George Washington Drawing Battle Plans

In belatedly June 1776, equally a massive British fleet prepared to invade New York, a circuitous drama played itself out at the headquarters of General George Washington'southward Continental Army in New York City: a former bodyguard of the general was set to exist hanged for conspiracy against the Patriot rebellion—and confronting Washington, himself.

On June 28, some 20,000 people gathered in a field just north of the city and watched a private in the Continental Army mount the gallows on charges of sedition, wildcat and treachery. The doomed human was Thomas Hickey, an Irish-born former British soldier who had joined the rebel crusade subsequently the outbreak of war in 1775.

More importantly, Hickey was a fellow member of Washington'southward Life Baby-sit, the aristocracy squad tasked with protecting the commander in principal, on whose shoulders the entire fate of the rebellion appeared to rest.

Now, Hickey would go the commencement Continental soldier to be executed for treason, thanks to his participation in a shadowy plot to foil the rebellion—and perhaps fifty-fifty to kill or kidnap Washington. The plot apparently involved the royal governor of New York, the mayor of New York City and more than a dozen others, though Hickey would be the only one to hang for it.

Infantrymen of the Continental Army during the American Revolution.

MPI/Getty Images

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In their volume The Get-go Conspiracy: The Cloak-and-dagger Plot to Kill George Washington, Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch revisit the tumultuous events of the spring and summer of 1776, only before the British invasion of New York began the outset large-calibration conflict of the Revolutionary War. Through close examination of the existing evidence, they trace the development of the Hickey plot, also every bit the efforts used to root out the conspiracy, including the formation of a "Cloak-and-dagger Commission" whose methods would foreshadow today's espionage and counterintelligence work.

Conspiracy in the Air

When George Washington arrived in April 1776 in New York to ready for the British counterattack, he was well aware that threats lay all around him. Many in New York, where the powerful merchant classes depended on secure trade with Britain, still hoped for reconciliation with the mother country.

From his exile aboard a British merchant send anchored in New York harbor, William Tryon, the imperial governor of New York, sought to undermine the Patriot cause past enlisting Loyalist support in New York and the surrounding regions.

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Almost as before long as he arrived, a suspicious Washington tried to crack downward on advice between Tryon'due south ship and New York colonists. In May, at his asking, the New York Provincial Congress formed a "Secret Commission" to uncover conspiracies amongst New York'southward Loyalists. According to Meltzer and Mensch, the committee, led by the prominent New York Patriot John Jay, was "a small early prototype of an intelligence agency—a squad dedicated entirely to gathering information, identifying dangerous parties, and uncovering hostile plots."

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A Plot Is Uncovered

Equally Washington urged the Continental Congress to send more troops to New York, Tryon and his swain Loyalists decided to try and recruit some of these soldiers for the Loyalist cause. Evidently, they succeeded.

In mid-June 1776, Thomas Hickey and another Life Guard soldier, Michael Lynch, were arrested and imprisoned for passing apocryphal coin. While in jail, they told a fellow prisoner, Isaac Ketcham, that they—along with several other members of the Life Baby-sit—were involved in a plan to undermine the Patriot cause on behalf of the British.

Seeking leniency for himself, Ketcham told authorities what Hickey and Lynch had said. Acting on this information, as well as the testimony of other witnesses who had come up forward separately, the committee tracked the conspiracy, absorbing and interrogating David Mathews, mayor of New York City, along with dozens of other suspects. Even Washington's housekeeper, a woman named Mary Smith, appears to have been implicated, although it's unclear whether she was actually involved or non.

On June 26, Hickey faced a court-martial. Afterward four witnesses testified against him, including Ketcham, he was found guilty and sentenced to death for "sedition and mutiny, and also of holding a treach'rous correspondence with the enemy, for the almost horrid and detestable purposes," according to the general orders issued from Continental Ground forces headquarters the next day.

Rumors and Reality

Two days after, the futurity Massachusetts governor William Eustis, and so an army surgeon, was in the oversupply at Hickey's execution, which took place near the intersection of today's Grand and Chrystie Streets, well-nigh the Bowery on Manhattan'south Lower East Side.

Writing to Dr. David Townsend at the time, Eustis chosen the Hickey conspiracy "the greatest and vilest endeavour ever made confronting our country...the plot, the infernal plot which has been contrived by our enemies." To depict the unthinkable—a plot against the life of the revered Full general Washington by the very people he virtually trusted—Eustis even coined a new word, "sacricide," from the Latin words meaning "slaughter of the good."

By that time, rumors were swirling almost the conspiracy, horrifying Eustis and many others. In the near sensational (false) story, Meltzer and Mensch recount, Hickey had attempted to impale Washington by feeding him poisoned peas.

In fact, the details of the Loyalist plot foiled by the Hole-and-corner Committee'south investigations remain vague. Washington himself never mentioned a threat to his own life, even in the letter he wrote to John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, on the very morning time of Hickey's execution. Nor do any of the official examinations of the committee mention a programme to kill Washington.

Yet, Meltzer and Mensch fence that evidence suggests the plotters intended to kill (or at least kidnap) Washington, and that Washington and the committee likely kept this nether wraps to avert causing panic—and betraying weakness—just as the British were preparing to invade.

The Aftermath of the Hickey Plot

Hickey may have been dead, but Washington couldn't afford to rest. In his letter of the alphabet to Hancock on June 28, the full general too noted that a fleet of 130 ships had sailed from Halifax (Nova Scotia, then a British colony) in early June, including General William Howe and a big number of reinforcements. Inside days, the main trunk of the British armada had landed at Staten Island, unloading their forces in preparation to strike.

On July 2, 1776, Washington issued more orders to his waiting troops. "The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves."

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, delegates to the Continental Congress debated the historic declaration drafted by Thomas Jefferson, abandoning forever the thought of reconciliation with U.k. and launching a new phase of the colonies' war for independence.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/george-washington-bodyguard-assassination-plot

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