Read Online A Counterfeiter's Paradise by Ben Tarnoff - Free Book Online

this case, however, Sullivan convinced the authorities to show mercy, so the constable planted the brand above the hairline, where it would be less visible. The onlookers inhaled a strange smell: the stench of burning hair and skin mingling with the sweet odor of fermenting molasses from the nearby rum distilleries. Then the constable took out a blade to crop the convict’s ears, but again, Sullivan had prevailed on the authorities to get his penalty reduced. Instead of slicing large pieces off the ears, the lawman only cut the edges, severing bloody strips from the counterfeiter’s head while the residents of Providence stood staring.
    Stephens’s punishment was next. He had received the same sentence and, despite helping convict his former partner, wasn’t as persuasive as Sullivan in his appeal for leniency. According to the inscrutable whims of the colonial authorities, Stephens faced the full force of the law: the constable burned the R into each of the criminal’s cheeks and cropped both ears. Sullivan, freshly branded and bloodied, had talked his jailers into letting him attend the performance, to gloat over Stephens’s suffering. But once he got there, the sight of the snitch so enraged him that he broke away from his keepers, seized a cutlass, and, swinging the sword in the air, urged the constable to do his duty. When the sentence was carried out to Sullivan’s satisfaction, he vaulted into the crowd, fought his way through, and disappeared.
    Sullivan had escaped in broad daylight while the entire Providence lawenforcement establishment looked on. His keepers, whether from fear or incompetence, were incapable of holding him; he did what he liked, and when he fled, they couldn’t recapture him. If this wasn’t embarrassing enough, Sullivan returned to town a few days later to shame the authorities again. He declared that by turning himself in, he would do voluntarily what they couldn’t do: put him in prison. The counterfeiter was promptly hauled back to jail and chained with heavy irons. Within a few days he broke out again, somehow having gotten hold of a sword, and the town officials, determined not to be further humiliated, sent men to chase him. “[T]hey pursu’d me very close, sent Post haste after me, and did all they could to Apprehend me,” Sullivan recalls in his confession. But he eluded his pursuers, and traveled 150 miles west through Rhode Island and Connecticut to settle in Dutchess County, New York, where he began planning the next phase of his career.
    Sullivan’s performance at the pillory and subsequent jailbreaks provided just the right kind of kindling to fuel his burgeoning reputation. It helped that he had a flair for showmanship. There was no reason to return to jail after his first escape other than to demonstrate his daring and his brazen contempt for the law. His theatrics had the quality of a burlesque—taunting, humiliating, and outwitting his captors. But Sullivan wasn’t just entertaining; he was also sympathetic. One account of his punishment in Providence called him “a man of good Address” who “found Means to prejudice the Populace in his Favour.” It made sense for the crowd to commiserate with the counterfeiter. First his partner betrayed him, then he was punished for making money, an activity that inspired more admi-ration than indignation among the spectators standing below the pillory. Everyone wanted to make money—Sullivan’s method was just more literal than most.
    Sullivan also provided a service that many residents of Providence had patronized: cheap currency, virtually indistinguishable from the genuine article. There was always demand for paper money among the town’sfarmers and laborers, who needed it to pay down their debt and trade in the marketplace. For these people, Sullivan had an obvious appeal. Like them he came from humble origins—an Irish immigrant and a former indentured servant—but went on to make a fortune almost overnight. Many