appeared too big for their suits. Walnut Street was the center of finance in Philadelphia, and of late it had been a place where clever and ruthless men could easily fatten themselves a little further.

Hamilton had launched his bank the previous summer, using an ingenious system of scrip—certificates that stood not for bank shares but for the opportunity to purchase those shares. Scrip holders could later, on a series of four predetermined quarterly dates, buy actual bank shares, using cash for half the payments and already-circulating government issues for the other half. These issues—six percent government loans—had been performing poorly in the markets, attracting little interest, so Hamilton’s method promoted trade in the six percents, since scrip holders needed to acquire them in order to exchange their scrip for full ownership of the bank shares. In addition to strengthening a market for already existing government issues, Hamilton’s scheme created a frenzy for the new Bank of the United States shares; the act of delaying gratification fueled the mania, and in a matter of weeks speculators were earning two or three times on their investment. Then, just as manically as the price soared, it crashed to earth, producing a panic. Hamilton had saved his bank only by sending his agents to the major trading cities—New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Charleston, as well as here in Philadelphia—to buy up scrip and settle the market. Many unwary investors lost everything they had, but clever men made themselves richer.

No harm done, one might say, but there were those who thought otherwise. Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State and Hamilton’s great enemy, argued that this mania proved the bank was a destructive force. Jefferson and his republican followers believed that the true center of American power must be agriculture. A national bank would empower merchants and traders and turn the nation into a copy of Britain—that is, a sink of corruption. I’d been inclined to side with the Jeffersonians on this point, though in truth I’d not given things too much thought. I merely chose to be opposed to anything that Hamilton desired.

The center of this new American trickery and greed was the Treasury Department, now located in a complex of conjoined private homes, roughly converted for the purpose of housing the largest of the federal government’s departments. We stepped through the front door and were met not by an austere and magisterial lobby but by a frenzy of excitement, hardly less riotous than the jostling of traders outside. Men scribbled away furiously at desks or rushed to bring one meaningless stack of papers to a place where an equally meaningless stack would be taken instead. Everywhere were clerks, busily writing and tallying and, many believed, plotting the downfall of liberty. I gave a clerk near the door my name. He looked at me most unkindly, but soon enough we were directed to Hamilton’s office.

Not until that moment had I considered what was about to happen. Hamilton had cast me out of the army and made free with my name, letting the world hear the lies that I was a traitor. His actions had led directly to the death of my great friend. Now, ten years later, I was about to present myself to him, red-eyed and haggard, in a wrinkled and stained suit, and beg that he make me privy to what he seemed to regard as state secrets. I felt anger and humiliation, and I wished to run away, but instead I marched forward, as a man marches forward to the noose that is to hang him.

I took deep breaths and attempted to anticipate the scene that lay before me. Since returning to Philadelphia I’d seen Hamilton a few times upon the street, but I had kept my distance, wanting no discourse with him. I’d not had an opportunity to see him close since the end of the war, and I was now pleased to observe that he was not looking his best. He was a year or two older than I was but looked as though the span were closer to ten years. He had grown plump in office, jowly in the face, saggy under the eyes. His nose was as long as ever, but it seemed to be growing, as the noses of old faces do, and he had begun to lose his hair, which must have displeased his vain and libertine nature. Clearly the duties and difficulties of being one of the most hated men in the nation had begun to affect him. They had affected his clothes too, for his suit looked faded and shiny in spots. Perhaps the Treasury Secretary ought to present himself to better advantage, but then even I knew the rumors of his enriching himself off government funds were false. The less popular truth was that Hamilton had so dedicated his time to promoting his policies that he had allowed his own finances to suffer.

If, however, he looked less than his best, he was certainly formal. He rose when we entered his spare-looking office—short upon decorative flourishes, but long upon filing cabinets, imposing-looking financial volumes, and writing desks filled with ledgers and charts. As for his own desk, it was as neat as though no one used it. Hamilton, I recalled, from his days as Washington’s chief of staff, loathed a cluttered workplace.

Once upon his feet, and thus revealing his short stature, he approached us. He took my hand and shook it warmly, and such was my surprise that I could not but allow this to happen. “Captain Saunders, it has been many years.” He appeared—and I found this shocking—pleased to see me. It is usual that a man hates no one so much as a person he has wronged. But here was Hamilton, smiling, his eyes crinkling with pleasure, his cheeks rosy. Perhaps my presence recalled to him fond memories of life as a young officer in a momentous war. Perhaps he merely rejoiced to see me looking so poorly.

I let go of his hand, for I did not love his touch. “It has, in fact, been many years.”

“Many years,” he repeated, not knowing what else to say. He looked at Leonidas and then brightened, no doubt with the hope of easing the tension. “Please introduce me to your colleague.” He said it with no inflection, but I knew his motive was only mischief. He did not approve of the mistreatment of Negroes and opposed all slavery.

“This is my man, Leonidas.”

Hamilton now shook his hand and applied his charm, justly legendary.

“I trust you will sit,” he said, with a gesture to a cluster of chairs before his desk. “I am astonishingly busy. You cannot imagine the demands upon my time, but I can take a few minutes for an old comrade. I should like to say I hope you are well, but I presume, if you will excuse me for observing what is obvious, that you are in some distress. If you have come for assistance, we shall see how we can help you.”

I credited his presumption, making polite observations on my appearance and suggesting that he was available to assist me. Did he forget that it was he who had ruined my life, expelled me from the army, and made certain the world heard the tales of my supposed treachery? Was it of so little import to him that it slipped his mind? Had he done harm to so many over the years that he no longer even recalled the particular instances of his perfidy? Or did he merely enjoy playing the munificent despot?

Leonidas and I sat in two chairs before his desk. Hamilton returned to his own seat. He took a detour to a sideboard and I thought he meant to offer us drink, but then he glanced at me and changed his mind. Instead, he sat and placed upon his face a look of important expectation.

I waited a moment, the better to make him slightly uncomfortable, to feel slightly less in control. “I have had a difficult few days,” I said at last, “as my appearance will testify, and I believe it has some small relation to an inquiry you are running out of your department. You look into the affairs of Mr. Jacob Pearson?”

He hesitated a moment and then nodded. “It is not commonly known, nor would I have it so, but as you seem already familiar with some general facts, I will admit it but ask for your silence.”

Ironic, I thought, coming from him. “You need not concern yourself with that. But, as it happens, my path has crossed with your kinsman Mr. Lavien.”

“He is not my kinsman,” said Hamilton, with some force. It was hard enough for him to have the world know he was born a West Indian bastard, but if the world were to think him a Jew he would die from shame. “He is, however, a remarkable man.”

“I should like to assist him in his case. In short, I should like the government to employ me to use the skills I honed during the war to serve you in this and other matters.”

Hamilton kept his face remarkably devoid of expression. “I see.”

“Captain Saunders is already materially involved,” said Leonidas. “He has suffered physical attack and the loss of his home. He is personally caught up in the matter, and he is also possessed of certain skills, relatively rare as I understand it.”

“And you are certainly a strong advocate, Leonidas,” said Hamilton, who apparently delighted in having someone to speak to who was not me. “But it cannot be.”

“Why can it not be?” I asked.

“I am not ignorant of the past,” said Hamilton. “You had a connection to Mrs. Pearson once, did you not?”

“She is Fleet’s daughter,” I said.
You recollect Fleet, whom you hounded to death.
I did not say it, though. I am not so foolish as that.

“I am well aware of that, which alone would make it a difficult matter. But it was commonly said that you and she were once engaged to marry.”

“It was never so formal as that, though who can say how things might have gone had you not cashiered us out of the army and then ruined my reputation? Of course, had you not done so, Fleet might yet be alive.”

“Captain,” he said gently, “you do your case poor service with these accusations.”

“Is there anything I could say that would do my case good service?”

“No, my mind is quite made up on this matter.”

“Then I feel quite at my liberty to call you the rascal you are,” I said.

Leonidas put a hand upon my arm. He turned to Hamilton. “Captain Saunders does not intend to be so harsh, but his need is great.”

“Oh, I think he intends it. I have become a convenient object of hatred and blame for him over the years—don’t think I haven’t heard that you say so, doing no small injury to my own reputation, I might add—but I must clarify a point or two. You know well, Captain, that dismissing you from the army was the only way to save your life. You were under my command when the charges were leveled against you and Captain Fleet. Had I not agreed to a discharge, you would have been court-martialed and likely executed.”

“I ought not to have let you talk me into destroying my own reputation.”

“The evidence against you was strong,” he said. “It might have been a British sham. They may have had enough of your tricks and decided to let us deal with you by allowing us to find false evidence. But remember the mood of the army in those days, the exhaustion and setbacks we’d suffered. Men were still raw from Arnold’s betrayal, and at that crucial hour another pair of officers in league with the British would not have been treated well.”

It was perhaps unfair to blame him for Fleet’s death—by all accounts Fleet had initiated a fight and come out the loser—but I blamed him anyhow. And, of course, there was more. “What of my reputation? You promised me then that no one would hear of it, yet by the time I returned to Philadelphia it was common knowledge.”

“I know,” said Hamilton softly, “but I was not the one who made it so. I swore to keep it a secret, but in an army nothing can be a secret for long. I spent the better part of a week trying to find out who had spoken out of turn—I need not tell you how serious a thing that is before a major battle—but I could learn nothing. If you like, Captain, I can parade before you a dozen officers who will recall, ten years later, the fear I put into them over this matter.”

“Then you are not the one who ruined Captain Saunders’s reputation?” Leonidas asked.

“Of course not,” he said. “Why would I? You have wasted your time hating the wrong man. My God, Saunders, why did you not simply ask me? You were always a man who could sniff out a lie. You would have known if I had tried to deceive you.”

I
could
sniff out a lie, he was right in that. It was why I sat in astonishment, for I believed him now. His voice was so free, so easy, so empty of guile, I could not help but believe him. For the past ten years I’d cursed the name of Hamilton, considered him a villain and an enemy, and now it seems he was not. I felt sick and foolish and drunk. And, much as I had the night before with Mrs. Lavien, I felt ashamed.

I
remained silent, trying to think of everything and blot out all memory and to do both these things at once. While I considered this revelation, too astonished and angry to speak, Leonidas made polite conversation. I looked over at Hamilton, hardly knowing what to make of the long patrician face before me. For ten years I had hated this man as the author of my ruin, and when the country, at least the Jeffersonian part of it, began to hate him as well, to make him the central agent of corruption in our government, I could not help but feel that, at last, the universe had aligned itself with my perceptions of it. Now, it seemed, I hardly knew anything of the man.

When I turned my attention to his conversation with my slave, it seemed they were talking of my troubles with my landlady.

“And this happened the same night Mrs. Pearson contacted him?” Hamilton was saying. “That does sound suspicious. Captain, I cannot pay your way in the world, but I can send a representative to speak to your landlady and ask her, on behalf of the government, to give you three months to set your affairs in order. Will that be sufficient?”

“It is kind,” I admitted grudgingly, though I attempted not to sound sullen. One never likes to see a man he is used to hating prove himself magnanimous. “I am grateful, but I must ask you again to put me to work, to make use of my skills.”

“Your skills are formidable, and I could use a man like you,” he said, “but I cannot have you inquiring into something involving these people to whom you are so nearly connected. Not only will I not engage your services, I must ask you to have nothing to do with the matter. Stay out of Lavien’s way.”