The First Conspiracy Read online

  In Virginia, the Loyalist royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, crafted an especially elaborate scheme of mail interception. At night Dunmore, who had retreated to a ship at the time, sent his sentries to the colony’s central mail outpost in Williamsburg to confiscate mail for him. Dunmore and his aides would hold on to any mail with useful intelligence, and secretly return the rest before morning.

  In New York, in the spring of 1776, Governor William Tryon has lost all such advantages. Because Washington’s Continental army now controls the physical space of New York City, the Patriots have the clear upper hand when it comes to intercepting enemy mail and controlling the postal system.

  In fact, one of Tryon’s current allies on the Duchess of Gordon, the former New Jersey attorney general Cortlandt Skinner, had to take refuge on the ship precisely because one of his personal letters was intercepted by the Patriots. Skinner’s letter, written to his brother in December 1775, expressed candid opinions critical of the colonial governments and suggested that his true allegiance was still to England.

  When the New Jersey authorities intercepted the letter, they determined that it contained “many sentiments and expressions prejudicial to the peace and welfare of the United Colonies,” and ordered Skinner’s arrest. Skinner barely escaped New Jersey. Like Tryon, Skinner was forced to take refuge aboard the Duchess and now spends his days a fellow exile from the colonies he once served.

  The interception of Skinner’s letter occurred before Washington’s army took over New York City in early April 1776. Now that the Continental forces are garrisoned in the city, the mail lines in the region are even less secure.

  Starting in the month of May, Tryon almost entirely ceases sending letters or correspondence, at least within the colonies. Although a British courier boat called the Swallow can be used to send letters directly to England, even this is risky, and he limits mail to only the most banal and procedural.

  At this stage, everything Tryon does must be kept secret. While he can still send and receive goods, and still send and receive verbal messages by ferrying couriers to his ship, he sends nothing in writing—and certainly nothing that could possibly reveal the scope of his dark ambitions.

  For these reasons, Tryon’s plans and motives become even more difficult to detect in May and June of 1776. It also happens that at just this time, Tryon’s conspiracy against the Continental army is about to take on a shocking new dimension.

  41

  Life is different now.

  Life is different for everyone, really, in the spring of 1776; but life is especially different for Gilbert Forbes, the gunsmith.

  For Forbes, the last half of May has been a whirlwind. Ever since he sent the shipment of guns to Governor Tryon on board the Duchess of Gordon, his prospects in the world have expanded, almost too fast to keep up with. It starts with money: Forbes made a nice sale with those rifles and smoothbore guns, and he now has the benefit of sitting on a pile of money at a time when many are struggling.

  Money is only part of it, though.

  After Forbes’s secret meeting with Mayor David Mathews, he becomes a known player in the underground web of Loyalist activists and plotters in New York City on the eve of war. Now, he is a familiar presence at taverns like Houlding’s and Lowry’s, where Loyalists congregate and hold clandestine meetings. The fact that Forbes is a gunsmith with access to weapons probably makes him an especially welcome addition in this circle.

  Having made a successful secret sale of arms to the Duchess of Gordon, Forbes is also now acquainted with the network of people who regularly run supplies and relay secret messages to and from Governor Tryon. Among others this includes a Manhattan shoemaker named Peter McLean, who secretly ferries passengers to the Duchess of Gordon, and the woman known only as Mrs. Beck, who had helped deliver the initial batch of Forbes’s guns to the Governor’s ship.

  The exact timeline of Forbes’s activities in these few weeks is difficult to trace with certainty, but sometime shortly after his meeting with Mayor Mathews, Forbes meets a man known in Loyalist circles as “Sergeant Graham.”

  Graham is a former British officer, or at least claims to be, and he now works for Governor Tryon, helping organize Loyalist activity in the region. When Forbes meets him, Sergeant Graham is in the midst of developing a strategy for Tryon to help him deploy Loyalist soldiers on the ground against the Continental army when the British forces arrive.

  Through Sergeant Graham, Forbes is now privy to top-secret planning and intelligence. The Governor of New York, the Mayor of New York, and a former British officer are trusting him—a gun dealer—to learn their strategy and be part of their trusted circle.

  That’s not all.

  According to what Graham shares with Forbes, a key part of the Loyalist effort, as overseen by Governor Tryon, involves finding and organizing men who will join their cause. Efforts are under way, masterminded from the Duchess of Gordon, not just to raise troops from among the Loyalist citizens in the region around the city, but to actively lure Continental soldiers to switch sides.

  That’s where the extra cash from Mayor David Mathews comes in.

  Accounts vary as to exactly how and when the transaction occurs, and as to whether it was a direct handoff or made through an intermediary, but what is known is this: Sometime not long after Mathews visited William Tryon on the Duchess of Gordon, the Mayor transfers approximately 115 pounds to Gilbert Forbes.

  This money will pay for Forbes’s guns, and it will also give him funds for his next, higher-level assignment: bribing rebel soldiers to join the British cause.

  Forbes learns that Tryon’s operatives have already turned several hundred Continental soldiers on Long Island, in Westchester County, and in New Jersey. Clearly the Continental soldiers are ready to betray their leaders for the right price.

  Of course, the soldiers who have already been turned were probably easier prey because they were far removed from the army headquarters in New York City. The soldiers whom Tryon’s agents have recruited on Long Island and elsewhere may have been militia members, and not part of Washington’s army proper. Or they could have been isolated groups of soldiers stationed far away from their commanding officers—and therefore more open to influence.

  Forbes, on the other hand, is asked to operate in the belly of the beast. His shop is in the heart of the commercial district of Manhattan, within blocks of George Washington’s headquarters. Barracks of Continental soldiers surround him in every direction. Trying to infiltrate an army so close to its headquarters is risky work for sure. But these soldiers, if they can be persuaded, will be a far greater asset for Tryon.

  Graham sweetens the deal by making one additional offer. He promises Forbes, with Tryon’s blessing, that if Forbes “exerted himself … and raised enough men he should have a company.” In other words, if Forbes can enlist enough men to join the Crown’s forces, he’ll receive an officer’s commission and lead his own company when the British fleet arrives.

  This once ordinary gunsmith—who wears a white coat and runs a small shop on Broadway—could soon be an officer in the British army, the greatest army the world has ever known.

  Life is different now—and for Gilbert Forbes it will never be the same again.

  42

  Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island

  May 1776

  In some ways, Henry Dawkins and the Young brothers, the would-be counterfeiters based in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, are just unlucky.

  Until the start of 1776, the overwhelmed colonial authorities were not paying much attention to counterfeiting as a crime; they simply had too many other important things to worry about. However, in the early months of 1776, these same authorities suddenly began a concerted effort to crack down on the practice.

  Why the change? Once the colonies formed an army and the hostilities began in Boston, the British started using every possible tool to cripple the Continental war effort, including economic warfare. The British soon realized that one of their most effe
ctive tools to destabilize the colonial economies was to flood their markets with fake money. An influx of bogus cash devalues the real currency and creates runaway inflation.

  In essence, counterfeiting is used as a crude form of economic espionage: all it takes is putting a bunch of fake bills in the hands of a willing colonist, and encouraging him or her to spend it freely at local stores and markets.

  The resulting inflation has many brutal consequences for ordinary citizens, whose hard-earned money and savings lose value fast as the currency becomes diminished. On a larger scale, the inflation also cripples the Continental Congress’s ability to pay for the massive war effort, because the value of its war chest likewise plummets. As Benjamin Franklin would later explain: “Paper money was in those times our universal currency. But it being the instrument with which we combated our enemies they resolved to deprive us of its use by depreciating it; and the most effectual means they could contrive was to counterfeit it.”

  Later in the war, British counterfeiting of Continental currency will become so effective that in some regions of the colonies, half the money in circulation is fake. In the early war years, including 1776, the debilitating effects of fake money are just starting to catch the sustained attention of the colonial authorities—and they determine they must crack down on counterfeiting in order to keep the currency as strong as possible during the war.

  For all these reasons, the New York Provincial Congress takes the matter very seriously when, in early May 1776, they start hearing rumors of a possible band of counterfeiters based in a small town on Long Island.

  The first report comes from a Cold Spring Harbor resident who volunteers to local authorities that he’s suspicious of certain activities in the home of two brothers named Israel and Isaac Young. When the matter is brought before the New York Provincial Congress on May 10, the resident has also identified other neighbors as potential witnesses.

  Together, these neighbors and townspeople describe accounts and rumors of strange behavior near and within the Youngs’ house: unusual tools and supplies brought in and stored in the home, overheard conversations involving the intricacies of inks and currencies, and bragging on the part of one brother or the other about a windfall coming to them soon. Much of the hearsay focuses on someone who’s staying at the Youngs’—a boarder named Henry Dawkins—a stranger to town who spends all his time in their attic and only comes down at night to sleep.

  After hearing all this sworn testimony, the New York Provincial Congress decides to act fast. It resolves to send a militia captain to Long Island, where he will hire soldiers and put together a raid. The wording of the resolution is crystal clear:

  Whereas, this Congress is informed, on oath, that there is great cause of suspicion that Henry Dawkins, Israel Young, Isaac Young, Isaac Ketcham … of Cold Spring, on Nassau-Island, are counterfeiting the Paper currency emitted by the Continental and this Congress:

  Ordered therefore … to dispatch Captain Wool, with a sufficient guard, to Cold-Spring, on Nassau-Island, and that the said guard do take all possible means in their power to apprehend and seize the said Henry Dawkins, Israel Young, Isaac Young, Isaac Ketcham … and bring them (together with all suspicious tools and other materials) before this Congress without delay.

  The next day, Saturday, May 11, Capt. Jeremiah Wool makes the trip from Manhattan to Nassau County, Long Island. He arrives in the town of Huntington that night, where he’s joined by a local militia team. The group spends the night in Huntington, and then, first thing in the morning on Sunday, May 12, a guide leads Captain Wool and his team to the nearby coastal town of Cold Spring Harbor.

  Soon, Wool is standing at the front entrance of the Young brothers’ residence, with a few of his guards behind him.

  This is the very moment when Isaac Young, the only member of the counterfeiting team who happens to be inside at the time, has his quiet Sunday morning rudely interrupted.

  Wool, who has already “set guards around the house,” knocks loudly on the door; Wool himself will later recount that “Isaac Young came to the door and opened it; that he [Captain Wool] immediately entered; that Isaac Young appeared much surprised.”

  Isaac Young is even more surprised when the captain tells him to get dressed and be ready for a trip to Huntington with him—and then more surprised still when Captain Wool demands to search the house.

  As Wool recounts in his record of the day, his men first search Israel Young’s room without incident; then, their first hint of something out of the ordinary comes when “they proceeded to a room in which they were informed Henry Dawkins usually lodged, and found under the bed in which he was informed Dawkins had lodged, a few Engraver’s tools.”

  Engraver’s tools are exactly the sorts of items they would expect to find at the home base of a counterfeiting outfit. Still, there is nothing inherently criminal in owning some tools. What Wool and his men really hope to discover is a printing press, and their initial search through the downstairs does not reveal one.

  Perhaps Isaac Young, who is probably sweating profusely at this point, begins to have some hope that the guards won’t find anything out of the ordinary—and won’t discover the concealed passage to their upstairs workshop.

  Then, as Captain Wool later testifies:

  At the head of one of the beds in that room, one of his Sergeants discovered a crack or opening in the wall, which they suspected to be a door; that on removing the bed and other furniture necessary, with a bayonet put into the crevice, they opened a small door, within which was a narrow stairs; that Isaac Young who was present, appeared to be in terror, and trembled.

  If Wool has any doubts that the raid will be successful, Isaac Young’s visible trembling probably removes them. Wool sends two of his men through the hidden door and up the stairs, and then follows so he can search the secret room for himself.

  As Wool later describes it, he “proceeded up the said stairs into a very concealed garret, with one small window, and there found a rolling-press; that the first paper he picked up was a paper … appearing to be a copperplated imperfect copy of a Bill of Connecticut money, of forty Shillings.”

  So there it is. Captain Wool has just found a suspicious printing press and some sample counterfeit money in exactly the place he was told to look for a suspicious printing press and some sample counterfeit money.

  Over the next couple of hours, the men scour the premises and gather the evidence. First, Captain Wool has “the press, with every utensil thereof, taken down, and brought down stairs.” His men search every piece of furniture and “found in a chest in that house, [that] belonged to Henry Dawkins … a number of plates.” When Wool conducts a second and more thorough search of Israel Young’s room, he opens a drawer in a chest and discovers “a copperplate completely engraved for the impressing of two dollar bills, and on the plate a bill appearing to be a two dollar bill of Continental money.”

  While all this is going on, Captain Wool also does something else. He sends out teams of guards to apprehend the other suspects. First and foremost, they target the other Young brother, Israel, and of course the master engraver, Henry Dawkins.

  Another team goes to track down the person whose name had come up in conjunction with the counterfeiting operation: the family man himself, Huntington resident Isaac Ketcham.

  Wool’s instructions are to bring all these men to an agreed-upon inn in Huntington, where he will process the suspects. That afternoon, one by one, the guards apprehend the members of the team and bring them to the tavern and boarding house called the Huntington Inn. Isaac Young, Israel Young, Henry Dawkins, and Isaac Ketcham are now officially in custody.

  There is no record of how the suspects behaved while in Huntington, either to the guards or to one another. Wool’s careful account of the day doesn’t mention any shouting or altercation. However, it’s probably a safe assumption that Isaac Ketcham spent this time cursing the moment he became involved with the other three. Indeed, as soon as he’s able, Ketcham makes
a statement to Wool that he, Isaac Ketcham, played only a very limited role in the operation, that he was “employed in this business to get paper; that he had not been concerned in making the money.”

  Wool takes down Ketcham’s statement, as well as an initial statement from Dawkins. The next day, they will all travel to New York City, where each of them will be expected to provide full testimony, under oath, before the New York Provincial Congress. Then, after hearing their stories, the Congress will determine their crimes and decide their respective fates.

  By all appearances, the Cold Spring Harbor counterfeiting operation of Young, Young, Dawkins, and Ketcham seems to be nearing an end. Yet when it comes to these small-town criminals, the most remarkable part of their story still lies ahead.

  43

  New York, New York

  May 1776

  On a warm afternoon in late May 1776, three men—William Farley, James Mason, and William Benjamin—arrive in Manhattan on a boat from Elizabethtown, New Jersey.

  The men originally traveled from the town of Goshen, in upstate New York. They are now here in the city for one reason: to commit treason.

  Back in Goshen, Farley recruited the other two to betray their country and join the British in exchange for a promise of money and land. The money and land will come from Governor Tryon.

  Now that the traitorous trio is in Manhattan, their next destination is the Duchess of Gordon, the British ship in the harbor where Tryon is headquartered.

  Following directions they were given back in Elizabethtown, the team makes their way to the address of a shoemaker, Peter McLean, who runs a small shop by the waterfront near a market called the Royal Exchange.