The Whiskey Rebels (7 page)

New York had suffered under the occupation, and remaining everywhere were signs of careless treatment of a place that was never to the British more than a campground and a plaything. Much of the city had been burned, and even now some buildings were but charred beams; others had been left in terrible conditions of decay, and the people—so many of whom had sided with the British—were now reduced to penury. Those royalists who had not fled wandered the city as though dazed, unable to believe they had bet upon the wrong horse and lost everything.

Yet, for all that, New York was a city on the rise. Though the dominant argument in the air was whether or not the new Constitution would receive ratification by the states, many New Yorkers were so convinced that they were to be the center of a new imperial experiment that they had already come to think of their city as the “empire city,” their state as the “empire state.” Everywhere, decayed streets metamorphosed into rows of charming brick houses with tiled roofs. Great boulevards of shopping—Wall Street, the Broad Way, and Greenwich Street—became almost daily more refined. In the distance to the north were quaint villages and farmland and, beyond that, sublime outcroppings of mountain and forest. We walked the cobbled streets of the new imperial capital, the rivers filled with forests of merchant-ship masts, yet we were surrounded by the untouched sublimity of nature. There could be nothing more American.

Though I lived in this city of commerce, I continued to have trouble writing my novel, principally because I still did not know what I wished to say. I sat, when I could find the time, with my books on finance: Postlethwayt’s
Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce,
Thomas Mortimer’s
Every Man His Own Broker,
Smith’s
Wealth of Nations,
and a thousand bone-dry pamphlets arguing on all matters from free trade to taxes to tariffs to pricing. Somewhere in all that reading, I was certain, was a novel.

Though women were not welcome, on a few occasions I made my way to the Merchant’s Coffeehouse on Wall Street, where commodities, bank issues, and government loans were traded in a kind of organized frenzy. Men shouted out prices, while others attempted to buy to advantage or sell before the price further declined. Here I thought was something else uniquely American. In England, jobbers traded their issues in London; in France, they traded in Paris; but in America, we traded in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston. What effect did a decentralized market have upon prices and upon a trader’s ability to profit? It seemed to me, even then, that an unscrupulous jobber with a few fast riders in his employ could exploit the system and profit handsomely. This too seemed to me fundamentally American, for we were a land where cleverness and ingenuity bled quickly into chicanery and fraud. How easily, I thought, in an untamed land did the steady energy of ambition become the twitchy mania of greed.

T
hat we had no child also lay heavily upon me. I became pregnant three times in the five years we lived in New York, but always I miscarried before the fourth month. The surgeons and midwives gave me all manner of medicines, but none served. As the years passed, I began to grow despondent. For no want of effort, I could produce neither book nor child.

I wish to make it clear that Andrew was perfectly capable as a carpenter and equally so as a man of business. He was thrifty and hard-working, skillful and exacting, and could we have afforded to establish ourselves upon a better street, I have no doubt he would have risen to prominence, but we were trapped in the horrible cycle of poverty made inevitable by our neighborhood. Andrew offered his services cheap, and we had business enough, but once we were done paying our rents and our bills, there was little left. Some months we earned less than we spent, and after years of trying to make the carpentry business pay, Andrew began to wonder if it would not be better if we gave it up and attempted something new, though what this would be, neither of us could yet say.

Like many soldiers, Andrew found that after his service the Continental government had no funds with which to pay him, but he had long held on to his promissory notes rather than, as had many others, sell them to speculators at a fraction of their face value. Then late in 1788, Andrew came home one evening in a thoughtful mood. After a spare meal, he told me he had something of great importance to discuss. He had met a man named William Duer, an influential merchant in the city and an associate of Alexander Hamilton, who was rumored to be the new Treasury Secretary when General Washington took office as the first president in April.

No one knew what future, if any, there might be for war debt held by the various states. Some said the federal government planned to assume these obligations and pay all promissory notes. Other said it would declare the debt void with magisterial apologies, and soldiers like my husband would be forced to accept that they would never receive their due. There was no way to tell, this Duer had said, but there were men who were willing to hazard the risk. They had acquired land inexpensively in western Pennsylvania, near the forks of the Ohio, and they were willing to trade this acreage for war debt, assuming the risk of its future payment.

I knew nothing promising or inviting of western Pennsylvania, but Andrew had always regretted leaving farming behind, so was this not our opportunity? The western land, Duer claimed, was wondrous fertile. Once we had been willing to put farming behind us, but after years of struggling in the city, perhaps what we required was something familiar.

I always believed Andrew to be more innocent than I and said I wished to meet with this Mr. Duer myself, so the next day we had him in the sitting room, such as it was, on the second floor of our little house. It rained outside, and all the while I was in a fret that the first floor would flood while there was company there to witness it.

Duer was a small man in build and stature, in his forties, well groomed, with delicate features that made him look vaguely girlish but not effeminate. He was too fussy for that, like a squirrel worrying a nut. His pale brown eyes darted rapidly but lingered on nothing for long. Andrew and I sat on a cushioned bench, while Mr. Duer sat in a finely crafted chair—Andrew had made it himself—across from us, sipping tea and smiling with a small mouth full of very small teeth. With the cup in his hand, he rocked slightly with what I supposed was enthusiasm or an excess of energy. “It is a considerable undertaking,” he said. His voice was slightly high-pitched, slightly whiny. It cracked upon long vowel sounds. “You must decide if you will move to western Pennsylvania, a land you have never visited, and start anew. The journey west is long, and it is far from everything you know. However, it is also a marvelous opportunity for many people, people who were never paid by the country they served, to exchange their intangible notes for land of real value.”

“If the land has value and the notes do not, why do you propose such a trade?” I asked.

He raised his teacup to Andrew in salute. I noticed the cuffs of his sleeves were unnaturally white. “This is a clever woman you have here, clever and observant. There are some small-minded men who regard a clever woman as a curse, but I am not one of them. I admire a clever woman prodigiously, and I congratulate you upon her.”

“And yet you have not answered her question,” said Andrew.

“My own wife, Lady Kitty, is also such a woman, and cousins, you know, with the wife of Colonel Hamilton.”

“You clearly have an excellent domestic arrangement,” I offered.

“Yes, thank you. Most excellent. Now, you see, Mr. Maycott, western land is fertile, but cheap because it is so plentiful; there is far more land than there are people to settle upon it. The land is cheap for me to buy, but for those who wish to live, to farm, to have a life of plenty away from the city, it is of real value, for the land will grow nearly anything and livestock will thrive. Winters there are mild; summers are long and pleasant, without being oppressive and unwholesome as they can be here.”

He handed Andrew a pamphlet entitled “An Account of the Lands of Western Pennsylvania,” which, we discovered when we later read it, described an agrarian paradise. Rows of corn and vegetables that grew almost without husbandry. Because the land was so easily worked, families there had more free time than they did upon other farmlands, and balls, with fanciful homemade gowns and suits, had become something of a passion. It was a place of rural refinement, unlike any other in the world, for only in this new country, where good land remained unclaimed, could there be such independence and success. The dream of the American republic might have been born in the East, but it was reaching full flower in the West.

“I shoulder the risk in this investment,” Duer said. “Should the new government decide to assume the war debt, then I will profit. If it chooses not to—well, the land was got cheaply, and the loss will not do me great harm. In any exchange of this sort, each side makes a wager that he will be better off than he was before, but a speculator must also look at the consequences of losing. In my case, I will be poorer for the loss, but I must lose sometimes, and I do not chance what I cannot bear to part with. In your case, if you hazard and lose—which is to say, you do not like your new circumstances—you have parted with paper notes, perhaps worth some cash someday, perhaps not. On the other hand, you will still have your lands, your wealth in food and crops, and your independence.”

Andrew wore a serious expression, but I knew it belied his enthusiasm. He would be imagining the farms of our youth, a table on which a suckling pig steamed, surrounded by bowls of cabbage and carrots and potatoes and warm bread, all arising from the work of his own hands. Maybe the land would not be worth much to sell, but that was now. What of our children? Andrew believed the city air unhealthy. We would have children in the country, and they would inherit the land, which, as the nation moved west, would increase in value.

I was not, however, so eager. “I am concerned about Indians,” I said. “I have read more than one account of Westerners set upon by them. Men killed, children killed or abducted, women forced to become Indian brides.”

“It is a clever woman,” Duer said to Andrew, “who thinks of such things. And she is well informed, I see. I congratulate you, sir, upon her excellence.”

“Perhaps you should congratulate the lady directly,” Andrew suggested.

Duer smiled very politely—at Andrew. “Yes, the savages were a menace during the war, but that was owing to the influence of the British. Now the Indians have been run off—all but those who’ve embraced our savior. Just as their pagan brethren can be savage beyond imagination, the ones who accept religion become like saints. They live upon the most Christian principles, never raising their hands in violence. All say they make better neighbors than the white men. Not that white men have excessive faults, but the novelty of Christianity inspires the Indians to take its teaching to heart and to keep its doctrines foremost in their minds.”

“Perhaps we could go look at the lands,” I said. “Then we will let you know.”

“Your excellent wife proposes an excellent idea,” Duer said. “Many prefer to do so. I know of a group traveling out that way in two weeks. It should take them no more than a month and a half to make the journey, though it may take you some time more to return, for you will need an eastward-heading party. In the lands we speak of, the Indians have been quite quelled, but in the wilderness between it is still safe only to travel in large groups.”

Andrew shook his head. “I cannot afford to keep my house and yet not work my shop. I do not see how we can travel out there to inspect our property.”

“If we cannot see the land, we cannot buy it,” I said. “I am sure you understand that.”

“Absolutely. If you cannot see the land, then of course you cannot buy it.” Mr. Duer began to collect his things and spout pleasantries about how if we needed anything of him, we should not hesitate to call. Then he stopped himself in mid-sentence. “A thought occurs to me. It is the very germ of an idea. Hold.” He held out one hand in a gesture directing us to halt while he collected this notion from the ether. “Would it have some effect if you could speak to someone who has seen the lands—who has lived upon them?”

“I cannot say for certain,” Andrew said. “It should very much depend upon the person.”

“It
should
depend upon the person, I agree. And it
would
help to speak to such a man. As it happens, I know of a landowner who is in town this very week,” he said. “Perhaps I could persuade him to take a few moments to answer your questions.”

W
e agreed it would be a worthwhile conversation to have, and two days later he was back in our parlor, this time accompanied by a rough-looking fellow called James Reynolds. He was perhaps no older than my Andrew, but his face was cracked and wind-beaten and sun-blasted. Across his right eye a scar stretched from his forehead down almost to his mouth, half an inch wide, a deep gulf of violence that had mysteriously left his twitching eye intact. He wore homespun clothes of a rugged material, but they were nicely tailored and by no means out of fashion. Indeed, he carried himself with the rigid posture of a proud gentleman planter, though his manner was a bit more coarse. His teeth were sepia from a tobacco habit, and he was inclined to wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

He sipped at his tea, holding the whole cup with a strange caution, as though he might forget himself and crush it like an empty eggshell “So, Mr. Duer here wants me to tell you about Libertytown.” His voice was thick, as if his throat were coated in gravel.

“Libertytown,” Andrew repeated.

Reynolds smiled. “Most of us served in some way or another, during the war.”

“Are you satisfied with your life there?” Andrew asked.

“You have to understand, I wasn’t born to money. My mother was a seamstress, and my father died young. In Libertytown, I work my own land, and I take orders from no one. I grow more than I need, trade some of the surplus to the other farmers, and the rest we cart back east. I’ve got a little bit put away now. I didn’t have that much debt to exchange, not so much as you, so I’ll never be rich off my land. But I’ll tell you this: I won’t never be poor neither.”