From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com

Chapter One

Duer’s Disgrace

The new nation’s first financial panic was not long in coming, threatening to reach its climax on the night of April 18, 1792. The shouting started outside William Duer’s cell in the “New Gaol,” a debtors’ prison near the New York City commons
at the northeast corner of what is now City Hall Park. A diverse crowd of three to five hundred “disorderly persons” had gathered there to confront him that evening, including cart men, artisans, and slaves. What began with shouts, catcalls, and a
few stones tossed at the prison’s windows soon escalated into an old-fashioned New York riot.

Colonel William Duer was nearly fifty, a small and delicate man born into a wealthy English family with plantations in the Anglo-Caribbean colonies of Antigua and Dominica. Educated at Eton, Duer had come to New York in 1768 searching for timber for
his family’s Dominican plantation. Seeing greater opportunities in New York, he had borrowed £1,400 from his sister and established himself the next year on a large plot of land along the Hudson River. With his charming wife, “Lady Kitty,” he had
defied convention by dressing his servants in livery, creating a family crest of arms, and entertaining aristocrats in a fashionable town house one block north of Wall Street. As the Revolution began, he used his growing social network in New York to
become a furnishing merchant, supplying timber, planks, and provisions to the Continental army. By 1780 he was worth more than £400,000, or nearly 2 million. After the Revolution, he had become a member of the powerful Board of Treasury under the
Continental Congress, a government bond dealer, and a stock market trader.

But on March 23, 1792, less than a month before the fracas outside, Duer had voluntarily entered the New Gaol to hide from his creditors. By ancient rules of bankruptcy that still applied in New York, debtors’ prisons were designed to shake money
out of debtors, their friends, and their families. Duer’s neighbors in the New Gaol included many who had overleveraged, but no one who had leveraged so much.

At the height of the mayhem outside the prison, some in the crowd reportedly shouted, “We will have Mr. Duer, he has gotten our money.” Threatening to remove Duer bodily from his cell, the crowd began to throw paving stones, breaking windows and
streetlamps. Well after dusk, “friends of legal restraint and good order” helped the city magistrates to arrest some of the most troublesome members of the crowd, including several artisans, the merchant John Hazard, and Tom, a slave owned by Joseph
Towers. For the next few nights, crowds returned to the jail to threaten vengeance. The magistrate assigned Duer his own personal guard, though by the middle of April civil authorities and brick prison walls seemed little protection against a mob bent on
repossessing the colonel’s assets in this world and sending him to the next one.

At the time he entered prison, it was estimated that Duer, America’s first famous deadbeat, had defaulted on promises worth more than $2 million. By some estimates this was more than half the nation’s supply of readily available money. For though
the American colonies had revolted against the English crown more than ten years earlier, capital, education, and power in America were still concentrated among a small group of insiders. Duer was at the center of this financial network, the man who
hired the auctioneers who sold bonds in coffeehouses and shouted current prices from tree stumps on New York’s Wall Street. When he placed a bid, every head turned to see which way his money was moving. In today’s parlance, Duer was a market maker.

In the beginning of March, Duer and his associates borrowed more than $800,000 to corner the market on U.S. bonds. Few understood that he had bet most of his fortune. When his credit got tight later that month, he had his assistants privately borrow
gold and silver at high interest from many of New York’s most unlikely lenders. “Besides shopkeepers, Widows, [and] orphans,” wrote his associate Seth Johnson, Duer owed “Butchers, Car[t]men, Gardners, market women, & even the noted Bawd Mrs.
Macarty—many of them if they are unpaid are ruined.”

In addition to the sufferers outside the New Gaol, the nation’s tiny financial elite—men who spent their hours and their fortunes in the coffeehouses of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York—faced financial ruin. Scores of Duer’s merchant friends
along the Eastern Seaboard had signed now-overdue promissory notes on faith under Colonel Duer’s name. Most now rued the day they had ever met the man. Some disappeared into the western wilderness or crossed into Canada to escape Duer’s fate.

By April all five branches of the newly established Bank of the United States had restricted lending. Lenders demanded immediate settlement in gold and silver. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton sought to buoy the nation’s tiny stock and
securities market by buying back federal Treasuries, but few lenders were accepting anything but gold. In May interest rates on short-term loans approached 96 percent, or 8 percent per month. Soon there were rumors that creditors in Connecticut were
demanding that Congress make good on Duer’s debts. Many doubted if the new nation could survive its first financial crisis. But that is getting a bit ahead of the story.

How To Fund A Revolution?

After Americans and British troops began to exchange gunfire at Lexington and Concord in 1775, merchants with capital had to make a decision: support the Revolution or support the crown? Duer and a small group of New York and New England merchant
adventurers with names like Roosevelt, Bleecker, Melvill, and Morris threw their financial backing behind the American partisans. They took enormous risks in challenging the British crown, but many of Duer’s associates profited handsomely by providing
high-interest loans to this newly formed government.


[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)

From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com

On Monday, December 27, 2021 at 10:56:06 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

Chapter One

Duer’s Disgrace

The new nation’s first financial panic was not long in coming, threatening to reach its climax on the night of April 18, 1792. The shouting started outside William Duer’s cell in the “New Gaol,” a debtors’ prison near the New York City

commons at the northeast corner of what is now City Hall Park. A diverse crowd of three to five hundred “disorderly persons” had gathered there to confront him that evening, including cart men, artisans, and slaves. What began with shouts, catcalls,
and a few stones tossed at the prison’s windows soon escalated into an old-fashioned New York riot.

Colonel William Duer was nearly fifty, a small and delicate man born into a wealthy English family with plantations in the Anglo-Caribbean colonies of Antigua and Dominica. Educated at Eton, Duer had come to New York in 1768 searching for timber for

his family’s Dominican plantation. Seeing greater opportunities in New York, he had borrowed £1,400 from his sister and established himself the next year on a large plot of land along the Hudson River. With his charming wife, “Lady Kitty,” he had
defied convention by dressing his servants in livery, creating a family crest of arms, and entertaining aristocrats in a fashionable town house one block north of Wall Street. As the Revolution began, he used his growing social network in New York to
become a furnishing merchant, supplying timber, planks, and provisions to the Continental army. By 1780 he was worth more than £400,000, or nearly 2 million. After the Revolution, he had become a member of the powerful Board of Treasury under the
Continental Congress, a government bond dealer, and a stock market trader.

But on March 23, 1792, less than a month before the fracas outside, Duer had voluntarily entered the New Gaol to hide from his creditors. By ancient rules of bankruptcy that still applied in New York, debtors’ prisons were designed to shake money out

of debtors, their friends, and their families. Duer’s neighbors in the New Gaol included many who had overleveraged, but no one who had leveraged so much.

At the height of the mayhem outside the prison, some in the crowd reportedly shouted, “We will have Mr. Duer, he has gotten our money.” Threatening to remove Duer bodily from his cell, the crowd began to throw paving stones, breaking windows and

streetlamps. Well after dusk, “friends of legal restraint and good order” helped the city magistrates to arrest some of the most troublesome members of the crowd, including several artisans, the merchant John Hazard, and Tom, a slave owned by Joseph
Towers. For the next few nights, crowds returned to the jail to threaten vengeance. The magistrate assigned Duer his own personal guard, though by the middle of April civil authorities and brick prison walls seemed little protection against a mob bent on
repossessing the colonel’s assets in this world and sending him to the next one.

At the time he entered prison, it was estimated that Duer, America’s first famous deadbeat, had defaulted on promises worth more than $2 million. By some estimates this was more than half the nation’s supply of readily available money. For though

the American colonies had revolted against the English crown more than ten years earlier, capital, education, and power in America were still concentrated among a small group of insiders. Duer was at the center of this financial network, the man who
hired the auctioneers who sold bonds in coffeehouses and shouted current prices from tree stumps on New York’s Wall Street. When he placed a bid, every head turned to see which way his money was moving. In today’s parlance, Duer was a market maker.

In the beginning of March, Duer and his associates borrowed more than $800,000 to corner the market on U.S. bonds. Few understood that he had bet most of his fortune. When his credit got tight later that month, he had his assistants privately borrow

gold and silver at high interest from many of New York’s most unlikely lenders. “Besides shopkeepers, Widows, [and] orphans,” wrote his associate Seth Johnson, Duer owed “Butchers, Car[t]men, Gardners, market women, & even the noted Bawd Mrs.
Macarty—many of them if they are unpaid are ruined.”

In addition to the sufferers outside the New Gaol, the nation’s tiny financial elite—men who spent their hours and their fortunes in the coffeehouses of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York—faced financial ruin. Scores of Duer’s merchant friends

along the Eastern Seaboard had signed now-overdue promissory notes on faith under Colonel Duer’s name. Most now rued the day they had ever met the man. Some disappeared into the western wilderness or crossed into Canada to escape Duer’s fate.

By April all five branches of the newly established Bank of the United States had restricted lending. Lenders demanded immediate settlement in gold and silver. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton sought to buoy the nation’s tiny stock and

securities market by buying back federal Treasuries, but few lenders were accepting anything but gold. In May interest rates on short-term loans approached 96 percent, or 8 percent per month. Soon there were rumors that creditors in Connecticut were
demanding that Congress make good on Duer’s debts. Many doubted if the new nation could survive its first financial crisis. But that is getting a bit ahead of the story.

How To Fund A Revolution?

After Americans and British troops began to exchange gunfire at Lexington and Concord in 1775, merchants with capital had to make a decision: support the Revolution or support the crown? Duer and a small group of New York and New England merchant

adventurers with names like Roosevelt, Bleecker, Melvill, and Morris threw their financial backing behind the American partisans. They took enormous risks in challenging the British crown, but many of Duer’s associates profited handsomely by providing
high-interest loans to this newly formed government.


[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)

From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com

On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 2:12:35 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

On Monday, December 27, 2021 at 10:56:06 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

Chapter One

Duer’s Disgrace

The new nation’s first financial panic was not long in coming, threatening to reach its climax on the night of April 18, 1792. The shouting started outside William Duer’s cell in the “New Gaol,” a debtors’ prison near the New York City

commons at the northeast corner of what is now City Hall Park. A diverse crowd of three to five hundred “disorderly persons” had gathered there to confront him that evening, including cart men, artisans, and slaves. What began with shouts, catcalls,
and a few stones tossed at the prison’s windows soon escalated into an old-fashioned New York riot.

Colonel William Duer was nearly fifty, a small and delicate man born into a wealthy English family with plantations in the Anglo-Caribbean colonies of Antigua and Dominica. Educated at Eton, Duer had come to New York in 1768 searching for timber for

his family’s Dominican plantation. Seeing greater opportunities in New York, he had borrowed £1,400 from his sister and established himself the next year on a large plot of land along the Hudson River. With his charming wife, “Lady Kitty,” he had
defied convention by dressing his servants in livery, creating a family crest of arms, and entertaining aristocrats in a fashionable town house one block north of Wall Street. As the Revolution began, he used his growing social network in New York to
become a furnishing merchant, supplying timber, planks, and provisions to the Continental army. By 1780 he was worth more than £400,000, or nearly 2 million. After the Revolution, he had become a member of the powerful Board of Treasury under the
Continental Congress, a government bond dealer, and a stock market trader.

But on March 23, 1792, less than a month before the fracas outside, Duer had voluntarily entered the New Gaol to hide from his creditors. By ancient rules of bankruptcy that still applied in New York, debtors’ prisons were designed to shake money

out of debtors, their friends, and their families. Duer’s neighbors in the New Gaol included many who had overleveraged, but no one who had leveraged so much.

At the height of the mayhem outside the prison, some in the crowd reportedly shouted, “We will have Mr. Duer, he has gotten our money.” Threatening to remove Duer bodily from his cell, the crowd began to throw paving stones, breaking windows and

streetlamps. Well after dusk, “friends of legal restraint and good order” helped the city magistrates to arrest some of the most troublesome members of the crowd, including several artisans, the merchant John Hazard, and Tom, a slave owned by Joseph
Towers. For the next few nights, crowds returned to the jail to threaten vengeance. The magistrate assigned Duer his own personal guard, though by the middle of April civil authorities and brick prison walls seemed little protection against a mob bent on
repossessing the colonel’s assets in this world and sending him to the next one.

At the time he entered prison, it was estimated that Duer, America’s first famous deadbeat, had defaulted on promises worth more than $2 million. By some estimates this was more than half the nation’s supply of readily available money. For though

the American colonies had revolted against the English crown more than ten years earlier, capital, education, and power in America were still concentrated among a small group of insiders. Duer was at the center of this financial network, the man who
hired the auctioneers who sold bonds in coffeehouses and shouted current prices from tree stumps on New York’s Wall Street. When he placed a bid, every head turned to see which way his money was moving. In today’s parlance, Duer was a market maker.

In the beginning of March, Duer and his associates borrowed more than $800,000 to corner the market on U.S. bonds. Few understood that he had bet most of his fortune. When his credit got tight later that month, he had his assistants privately borrow

gold and silver at high interest from many of New York’s most unlikely lenders. “Besides shopkeepers, Widows, [and] orphans,” wrote his associate Seth Johnson, Duer owed “Butchers, Car[t]men, Gardners, market women, & even the noted Bawd Mrs.
Macarty—many of them if they are unpaid are ruined.”

In addition to the sufferers outside the New Gaol, the nation’s tiny financial elite—men who spent their hours and their fortunes in the coffeehouses of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York—faced financial ruin. Scores of Duer’s merchant

friends along the Eastern Seaboard had signed now-overdue promissory notes on faith under Colonel Duer’s name. Most now rued the day they had ever met the man. Some disappeared into the western wilderness or crossed into Canada to escape Duer’s fate.

By April all five branches of the newly established Bank of the United States had restricted lending. Lenders demanded immediate settlement in gold and silver. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton sought to buoy the nation’s tiny stock and

securities market by buying back federal Treasuries, but few lenders were accepting anything but gold. In May interest rates on short-term loans approached 96 percent, or 8 percent per month. Soon there were rumors that creditors in Connecticut were
demanding that Congress make good on Duer’s debts. Many doubted if the new nation could survive its first financial crisis. But that is getting a bit ahead of the story.

How To Fund A Revolution?

After Americans and British troops began to exchange gunfire at Lexington and Concord in 1775, merchants with capital had to make a decision: support the Revolution or support the crown? Duer and a small group of New York and New England merchant

adventurers with names like Roosevelt, Bleecker, Melvill, and Morris threw their financial backing behind the American partisans. They took enormous risks in challenging the British crown, but many of Duer’s associates profited handsomely by providing
high-interest loans to this newly formed government.


[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)

From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com

On Friday, December 31, 2021 at 2:51:22 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 2:12:35 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

On Monday, December 27, 2021 at 10:56:06 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

Chapter One

Duer’s Disgrace

The new nation’s first financial panic was not long in coming, threatening to reach its climax on the night of April 18, 1792. The shouting started outside William Duer’s cell in the “New Gaol,” a debtors’ prison near the New York City

commons at the northeast corner of what is now City Hall Park. A diverse crowd of three to five hundred “disorderly persons” had gathered there to confront him that evening, including cart men, artisans, and slaves. What began with shouts, catcalls,
and a few stones tossed at the prison’s windows soon escalated into an old-fashioned New York riot.

Colonel William Duer was nearly fifty, a small and delicate man born into a wealthy English family with plantations in the Anglo-Caribbean colonies of Antigua and Dominica. Educated at Eton, Duer had come to New York in 1768 searching for timber

for his family’s Dominican plantation. Seeing greater opportunities in New York, he had borrowed £1,400 from his sister and established himself the next year on a large plot of land along the Hudson River. With his charming wife, “Lady Kitty,” he
had defied convention by dressing his servants in livery, creating a family crest of arms, and entertaining aristocrats in a fashionable town house one block north of Wall Street. As the Revolution began, he used his growing social network in New York to
become a furnishing merchant, supplying timber, planks, and provisions to the Continental army. By 1780 he was worth more than £400,000, or nearly 2 million. After the Revolution, he had become a member of the powerful Board of Treasury under the
Continental Congress, a government bond dealer, and a stock market trader.

But on March 23, 1792, less than a month before the fracas outside, Duer had voluntarily entered the New Gaol to hide from his creditors. By ancient rules of bankruptcy that still applied in New York, debtors’ prisons were designed to shake money

out of debtors, their friends, and their families. Duer’s neighbors in the New Gaol included many who had overleveraged, but no one who had leveraged so much.

At the height of the mayhem outside the prison, some in the crowd reportedly shouted, “We will have Mr. Duer, he has gotten our money.” Threatening to remove Duer bodily from his cell, the crowd began to throw paving stones, breaking windows

and streetlamps. Well after dusk, “friends of legal restraint and good order” helped the city magistrates to arrest some of the most troublesome members of the crowd, including several artisans, the merchant John Hazard, and Tom, a slave owned by
Joseph Towers. For the next few nights, crowds returned to the jail to threaten vengeance. The magistrate assigned Duer his own personal guard, though by the middle of April civil authorities and brick prison walls seemed little protection against a mob
bent on repossessing the colonel’s assets in this world and sending him to the next one.

At the time he entered prison, it was estimated that Duer, America’s first famous deadbeat, had defaulted on promises worth more than $2 million. By some estimates this was more than half the nation’s supply of readily available money. For

though the American colonies had revolted against the English crown more than ten years earlier, capital, education, and power in America were still concentrated among a small group of insiders. Duer was at the center of this financial network, the man
who hired the auctioneers who sold bonds in coffeehouses and shouted current prices from tree stumps on New York’s Wall Street. When he placed a bid, every head turned to see which way his money was moving. In today’s parlance, Duer was a market
maker.

In the beginning of March, Duer and his associates borrowed more than $800,000 to corner the market on U.S. bonds. Few understood that he had bet most of his fortune. When his credit got tight later that month, he had his assistants privately

borrow gold and silver at high interest from many of New York’s most unlikely lenders. “Besides shopkeepers, Widows, [and] orphans,” wrote his associate Seth Johnson, Duer owed “Butchers, Car[t]men, Gardners, market women, & even the noted Bawd
Mrs. Macarty—many of them if they are unpaid are ruined.”

In addition to the sufferers outside the New Gaol, the nation’s tiny financial elite—men who spent their hours and their fortunes in the coffeehouses of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York—faced financial ruin. Scores of Duer’s merchant

friends along the Eastern Seaboard had signed now-overdue promissory notes on faith under Colonel Duer’s name. Most now rued the day they had ever met the man. Some disappeared into the western wilderness or crossed into Canada to escape Duer’s fate.

By April all five branches of the newly established Bank of the United States had restricted lending. Lenders demanded immediate settlement in gold and silver. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton sought to buoy the nation’s tiny stock

and securities market by buying back federal Treasuries, but few lenders were accepting anything but gold. In May interest rates on short-term loans approached 96 percent, or 8 percent per month. Soon there were rumors that creditors in Connecticut were
demanding that Congress make good on Duer’s debts. Many doubted if the new nation could survive its first financial crisis. But that is getting a bit ahead of the story.

How To Fund A Revolution?

After Americans and British troops began to exchange gunfire at Lexington and Concord in 1775, merchants with capital had to make a decision: support the Revolution or support the crown? Duer and a small group of New York and New England merchant

adventurers with names like Roosevelt, Bleecker, Melvill, and Morris threw their financial backing behind the American partisans. They took enormous risks in challenging the British crown, but many of Duer’s associates profited handsomely by providing
high-interest loans to this newly formed government.

[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)

From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com

On Tuesday, January 4, 2022 at 11:57:22 AM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

On Friday, December 31, 2021 at 2:51:22 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 2:12:35 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

On Monday, December 27, 2021 at 10:56:06 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

Chapter One

Duer’s Disgrace

The new nation’s first financial panic was not long in coming, threatening to reach its climax on the night of April 18, 1792. The shouting started outside William Duer’s cell in the “New Gaol,” a debtors’ prison near the New York City

commons at the northeast corner of what is now City Hall Park. A diverse crowd of three to five hundred “disorderly persons” had gathered there to confront him that evening, including cart men, artisans, and slaves. What began with shouts, catcalls,
and a few stones tossed at the prison’s windows soon escalated into an old-fashioned New York riot.

Colonel William Duer was nearly fifty, a small and delicate man born into a wealthy English family with plantations in the Anglo-Caribbean colonies of Antigua and Dominica. Educated at Eton, Duer had come to New York in 1768 searching for timber

for his family’s Dominican plantation. Seeing greater opportunities in New York, he had borrowed £1,400 from his sister and established himself the next year on a large plot of land along the Hudson River. With his charming wife, “Lady Kitty,” he
had defied convention by dressing his servants in livery, creating a family crest of arms, and entertaining aristocrats in a fashionable town house one block north of Wall Street. As the Revolution began, he used his growing social network in New York to
become a furnishing merchant, supplying timber, planks, and provisions to the Continental army. By 1780 he was worth more than £400,000, or nearly 2 million. After the Revolution, he had become a member of the powerful Board of Treasury under the
Continental Congress, a government bond dealer, and a stock market trader.

But on March 23, 1792, less than a month before the fracas outside, Duer had voluntarily entered the New Gaol to hide from his creditors. By ancient rules of bankruptcy that still applied in New York, debtors’ prisons were designed to shake

money out of debtors, their friends, and their families. Duer’s neighbors in the New Gaol included many who had overleveraged, but no one who had leveraged so much.

At the height of the mayhem outside the prison, some in the crowd reportedly shouted, “We will have Mr. Duer, he has gotten our money.” Threatening to remove Duer bodily from his cell, the crowd began to throw paving stones, breaking windows

and streetlamps. Well after dusk, “friends of legal restraint and good order” helped the city magistrates to arrest some of the most troublesome members of the crowd, including several artisans, the merchant John Hazard, and Tom, a slave owned by
Joseph Towers. For the next few nights, crowds returned to the jail to threaten vengeance. The magistrate assigned Duer his own personal guard, though by the middle of April civil authorities and brick prison walls seemed little protection against a mob
bent on repossessing the colonel’s assets in this world and sending him to the next one.

At the time he entered prison, it was estimated that Duer, America’s first famous deadbeat, had defaulted on promises worth more than $2 million. By some estimates this was more than half the nation’s supply of readily available money. For

though the American colonies had revolted against the English crown more than ten years earlier, capital, education, and power in America were still concentrated among a small group of insiders. Duer was at the center of this financial network, the man
who hired the auctioneers who sold bonds in coffeehouses and shouted current prices from tree stumps on New York’s Wall Street. When he placed a bid, every head turned to see which way his money was moving. In today’s parlance, Duer was a market
maker.

In the beginning of March, Duer and his associates borrowed more than $800,000 to corner the market on U.S. bonds. Few understood that he had bet most of his fortune. When his credit got tight later that month, he had his assistants privately

borrow gold and silver at high interest from many of New York’s most unlikely lenders. “Besides shopkeepers, Widows, [and] orphans,” wrote his associate Seth Johnson, Duer owed “Butchers, Car[t]men, Gardners, market women, & even the noted Bawd
Mrs. Macarty—many of them if they are unpaid are ruined.”

In addition to the sufferers outside the New Gaol, the nation’s tiny financial elite—men who spent their hours and their fortunes in the coffeehouses of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York—faced financial ruin. Scores of Duer’s merchant

friends along the Eastern Seaboard had signed now-overdue promissory notes on faith under Colonel Duer’s name. Most now rued the day they had ever met the man. Some disappeared into the western wilderness or crossed into Canada to escape Duer’s fate.

By April all five branches of the newly established Bank of the United States had restricted lending. Lenders demanded immediate settlement in gold and silver. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton sought to buoy the nation’s tiny stock

and securities market by buying back federal Treasuries, but few lenders were accepting anything but gold. In May interest rates on short-term loans approached 96 percent, or 8 percent per month. Soon there were rumors that creditors in Connecticut were
demanding that Congress make good on Duer’s debts. Many doubted if the new nation could survive its first financial crisis. But that is getting a bit ahead of the story.

How To Fund A Revolution?

[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)

From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com

On Wednesday, January 5, 2022 at 8:02:44 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

On Tuesday, January 4, 2022 at 11:57:22 AM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

On Friday, December 31, 2021 at 2:51:22 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 2:12:35 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

On Monday, December 27, 2021 at 10:56:06 PM UTC-8, Jeffrey Rubard wrote:

Chapter One

Duer’s Disgrace

The new nation’s first financial panic was not long in coming, threatening to reach its climax on the night of April 18, 1792. The shouting started outside William Duer’s cell in the “New Gaol,” a debtors’ prison near the New York

City commons at the northeast corner of what is now City Hall Park. A diverse crowd of three to five hundred “disorderly persons” had gathered there to confront him that evening, including cart men, artisans, and slaves. What began with shouts,
catcalls, and a few stones tossed at the prison’s windows soon escalated into an old-fashioned New York riot.

Colonel William Duer was nearly fifty, a small and delicate man born into a wealthy English family with plantations in the Anglo-Caribbean colonies of Antigua and Dominica. Educated at Eton, Duer had come to New York in 1768 searching for

timber for his family’s Dominican plantation. Seeing greater opportunities in New York, he had borrowed £1,400 from his sister and established himself the next year on a large plot of land along the Hudson River. With his charming wife, “Lady Kitty,�
�� he had defied convention by dressing his servants in livery, creating a family crest of arms, and entertaining aristocrats in a fashionable town house one block north of Wall Street. As the Revolution began, he used his growing social network in New
York to become a furnishing merchant, supplying timber, planks, and provisions to the Continental army. By 1780 he was worth more than £400,000, or nearly 2 million. After the Revolution, he had become a member of the powerful Board of Treasury under
the Continental Congress, a government bond dealer, and a stock market trader.

But on March 23, 1792, less than a month before the fracas outside, Duer had voluntarily entered the New Gaol to hide from his creditors. By ancient rules of bankruptcy that still applied in New York, debtors’ prisons were designed to shake

money out of debtors, their friends, and their families. Duer’s neighbors in the New Gaol included many who had overleveraged, but no one who had leveraged so much.

At the height of the mayhem outside the prison, some in the crowd reportedly shouted, “We will have Mr. Duer, he has gotten our money.” Threatening to remove Duer bodily from his cell, the crowd began to throw paving stones, breaking

windows and streetlamps. Well after dusk, “friends of legal restraint and good order” helped the city magistrates to arrest some of the most troublesome members of the crowd, including several artisans, the merchant John Hazard, and Tom, a slave
owned by Joseph Towers. For the next few nights, crowds returned to the jail to threaten vengeance. The magistrate assigned Duer his own personal guard, though by the middle of April civil authorities and brick prison walls seemed little protection
against a mob bent on repossessing the colonel’s assets in this world and sending him to the next one.

At the time he entered prison, it was estimated that Duer, America’s first famous deadbeat, had defaulted on promises worth more than $2 million. By some estimates this was more than half the nation’s supply of readily available money. For

though the American colonies had revolted against the English crown more than ten years earlier, capital, education, and power in America were still concentrated among a small group of insiders. Duer was at the center of this financial network, the man
who hired the auctioneers who sold bonds in coffeehouses and shouted current prices from tree stumps on New York’s Wall Street. When he placed a bid, every head turned to see which way his money was moving. In today’s parlance, Duer was a market
maker.

In the beginning of March, Duer and his associates borrowed more than $800,000 to corner the market on U.S. bonds. Few understood that he had bet most of his fortune. When his credit got tight later that month, he had his assistants privately

borrow gold and silver at high interest from many of New York’s most unlikely lenders. “Besides shopkeepers, Widows, [and] orphans,” wrote his associate Seth Johnson, Duer owed “Butchers, Car[t]men, Gardners, market women, & even the noted Bawd
Mrs. Macarty—many of them if they are unpaid are ruined.”

In addition to the sufferers outside the New Gaol, the nation’s tiny financial elite—men who spent their hours and their fortunes in the coffeehouses of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York—faced financial ruin. Scores of Duer’s merchant

friends along the Eastern Seaboard had signed now-overdue promissory notes on faith under Colonel Duer’s name. Most now rued the day they had ever met the man. Some disappeared into the western wilderness or crossed into Canada to escape Duer’s fate.

By April all five branches of the newly established Bank of the United States had restricted lending. Lenders demanded immediate settlement in gold and silver. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton sought to buoy the nation’s tiny

stock and securities market by buying back federal Treasuries, but few lenders were accepting anything but gold. In May interest rates on short-term loans approached 96 percent, or 8 percent per month. Soon there were rumors that creditors in Connecticut
were demanding that Congress make good on Duer’s debts. Many doubted if the new nation could survive its first financial crisis. But that is getting a bit ahead of the story.

How To Fund A Revolution?

[continued in next message]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)