The First Conspiracy Read online

  The nickname is apt. After all, for all of their other special duties and unique training, these soldiers’ greatest responsibility is to protect George Washington’s life.

  For a fragile young army whose success rests almost entirely on the shoulders of its Commander-in-Chief, no obligation could be more sacred.

  Soon, the Life Guards’ hallowed duty to their Commander will be put to the ultimate test.

  20

  Intelligence. Cunning. Secrecy.

  George Washington is about to learn once again that these are the keys to success in this war.

  Outside Boston, the winter had seemed never to end. For months, the stalemate between the armies had continued, with Washington and his cold, disease-ravaged officers and troops living in a state of constant anxiety.

  At one point, out of sheer frustration, and because he was about to lose thousands of soldiers whose enlistment was coming to an end, Washington even contemplated sending a mass of troops led by soldiers on ice skates across the bay in the middle of the night, to conduct a sneak attack and try to seize back the city. Fortunately his generals convinced him otherwise.

  For both sides, the tense months-long standoff has been broken only by occasional skirmishes at the margins, as one side or the other hijacks a supply cart or tries to better its position by gaining another small field, barn, or hilltop.

  Then, in March 1776, just as the Continental troops’ purgatory seems truly interminable, the dynamic between the two armies changes abruptly thanks to the efforts of an unlikely young soldier.

  Henry Knox was a working-class kid from Boston who had joined the Continental army the previous summer. He was a specialist in artillery—a subject he had mostly learned about by reading military books in his parents’ bookstore growing up—and due to this specialized knowledge, he soon earned an officer’s commission.

  The generals liked him, and back in early November, Knox got up the nerve to propose to Washington an unusual plan that he thought could finally alter the stalemate in Boston.

  It was a plan based on intelligence and deception.

  Knox had received information that an empty fort in upstate New York contained a set of cannons not currently in use. Knox suggested that if the Continental army could somehow retrieve and transport these cannons without British knowledge, it could potentially bombard Boston from south of the city, and the British warships in the harbor wouldn’t have an angle to fire back.

  Washington met with his council of war to discuss the possibility. Some senior officers thought the logistics of transporting the cannons from the middle of upstate New York to Cambridge would be impossible, and therefore to attempt it would be a waste of men and resources.

  Despite these objections, Washington was intrigued enough to take a chance on this enterprising young officer.

  On November 16, 1775, Henry Knox embarks, accompanied at first only by his nineteen-year-old brother, on what will be an extraordinarily complex mission. After a trip down to New York City to procure transport supplies, the brothers make a weeklong trek north through New York State, hiring dozens of able-bodied men en route to man sleds and carts. Eventually they make their way to Fort Ticonderoga at the base of Lake Champlain.

  Knox’s information was correct. The brothers and their party find that most of the abandoned fort’s cannons are intact and sit unused. In total, they gather more than fifty usable cannons and mortars of various sizes—some of which weigh more than a ton—and use a system of ropes and pulleys to load them on a series of carts.

  With their team of hired men, Knox and his brother embark on an epic journey in the middle of winter hauling the cannons and mortars, first via boat over Lake Champlain, then via ox-drawn sleds through blizzards and across tundra, and finally over a series of mountain ridges in several feet of snow.

  In all, Knox’s team hauled roughly 120,000 pounds of artillery (to put it in perspective, that’s about thirty modern full-size sedans) through mostly untamed wilderness over three hundred miles in the dead of winter, an eight-week journey the likes of which has never been undertaken before or since.

  When the caravan arrives back near Cambridge on January 18, 1776, Henry Knox is a hero. George Washington promotes him on the spot.

  The Continental army has a major new asset with all this artillery; just as important, the British know nothing about it. Now, it will take a clever and deceptive strategy for Washington to use these new weapons to gain the upper hand.

  According to Knox’s original idea, the key to the strategy is a series of hills and bluffs called Dorchester Heights, just south across the bay from Boston. Knox had predicted that from this elevated expanse, the cannons could fire down on British ships in the harbor, and at the city itself, at such an angle that the ships’ artillery cannot answer back. If Washington’s army can occupy and fortify Dorchester Heights without British knowledge, they will suddenly hold the upper hand over the enemy.

  Secrecy is critical to the mission. If British sentries or spies detect the plan, the British troops will simply occupy the heights first, or set up defensive positions to block access.

  After weeks of clandestine preparations, on March 2, 1776, Washington embarks on the carefully planned maneuver.

  First, to create a diversion, the Continental army begins shelling Boston from artillery positions to the west of the city. The British army responds in kind, assuming this will be one of many harmless back-and-forth artillery volleys both sides have engaged in over the winter.

  While the volleys continue, just after nightfall on the night of March 3, several hundred Continental soldiers stealthily travel along the perimeter of the water from their base camps to Dorchester Heights, joined by several ox-pulled sleds carrying the heavy cannons. Earlier, a long line of hay bales were carefully placed along the route, designed to conceal the mile-long march of soldiers from the eyes of British sentries across the water. The soldiers had also prebuilt several fortifications in the camp, and these are hauled up to Dorchester alongside the cannons.

  That night, under the cover of darkness, a total of more than three thousand men, accompanied by eight hundred oxen and dozens of carts and sleds, quickly and stealthily occupy the heights. Under the night sky, the soldiers build barricades, set up the premade fortifications, and carefully place the heavy cannons. Washington himself, on horseback, leads the moonlit operation, anxiously circling the men and directing the process.

  By the first light of dawn, after an efficient ten hours of labor, a few thousand Continental soldiers have fully occupied the heights, complete with parapets, trenches, defensive barrels, and more than twenty massive cannons from the two forts at Ticonderoga.

  As the sun rises, when British officers in Boston look through their spyglasses, they are greeted with an incredible surprise: the Continental army has occupied and fortified Dorchester Heights just across the harbor with about two dozen long-range cannons trained directly at them.

  “My God, these fellows have done more work in one night than I could have made my army do in three months,” the British commander, General Howe, is reported to have said. He estimates to his aides that it must have taken fourteen thousand troops to execute such a feat so fast; in reality the number was less than a third of that.

  Suddenly, General Howe and the British are in a bind. For Howe to send troops by boat to storm and conquer the heights would be a massive undertaking, proceeding from an unfavorable position below the enemy. To have any chance of success, he would have to send so many troops southward across the bay that he’d leave the city highly vulnerable to an attack from another direction. Indeed, Washington has prepared forty-two flatboats with an amphibious force of four thousand soldiers to attack the city from the west, should Howe send his soldiers southward toward Dorchester.

  However, if Howe doesn’t launch some sort of attack, the British forts in the city and their ships in the harbor are sitting ducks, with the rebels able to fire their cannons from Dorchester Heights almost a
t will.

  These are terrible options. At first Howe starts loading boats to storm the heights, despite the risks. When a sudden storm over the harbor delays the assault, Howe rethinks his weak position, meets with his top officers, and decides to call off the attack.

  On March 8, 1776, Howe sends a message to the Continental army that would have been unimaginable only a few weeks ago: All British troops will now evacuate Boston. They’ll leave without harming the city if the Continental army allows them to retreat peacefully.

  Just like that, the British are evacuating Boston.

  After eight long months of a tense and often grueling stalemate, the Continental army has just liberated Boston practically overnight. In the five days since the Continental army began its move toward Dorchester Heights on March 3, not a single soldier has been lost.

  This wasn’t achieved through force and greater numbers, but by deception and trickery—and by keeping the operation completely secret.

  Intelligence. Cunning. Secrecy. These are the tools of war.

  21

  Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island

  March 1776

  Some three hundred miles away from Boston, a very different operation is simultaneously under way.

  Here, in the small town of Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, the counterfeiting team of Henry Dawkins, Israel Young, and Isaac Young is planning ambitious next steps from its headquarters, which happens to be the cramped, cold private attic of the Young brothers’ small wooden house.

  Unfortunately, despite the team’s grandiose plans, its counterfeiting scheme has run into an early snag.

  At first, everything was going well.

  Dawkins, the experienced engraver and silversmith, had painstakingly created a metallic plate for their printing press, engraved with the design and wording of the paper currency from the colony of Connecticut. He copied the design and lettering perfectly from existing bills, also allowing for some irregularities to be consistent with the poor craftsmanship of colonial money.

  Following Dawkins’s directions, the Young brothers also acquired the necessary ink and, of course, the correct printing press, now set up and operating in the attic where Dawkins secretly works.

  Unfortunately, the team learns there is something they don’t have: the correct paper to make the bills. The printing parchment they had obtained doesn’t, it turns out, match that of the existing currency. No one had double-checked this in advance.

  Now, here they are in their little attic, with a nicely engraved printing plate, a working press, and rolling drum, and no paper to print the bills on.

  For the aspiring counterfeiters, the news soon gets worse. After doing some research on the matter, they learn that not only do they not have the correct paper, but that the paper is available only in one place: Philadelphia. When the Continental Congress established the protocols for colonial currency, it created a unique paper that only it, the Congress, could send to each colony. The paper is made and sold only in Philadelphia, so the Congress can regulate the volume of currency being tendered.

  Presented with this unfortunate setback, many other counterfeiters might give up.

  Not these counterfeiters.

  Neither Dawkins nor the Young brothers are in a position to make the trip to Philadelphia to acquire the paper. However, the Youngs happen to know someone who is. They have an acquaintance who, by chance, is already planning a trip to Philadelphia to sell a couple of horses. Maybe, for a piece of the action, he will also procure them some counterfeiting paper.

  The friend’s name is Isaac Ketcham. He is also a Long Islander, from the larger neighboring town of Huntington. Ketcham, at least by his own admission, is not, in fact, a criminal. As he later describes himself, he’s an honest man, a family man. However, like many other ordinary folk during the chaotic early years of the revolution, he’s out of work, short on money, and needs to put food on the table for his family. To make his situation worse, Ketcham’s wife died recently—leaving their six children entirely reliant on their father for care and support. Isaac Ketcham is not in a position to turn down an opportunity.

  The three-person team is now a four-person team.

  They agree on a plan. On April 19, Ketcham will leave Long Island and travel to Philadelphia with instructions on what kind of paper to buy, and where to buy it. The Youngs give him some funds to make the purchase.

  Of the members of the Cold Spring Harbor counterfeiting operation, Isaac Ketcham is, by any measure, the least involved and least criminally motivated of the team. But ironically, it is Isaac Ketcham who will cause this little band of criminals to intersect with the most seismic events of the day—and possibly alter the destiny of a continent.

  22

  New York Harbor

  March 1776

  The Duchess of Gordon.

  Governor Tryon had spent the entire winter, through freezing temperatures and snowstorms, exiled on this British ship. He was often cold, often angry, often bitter—but always busy.

  Tryon has spies and agents posted at wharves, docks, and inns all over the New York area. His men regularly gather Patriot correspondence and information, and then ferry the goods to him at night on the Duchess of Gordon. Tryon can then forward his intelligence to British officers or his Loyalist allies in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and other colonies.

  Patriots in the region have learned to respect and fear Tryon’s ring of spies and his intelligence capabilities. In December, a New York City Patriot publication called The Sentinel distributes a broadside specifically alerting citizens to the Governor’s spying from the Duchess. The proclamation begins with this exhortation: “To the inhabitants of New York … WARNING THEM OF THOSE WHO TRANSMIT INTELLIGENCE TO GOVERNOR TRYON.”

  The proclamation goes on to call the Duchess of Gordon an “Intelligence Office” for the enemy, and continues with this warning: “Believe me my friends, the Governor never meant any thing else by going on board that vessel, but to collect intelligence for our merciless enemies, which he has been but too successful in obtaining.” And finally, “What in the name of Heaven have we to do with the wretches on board that ship?”

  In February, Tryon also makes an important move to consolidate his power. Whitehead Hicks, the aging New York City mayor, has resigned to take a position as a provincial judge. The mayoralty is now open, and Tryon seizes the opportunity to appoint a new mayor who is more sympathetic to his cause: a former lawyer by the name of David Mathews.

  Although born and raised in New York, David Mathews is a Loyalist through and through, firmly against the rebellion. He is also a man who understands how to skirt rules to get things done. Known for living an extravagant lifestyle above his means, Mathews has a reputation for slippery morals.

  Even Mathews’s supposed political allies speak poorly of his character. According to the prominent Loyalist judge Thomas Jones, Mathews is “a person low in estimation as a lawyer, profligate, abandoned, and dissipated, indigent, extravagant, and … over head and ears in debt.” One of Mathews’s former peers refers to him outright as a “villain” and accuses him of embezzling goods that were donated through charity to poor children.

  Most important for Tryon, Mathews is a man who will serve to protect his own power and money, which also means protecting and serving the man who appointed him. Through Mayor Mathews, Tryon will have a right-hand man on the ground to help serve his political agenda, and someone who has the powers of the mayoralty at his disposal to combat the increasing Patriot control of the local institutions of government. Mathews quickly becomes a regular visitor on Tryon’s ship, where the Governor conducts his clandestine meetings.

  Much of Tryon’s efforts become focused on what he sees as a critical goal: creating and overseeing a Loyalist network in and around the city. He believes they need to fight back against the rise of rebel power in the region. He still believes that the majority of people are on his side—they just need better organization.

  Of course the Loyalists a
lso need to raise arms, and for this they must have new supplies of weapons. Over the winter, Tryon had bribed New York gunsmiths to offer their services only to Loyalists and to the royal army. At one point he bragged to a British official that three out of the four major gunsmiths in New York would now make weapons only for friends of the Crown.

  In early March, Tryon decides to use his platform as Governor to send a message to the city. The rebels need to be humbled, and the Loyalists need some support. The Governor will issue a public proclamation reasserting the Crown’s—and therefore his own—preeminence in the colony.

  He spends several days writing the proclamation and, on March 16, sends the document ashore to his new mayor, David Mathews, with directions for Mathews to distribute it to prominent citizens, and also to “have it inserted in the several Gazettes published in the City of New York.”

  On March 21, multiple New York City newspapers carry the Governor’s message, addressed “to the inhabitants of New York.”

  Tryon’s proclamation begins by decrying the “prejudice, delusion, and faction” that have overtaken the city as a result of the rebellion. He reminds the public that contrary to what these radicals have been advocating, “It is in the clemency and authority of Great Britain only, under God, that we can look for happiness, peace, and protection.” He regrets that some “deluded people” have been subverting the rule of law, but he wants to send a very clear message to those who stay loyal that they can rely on the full “weight and force” of Great Britain to fight for them. Whereas for its enemies, England demands a “timely and dutiful submission.”

  Tryon had hoped that his forceful words would embolden the Loyalists in the city and intimidate the rebels. Unfortunately for the Governor, his message has the opposite effect.