The First Conspiracy Read online

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  For Dale Flam, my mother-in-law, the quiet leader, who does all the heavy lifting, but never takes the credit.

  —B.M.

  For Mary and Malcolm, with all my love.

  —J.M.

  Author’s Note

  This book started as a detective story. Nearly a decade ago, I found my first clues where all the best clues are found—in the footnotes. I forget the name of the book, but there it was: a supposed plot to kill George Washington.

  Naturally, I started with skepticism. Was this true, or just some overhyped myth? Weeks went by and I couldn’t shake it. A bit of digging found small mentions in many scholarly works. Some called it a plot to kill George Washington; others said the goal was to seize or kidnap him, but I couldn’t find an entire book written on the subject.

  Searching for information, and wondering if this should be my new project, I eventually reached out to Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis. As the author of His Excellency: George Washington, I thought he’d know a thing or two about the subject. Naturally, he’d heard the story. He was fascinated by it too, and when I told him I was thinking about writing a book about it, he warned me how hard the project would be. This was a story about espionage—a secret plot—and the clandestine investigation to stop that plot. For everyone involved, including George Washington’s inner circle, their entire purpose was to ensure there was no record of their actions. As Ellis told me that day, “You can find the number of slaves at Mount Vernon; you’ll never find all his spies. By its nature, this is something that will always be elusive.”

  He was right. Thankfully, with the help of Josh Mensch, as well as historian and Washington expert Barnet Schecter, there was still plenty to find. You’ll see the evidence in these pages—from private letters, to pension requests, to the transcripts of secret trials—each detail an additional puzzle piece.

  Along the way, one key question remained: Were they trying to kill George Washington, kidnap him, or something else? The evidence, along with our analysis and conclusions, are in these pages, though whether it was killing or kidnapping, the result would most likely have been the same. During the Revolution, if those at the top level of American leadership were captured, they expected to be hanged as traitors. Only at lower levels were officers like Major General Charles Lee, Washington’s second-in-command, exchanged for their British counterparts. Does that tell us definitively what was in the heart of each and every conspirator back then? Of course not. Like Ellis said during out first conversation, some details are forever elusive.

  In the end, you’ll see how the plot against George Washington was planned. You’ll see how it was foiled. And most important, when it came to Washington himself, you’ll see how easily history could’ve turned out differently.

  —Brad Meltzer

  Notes on the Text

  When quoting directly from eighteenth-century written sources, we’ve standardized the original spelling, capitalization, and punctuation to make the language more accessible to modern readers. The wording itself is not changed, unless otherwise indicated in the text or endnotes.

  Also, many chapters begin with a heading that indicates the location, using the familiar “City, State” construction. The states were still colonies during most of the time period we cover, but because the colony and state names are the same in every case, we’ve opted to use the modern format.

  We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.

  —ATTRIBUTED TO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, JULY 4, 1776

  Prologue

  New York, New York

  April 1776

  The trap is set.

  It’s quiet on this night. Moonlight shines over a clearing in a dense wood.

  The silence is broken by the drumbeat of hooves in the distance, growing steadily louder. Soon several uniformed men on horseback emerge from the blackness. The party halts not far from a large wooden manor house that sits at the clearing’s edge. A few of the riders dismount and prime their muskets, standing guard. They scan the clearing, apparently thinking all is safe.

  They’re wrong.

  A moment later, another rider steps down from his horse. He’s taller than the rest and wears a long officer’s coat.

  His name is George Washington, the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental army.

  There is a traitorous plan against him. He has no idea it’s coming.

  For the last ten months, since the day he was appointed to his command, Washington has had a nearly impossible task: to organize a scattered mess of backwoods militias and untrained volunteers into a functioning national army. And not just any army. This small, inexperienced, poorly equipped group of soldiers needs to stand up to what is probably the biggest and most powerful military force in the world. By any normal measure, they don’t stand a chance—and Washington knows this, just as he knows that with every decision he makes, thousands of young soldiers’ lives could be lost.

  Tonight, even more is at risk.

  Washington has just arrived in the western woods of Manhattan, about two miles north of New York City’s bustling commercial district, which covers the island’s southern tip. He’s just finished a weeklong journey from Boston, and he’s here now to fortify the city against the first major British offensive of the war. What he’s facing is terrifying: Sometime in the next few weeks or months, a massive fleet of the vaunted British navy will swarm into New York Harbor—hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of soldiers prepared to invade the city.

  They’re coming. It’s just a question of when.

  The colonies have placed all their hope and trust in him. It is up to this one man, George Washington, to lead the small Continental army and withstand the massive attack.

  Tonight, among the soldiers accompanying Washington, a few are dressed differently from the rest, in short blue-and-white coats with brass buttons. They’re known as the “Life Guards,” an elite group of specially trained soldiers handpicked to serve as Washington’s bodyguards. He takes particular pride in these men, whom he trusts above all others.

  In the faint moonlight, Washington walks slowly toward the nearby manor house that will serve as his lodging for the next few critical weeks before the British attack.

  Yet what George Washington doesn’t know is that here in Manhattan, the coming battle isn’t the only thing he should fear.

  There are other enemies waiting for him—enemies more dangerous than even the British army.

  At this exact moment, three miles away due southeast in New York Harbor, a ship is anchored in the darkness. On board is one of the most powerful men of the colonies—the exiled Governor of New York—and he is masterminding a clandestine plan to sabotage the colonies’ rebellion. In the dead of night, small boats carrying spies shuttle back and forth to him, delivering intelligence from shore.

&nbs
p; At the same time, two miles away from where Washington now stands, the Mayor of New York City, working in concert with the Governor, carries a secret cache of money. His plan is to tempt Washington’s soldiers to betray their army and their countrymen in a breathtaking act of treason.

  And several blocks from the Mayor’s office, in one of the city’s underground jails, three prisoners whisper to each other in a dank cell, out of earshot of the guards. They have no idea that their quiet murmurs could change the future of the continent.

  They are all players in an extraordinary plot:

  A deadly plot against George Washington.

  Most extraordinary of all, some of the key members of this plot are in George Washington’s own inner circle—the very men in whom he has placed his greatest trust.

  You could call it America’s first great conspiracy—but at this moment, America doesn’t yet exist.

  Some of the details of this scheme are still shrouded in mystery, but history provides enough clues for an astonishing story. This is a story of soldiers, spies, traitors, Redcoats, turncoats, criminals, prostitutes, politicians, great men, terrible men, and before it’s over, the largest public execution at the time ever to take place on North American shores. It all happens, amazingly, within days of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

  That’s not all. The discovery of this plot, and the effort to investigate it, will lead colonial authorities to devise new systems of intelligence gathering and counterespionage. In many ways, this plot against George Washington would lead to the creation of a whole new field of American spycraft—now known as counterintelligence.

  At its center is a deadly conspiracy against the one man on whose life the very future of America depends.

  PART I

  The Commander

  Prelude

  Fredericksburg, Virginia

  July 1752

  It’s a hot summer day in Virginia, and this young man is full of sorrow.

  He’s barely twenty years old, with no college education. He’s a terrible speller, though better at math. He grew up mostly in a rural farming region in King George County, across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg.

  His name is George Washington, and today his world has been shattered. He just found out that his older half brother, Lawrence, has died. For several years Lawrence had been suffering from tuberculosis, which has been sweeping through the southern colonies. Doctors had warned that the illness could be fatal, and lately Lawrence has been bedridden by coughs and fever. Still, Lawrence had always been strong. Handsome. Thirty-four years old and in his prime. The family couldn’t believe that Lawrence would succumb to the disease; certainly George couldn’t.

  Nine years earlier, when George was eleven, their father, Augustine, died unexpectedly, leaving his family in grief and financial turmoil. George’s mother was left to raise five young children on her own, and to run their estate without an income. After this tragedy, it was Lawrence, then a dashing man in his midtwenties, who swept in and took George under his wing.

  Born to a different mother, Lawrence had grown up in relative privilege; he had traveled to London for his college education, and soon served as an officer within the provincial forces under the British navy. After his return to Virginia, he had married into a wealthy and powerful family and become a leader in local affairs. Fortune had smiled on Lawrence: He was worldly, ambitious, and sophisticated.

  Young George, a country boy, was none of these things. But Lawrence took a great interest in this younger brother whom their father had left behind. Lawrence mentored George, taught him social graces, and invited him to stay at the grand estate of his wife’s family. Thanks to Lawrence, George’s world expanded. The two were often inseparable. Lawrence was many things to George: a role model, a hero, and a surrogate father. When Lawrence was hit by tuberculosis, it was George who often sat by his bed.

  Now Lawrence is gone too. For the second time in his life George has been left alone.

  When the final estate papers are read, it’s revealed that Lawrence has set aside two small parcels of land for George. There is also the possibility that he might one day inherit Lawrence’s own beloved estate, Mount Vernon. According to his brother’s will, these gifts are “in consideration of the natural love and affection which he hath and doth bear unto his loving brother George Washington.”

  But for George, now twenty years old, gaining a few parcels of land doesn’t begin to fill the void left by the loss of his brother. Lawrence’s death devastates George, taking away arguably the most important man in his life—the person he has looked up to more than anyone else.

  Reflecting on his older brother’s varied accomplishments, perhaps what George most admires is Lawrence’s past glory as a military officer. Fulfillment of a greater duty, dedication to a larger cause—these ideals had transformed his brother’s life and provided him a grand purpose.

  Now, with Lawrence gone, George is searching for a purpose of his own.

  For the past few years, during his late teens, George has worked as a land surveyor. In the rapidly growing colonies, land speculation is a great way to make money; George’s surveying skills are in high demand. He serves prominent clients and has started to invest in land deals of his own, putting him on a path to gain wealth and property.

  Yet the death of his brother stirs within George a deeper craving. A month earlier, in June 1752, while Lawrence lay on his deathbed, George wrote a letter to the Lieutenant Governor of the colony of Virginia. His goal? To apply for a position in the local militia, run by the colony’s royal government. It is, in fact, a position formerly held by Lawrence—a position that would now be vacant.

  George has no military experience or skills to speak of, so all his letter offers is an earnest promise to do his best and honor his brother’s work: “[I] should take the greatest pleasure in punctually obeying … your Honor’s commands; and by a strict observance of my Duty, render myself worthy of the trust reposed in me.”

  Perhaps because of the letter’s sincerity, or because of Lawrence’s reputation, or perhaps just due to good timing, George receives the position. Within weeks after the death of his boyhood hero, he puts aside his surveyor’s tools and prepares to wear a uniform for the first time.

  Up to this point, George Washington’s youth has been characterized by death and loss. But now he is ready to embark on a new path.

  Maybe, as a soldier, he will find his deeper purpose.

  This young man from Virginia, George Washington, is now on the road to fulfill a destiny greater than he could ever imagine.

  And nothing—not even the fear of death itself—will stop him.

  1

  TWENTY-THREE YEARS LATER …

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  May 10, 1775

  Philadelphia feels alive.

  For the past few days, the most prominent leaders in the colonies have been arriving in the city. Coaches and carriages are pulling in, almost by the hour, often met by cheering crowds and marching bands. Onlookers fill the streets and watch from porches and windows. The inns are full to capacity; the taverns are bustling.

  The mood is mostly festive. But the air is also charged with something else: that unique mix of anticipation and fear that comes with the feeling that the world is about to change, though no one knows quite how.

  The occasion is momentous: a meeting of the Second Continental Congress. Delegates chosen from every colony are meeting here for one purpose—to debate the possibility of war with England.

  Just a year earlier such a notion was unthinkable except to the most radical. But in recent months, longstanding disputes have grown and multiplied between the Crown and its colonial subjects across the ocean. Arguments over trade, taxes, and tariffs have turned into deep, irreconcilable grievances. On the colonists’ side, rallies and protests against the Crown’s repressive policies have grown louder, larger, and angrier. England has responded by sending soldiers to clamp down on protests and
reassert the mother country’s absolute power. In the New England colonies, local rebel militias have been preparing to stand up to the royal authorities. Earlier in the year, King George III declared the colony of Massachusetts to be in a state of “rebellion” against England.

  And recently, outside Boston, blood has been spilled.

  On the night of April 19, a regiment of British soldiers stationed in the city marched from Boston toward the neighboring towns of Lexington and Concord, to arrest two rebel leaders and seize a cache of munitions that the colonial militias were stockpiling. The colonists learned of the plan in advance, and as the British arrived in Lexington a band of armed locals was there to meet them. In the melee that followed, the British forces killed eight townspeople and lost only a horse. When the British troops advanced towards Concord, however, they encountered a much larger colonial militia. No one knows which side began shooting first, but whoever pulled the first trigger fired the “shot heard ’round the world.” Both the British and the colonists suffered heavy casualties in sustained fighting.

  Within forty-eight hours, the British soldiers were driven back into Boston and royal authorities put the city under lockdown. An uneasy truce was reached, but tensions in the city were now at an all-time high.

  The bloodshed sent shockwaves throughout the colonies, especially in New England. Dr. Matthew Thornton, the president of the New Hampshire Provincial Congress, captured the prevailing mood in a public address:

  Painful beyond expression have been those scenes of blood and devastation which the barbarous cruelty of British troops have placed before our eyes. Duty to God, to ourselves, to posterity, enforced by the cries of slaughtered innocents, have urged us to take up arms in our defense. Such a day as this was never before known, either to us or to our fathers.