The First Conspiracy Read online

  Even more telling, fellow Virginian Patrick Henry encounters Washington outside by himself the night following the appointment, and sees that the new Commander has tears in his eyes. As Henry recalls it, Washington confides to him: “Remember, Mr. Henry, what I now tell you: From the day I enter upon the command of the American armies, I date my fall, and the ruin of my reputation.”

  For Washington, it seems, the responsibility and trust given him are so awesome, that the very possibility of failing in his duty—of letting down his countrymen who have placed their faith in him—is almost impossible to bear.

  A few days later, John Adams writes of Washington: “I hope the people of our Province, will treat the General with all that confidence and affection, that politeness and respect, which is due to one of the most important characters in the world. The liberties of America depend upon him, in a great degree.”

  No pressure.

  5

  ONE YEAR LATER …

  New York, New York

  June 1776

  The sky above Manhattan is overcast.

  Almost exactly one year into George Washington’s command, at eleven o’clock in the morning, thousands of troops gather in a large field due north of New York City, divided into four standing brigades. Most of the Continental army is here, officers and soldiers alike.

  General Washington, the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental forces, had ordered that the troops march here from their encampments, in uniform, and stand at attention.

  Separate from the army, a huge crowd of ordinary citizens is also gathered in the field, comprised of onlookers and residents from all over the region. In total some twenty thousand people are here, soldiers and civilians, all watching and waiting.

  Although the troops are in full uniform and carry their weapons, today there will be no battle, or parade, or military exercise. The crowd is silent, and the mood is somber.

  A chaplain stands there, waiting.

  After a few quiet minutes, several soldiers escort a prisoner before the crowd, his hands bound by rope. He’s of medium height, well built, with pale skin and dark hair. The soldiers flanking the prisoner march him slowly forward.

  On this very day, the colonies are at war with Great Britain; yet this prisoner is not an enemy soldier. He wears the colors of the Continental army, not those of the British.

  Who is this man? And what awful crime could warrant this somber public spectacle?

  Among the onlookers is a young army surgeon, barely twenty-three years old, by the name of William Eustis. He stands at attention with the rest of his unit, watching.

  Several hours later, the surgeon is back at his quarters in New York City. There, sitting alone, he brings out a quill, dips it in his inkstand, puts it to paper, and begins to compose a letter.

  “You will doubtless have heard of the discovery of the greatest and vilest attempt ever made against our country,” he writes. “I mean the plot, the infernal plot, which has been contrived by our worst enemies.”

  For Eustis, writing the letter, the very idea of this plot is so terrible that he can’t even conjure an ordinary word to describe it. Instead, he invents a new one: Sacricide.

  From the Latin roots, it means “slaughter of the sacred,” or “slaughter of the good.”

  And the target of this plot?

  The young man continues:

  Their design was upon the first engagement which took place, to have murdered (with trembling I say it) the best man on earth: General Washington was to have been the subject of their unheard of SACRICIDE … and in short the most accursed scheme was laid to give us into the hands of the enemy, and to ruin us.

  Centuries later, it is a moment mostly lost to the history books. A plot to kill George Washington.

  In 1776, in the first full year of the Revolutionary War, George Washington is the leader of the Continental army, and the man on whom the colonies have placed all of their hopes. For any person of the colonies, conspiring to assassinate George Washington is treasonous almost beyond measure—an act that single-handedly threatens the existence of America itself.

  Who would undertake such a dangerous act?

  How was the plot uncovered?

  And what happened to those responsible?

  This is the story of the first conspiracy.

  6

  ONE YEAR EARLIER …

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  June 1775

  In the days immediately following his appointment as the new leader of the Continental army, George Washington races to do three things in Philadelphia before he leaves for Boston to assume his command:

  1.  He orders a new uniform based almost entirely on his old one from the Virginia militia. Blue coat. Epaulettes on his shoulders. Yellow buttons. There is no time for anyone to come up with a new design.

  2.  He sends instructions to a lawyer friend to draw up his will, just in case. He and Martha have no children together, but Martha has children from her previous marriage, and Washington has several siblings, nieces, and nephews. Should he not return from battle, he needs to provide for those he leaves behind.

  3.  He orders several books on military strategy. These include Roger Stevenson’s Military Instructions for Officers, recently published in Philadelphia; also, a new edition of one of Washington’s favorites, Humphrey Bland’s A Treatise of Military Discipline, originally published in 1727 and considered the “bible of the British army.” It has been fifteen years since Washington has seen any real military combat, and he wants to be ready.

  In fact, Washington’s request for these books highlights something else: his lack of experience for the position he has just assumed. Washington may be one of the more seasoned military veterans in the colonies, but that isn’t saying much. Colonial officers like Washington were given inferior positions compared to their British counterparts. As a colonel, Washington was a midlevel officer who had never led more than a hundred men in actual battle. He has no experience remotely like commanding a national force in a large-scale war.

  Now, as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental army, he’ll be responsible for organizing a national army and leading thousands of troops against the world-renowned generals of the mighty British military forces.

  He better read those books.

  On June 22, 1775, barely a week after Washington’s appointment, the delegates gather outside the Pennsylvania State House to see their new Commander off. A handful of newly appointed officers, also selected from among the delegates, will join him for the trip.

  As Washington strides toward one of the five white horses that have been readied for the journey, his new aide-de-camp, a young congressman named Thomas Mifflin, runs out in front of the General, kneels, and cups his hands by the horse’s stirrup to help the new Commander mount. It’s a ceremonial gesture, a demonstration of respect, and the crowd breaks into spontaneous applause.

  George Washington, once a rural boy from Virginia, is now one of the most important men in the colonies.

  Before their departure, Washington had instilled in the other generals his conviction that anytime they appear in public, their presentation must be exemplary. In order to persuade young men to become soldiers—and to win the faith and confidence of the public—it is essential always to appear confident, to appear organized, and to appear disciplined, even under the worst circumstances.

  No matter how hastily they have planned this endeavor, and no matter how under-resourced and inexperienced they are, Washington tries to make sure he and his generals look like officers prepared to conquer the world.

  So, on the road from Philadelphia to Boston, his new entourage appears every bit the embodiment of military leaders. Washington himself rides in a small carriage known as a phaeton followed by teams of aides and servants on horseback. Before they pass through each town, Washington jumps out of his carriage and onto a single white horse to lead the procession in dramatic fashion. By this time word has spread through the colonies that a C
ontinental army has been formed, and townspeople line the streets to get a glimpse of the new Commander.

  After they travel north from Pennsylvania and up through New Jersey, the most important stop is on the third day of their trip: New York City.

  At midday on June 25, now ten days after he had accepted the command, Washington and his generals arrive in Newark, New Jersey, and then travel northeast to the Hudson River, where they board a ferry across the water to Manhattan Island.

  At the time, the entirety of New York City comprised only the southernmost tip of Manhattan Island. The northern city limit was the equivalent of today’s Chambers Street; most of the island above that was unpopulated woods, grasslands, rivers, and rolling hills, dotted by the occasional farm or wealthy estate. Today’s boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens were part of Long Island—not considered New York City at all—and usually referred to by their county names: Kings County and Queens County, respectively.

  Although geographically relatively small, New York City was nonetheless a vibrant, bustling place, and its busy port district along the southeast corner of the island—today’s South Street Seaport—was a commercial hub of the northeastern and mid-Atlantic colonies. With a population of about 25,000, New York City was the second largest city in the colonies after Philadelphia.

  Once Washington and his generals cross the Hudson and arrive on the western shore of Manhattan, a small troop of militia greets them. Then the entire entourage advances to the city and parades through the busy streets. New Yorkers had learned in advance of Washington’s arrival, and crowds line the sidewalks to cheer the man whose name has become almost instantly famous.

  As Washington’s procession rides down Broadway close to Wall Street, it passes near the small campus of King’s College (later to be moved uptown, as Columbia University), and the cheers grow especially loud.

  Among the onlookers is a fresh-faced nineteen-year-old named Alexander Hamilton, then an undergraduate student and budding revolutionary, dazzled to catch a glimpse of the new Commander. Hamilton is likely accompanied by his classmate Hercules Mulligan—and these two friends, perhaps inspired by seeing Washington, will soon enlist in the Continental army and play their own roles in the sweeping events to come.

  But cheering revolutionaries-to-be like Hamilton and his classmates aren’t the only ones closely watching George Washington that day.

  Although many New York City residents cheer on Washington and the new Continental army, there are also many who don’t support them. New York is, in fact, a major power center for Loyalists—the name given to those who live in the colonies but still support the Crown, and who oppose the colonies’ rebellion.* Indeed, the New York City region has almost as many Loyalists as Patriots, with allegiances often changing. Right now, in the summer of 1775, these two opposing factions are locked in a volatile battle for the soul of the city.

  There are many reasons why New York City is a base for Loyalist sentiment. Prominent families with deep royal ties live in and around the city, giving support and resources to the pro-British cause. Most of the city’s countless merchants are also loyal to England and the trade it provides. The Anglican Church—literally, the “Church of England”—is dominant in New York, and most of its flock won’t betray their faith and turn against the mother country. Then as now, New York was full of immigrants, and workers from various European countries had any number of reasons to support one side or the other. Unlike George Washington’s genteel Virginia, New York City is a teeming, unpredictable place full of shifting loyalties and competing agendas.

  In fact, on that very same afternoon that Washington’s procession rides along Broadway, a very different procession is also under way in the city, in honor of a very different man.

  By sheer coincidence William Tryon, the Governor of the colony of New York and a staunch Loyalist, has that same day returned to New York City from an almost yearlong trip to England. Therefore a procession is also due in his honor, only a few blocks from where Washington and his generals pass. That morning, the city’s planning committee, run by the New York Provincial Congress, was caught in the awkward position of having to provide a public reception to two politically opposed leaders on the same afternoon. The committeemen, doing their best, first instructed the greeting militias to be “ready to receive either the Generals or Governor Tryon, which ever shall first arrive, and to wait on both as well as circumstances will allow.”

  Soon realizing they should avoid two simultaneous competing processions, however, the city officials then change their strategy and intentionally delay Tryon’s arrival until early evening, shortly after Washington’s parade has passed. As a reflection of the city’s confused politics, some of the same crowds move right from one procession to the other.

  In his leadership of the colony, Governor Tryon has remained a strong supporter of British rule. He believes the “revolutionary” movement is illegitimate and has been fighting against it.

  Having been at sea during the past several weeks, the Governor probably didn’t learn until arriving in the port that the Continental Congress had just announced the formation of an army, and that its leader would be riding through New York City on the same day as his own ceremonial return from England.

  So when Governor Tryon finally disembarks on the ferry landing’s stairs in the evening to be escorted through the city, he is not pleased at having had to wait several hours for the Continental army’s parade to end. As one city official who witnessed Tryon’s arrival puts it, “He appeared grave this evening and said little.”

  The Governor’s mood surely isn’t improved by the sound of “much shouting in the procession,” probably coming from the city’s more radical contingent, which came out to see Washington and is now heckling the newly returned Governor.

  Tryon, accustomed to calling the shots in his own colony, must in fact be appalled that this enemy, this so-called Commander, would parade through Manhattan right under his nose. After all, New York is Tryon’s city, and the public should be cheering him—not some usurper representing an illegal subversion of proper royal authority.

  George Washington.

  It’s a name William Tryon won’t soon forget.

  Indeed, Governor Tryon is the last person to be intimidated by so-called rebels, radicals, or revolutionaries—something he demonstrated just a few years earlier, in a most controversial fashion.

  7

  William Tryon was born in Surrey, England, in 1729. Raised in an aristocratic family, as a young man he was inclined toward military service, enlisting as an officer to serve the British army against France during the Seven Years’ War in Europe.

  By the late 1750s, Tryon had achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel when a bullet wound to his leg ended his service in the war.

  Like many ambitious Englishmen at the time, Tryon turned his attention to the American colonies as a place to find success, wealth, and opportunity.

  In 1764, Tryon received an appointment to serve the Crown in the colony of North Carolina, first as Lieutenant Governor, then as Governor in 1765. It was there that William Tryon had his first memorable run-in with colonial subversives or “rebels” who dared to challenge the authority of the royal government.

  In the late 1760s a group of poor backwoods farmers in North Carolina—a group that became known as the Regulators—had begun organizing to protest oppressive taxes and fines that British officials routinely levied against them. These farmers could barely feed their families, yet had to pay increasingly large fees every month. If they couldn’t pay, additional fines were levied against them. Stuck in a cycle of debt, many had their humble farms confiscated and were sometimes forced into indentured servitude.

  Before serving as Governor of New York, William Tryon served as Governor of North Carolina from 1765 to 1771. This painting from 1767, originally attributed to the artist John Wollaston, has long been thought to be the only surviving portrait of Tryon. However, researchers now suspect that the portrait may not rea
lly be the work of Wollaston, and the subject may not be Tryon.*

  One of these farmers’ most hated taxes was in fact one imposed directly by Governor Tryon to pay for a vast, lavish mansion he was building for himself at public expense. This luxurious Governor’s residence, known around the colony as “Tryon’s Palace,” became a symbol of royal luxury and greed at a time when many rural residents lived in near poverty.

  As the Regulator movement in North Carolina gained greater numbers, Governor Tryon chose to act decisively and set an example. Rather than negotiate with the protesting farmers or respond to their demands, Tryon hired a band of well-armed mercenary soldiers, and personally rode with them to a riverside grove where several hundred of the Regulators had gathered. After a tense standoff with the encamped group, Tryon sent a written demand that the Regulators lay down any weapons and surrender their leaders for arrest within an hour’s time. The message ended with these words: “By accepting these terms within one hour from the delivery of this dispatch, you will prevent an effusion of blood, as you are in this time in a state of REBELLION against your King, your country, and your laws. [Signed]William Tryon.”

  When the group’s leaders failed to come forward and offer themselves up for arrest, Tryon’s militia charged the encampment.

  In this so-called Battle of Alamance, Tryon’s forces overwhelmed the poorly armed farmers, killed or wounded several dozen, and shackled the group’s leaders. Under Tryon’s direction, the leaders were quickly tried and sentenced to death for treason. On June 19, 1771, the chief justice of Hillsborough pronounced their gruesome sentence:

  The prisoner should … be drawn from thence to the place of execution and hanged by the neck; that he should be cut down while yet alive; that his bowels should be taken out and burned before his face; that his head should be cut off, and that his body should be divided into four quarters, which [are] to be placed at the King’s disposal, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.