Washington’s hair is still a youthful reddish-brown. His new Continental Army uniform is blue, although darker than the Virginia hue for which he was once known. The general spent the morning writing letters and conducting official business, knowing that this hanging is part of the messy business of war.
On any other day, the enormity of this public spectacle would be enough to keep the general’s mind occupied. But not today. That’s because his wife, Martha, is on her way back to Mount Vernon, Virginia, which is both a relief and source of grief to Washington. He is glad she will be safe, but he will miss the comforts and counsel of his beloved wife.2
Martha is leaving New York because Washington’s spies have informed him that a Royal Navy fleet laden with tens of thousands of British Army regulars and German auxiliaries is now on the way to the city from Canada and could arrive as early as tomorrow. The general has fortified Manhattan as best he can, but in all likelihood his small army will be vastly outnumbered. The untested Continental Army will soon reveal whether it is battle ready.
Washington knows that in Philadelphia the debates over independence continue, with a five-man committee in the process of writing a formal declaration of freedom.
But none of that will matter unless he finds a way to defeat the British.
Seen in that light, the hanging of Sergeant Hickey is a mere sideshow, but a vital one—it sends a powerful message to all in attendance.
Washington studies the approaching prisoner. Hickey—five foot six, dark-haired, thickly set—is sobbing. He still wears the distinctive blue wool jacket and white breeches of Washington’s “Life Guards.”3
Thomas Hickey has spent two weeks in a jail cell. The buttons and stripes have been cut from his coat as a ritual act of stripping his rank. The loss of stripes means he is no longer Sergeant Hickey, but a mere private.
Just three months ago, Hickey was handpicked to serve as one of Washington’s personal bodyguards. But with General Howe’s army and navy just days away from sailing into New York Harbor, Hickey had a change of heart. He joined a daring plot to assassinate Washington and deliver the city over to the British. Now he is about to become the first soldier in American history to be executed for treason.
Washington signed his death warrant with no reservations, for Hickey has shown himself to be a liar, a thief, a braggart, and a traitor—a man who betrayed not just the American colonies but General Washington himself.
The Irishman has long flirted with the gallows. Hickey is a complicated man, trusted by powerful leaders but loyal only to his own ambitions. He first came to America during the French and Indian War, fighting as a soldier in the British Army. Hickey’s charisma and efficiency were noted, and he was removed from the ranks to serve at a higher level. By war’s end, he was personal assistant to top British general William Johnson, a brilliant tactician whose fondness for Mohawk beauties led him to father mixed-race children by multiple women and take a Mohawk as his common-law bride for the last fifteen years of his life.
Johnson died of a stroke in 1774, leaving Hickey without the status and protection that once accompanied his service to the general. However, rather than return to duty as an ordinary British soldier, he defected to the American cause.
In March 1776, General Washington, realizing the need for men to guard him, his official papers, and the Continental Army’s treasury, sent an order asking for a very specific sort of soldier. They were to be individuals of “sobriety, honesty, and good behavior … from five feet, eight inches high, to five feet, ten inches; handsomely and well made,” he specified, writing in the third person. “There is nothing in his eyes more desirable, than cleanliness in a soldier, he desires that particular attention may be made, in the choice of such men, as are neat, and spruce.”
Despite being too short for Washington’s specifications, Hickey was among eighty men handpicked for this elite squad. Soon, he became a favorite of the general. But the duties of a Life Guard did not carry the prestige the Irishman had enjoyed while working for General Johnson. Very often, the guards were nothing more than Washington’s servants, performing mundane household chores at the general’s headquarters. Hickey grew bored. Close daily proximity to General Washington and a lingering allegiance to the British cause made him an easy mark for Loyalists seeking conspirators to assassinate His Excellency.
The ringleader was New York royal governor William Tryon, a British subject and avowed Loyalist.4 Tryon fled the city as Washington’s army approached in April, taking refuge aboard a seventy-four-gun British ship of the line anchored off the coast, HMS Duchess of Gordon.
The American forces lack a navy, leaving Tryon safe aboard the vessel, and giving him ample opportunity to receive those visitors who rowed out to greet him.5 Tryon became so successful at using these guests to send messages to the Loyalist community that Washington himself informed Congress of Tryon’s ongoing influence.
“The encouragements given by Governor Tryon to the disaffected, which are circulated no one can tell how; the movements of this kind of people, which are more easy to perceive than describe,” Washington wrote.
Tryon was not just exhorting his followers; he was planning a massive campaign to win the war. His messages traveled into Connecticut and as far north as Massachusetts. His plan was simple: kill George Washington, kill the rest of Washington’s generals, and then conduct guerrilla warfare in New York City once the British Army arrived. Cannon would be spiked, powder magazines would be set ablaze, and bridges would be destroyed to prevent the arrival of patriot reinforcements.
Rumors of the plot swirled for more than a month. “The friends to liberty are to a man convinced, that the Tories will take up arms, when encouraged by the appearance of any royal troops,” noted one of Washington’s top generals, Charles Lee.
Tryon recruited New York mayor David Matthews to join his cause, and contracted with a local gunsmith to procure weapons. He enforced a strict code of secrecy, letting few conspirators know the names of others involved.
Tryon’s plan might have worked, had it not been for Thomas Hickey.
Washington’s bodyguard was arrested on charges of possessing counterfeit money. While in prison, he bragged to jailhouse informant Isaac Ketchum that he had received money from Tryon and was recruiting other Life Guards to join the fight. He bragged that he would personally take up arms on the great day when the British arrived.
Hickey’s trial took place two days ago, on June 26. It seemed he had little to fear—every other accused man sentenced that afternoon received a release from prison or a short sentence. But four eyewitnesses testified that Hickey tried to recruit Life Guards to join Tryon’s plot. And Hickey’s role in the plot, it was revealed, would have required him, personally, to kill George Washington, and then destroy artillery and ammunition.
Hickey admitted to joining Tryon, though only as a precaution, stating that “if the enemy should arrive and defeat the army here, and he should be taken prisoner, he might be safe.”
With little doubt of his treachery, Hickey was convicted of “Sedition and mutiny, and also of holding a treach’rous correspondence with the enemy, for the most horrid and detestable purposes.”
The Irishman was sentenced “to suffer death.”
“The General approves the sentence,” Washington wrote in an order that afternoon, “and orders that he be hanged to morrow at eleven o’clock.”
Washington could have ordered that the Irishman be shot. A firing squad would have done the job nicely. Hickey would have been forced to kneel next to a coffin, and then been shot in the head by twelve of his fellow soldiers.
But firing squads are anonymous affairs that take place at ground level. Few soldiers would witness the execution, let alone civilians. This is why Washington prefers a hanging. In fact, he likes that mode of execution very much. Capital punishment makes for excellent theater. As with all military executions, the general means to make an example of the traitor. The swinging corpse will serve as “a warni
ng to every soldier in the army” who might consider desertion or treason.
Washington has ordered that the death procession be made as public as possible. As the crowd lines Hickey’s path to the gallows, he is trailed by a chaplain, there to hear his confession and offer a spiritual message to the crowd; a provost marshal, to oversee the execution; and more than a hundred uniformed armed guards leveling sharpened bayonets—lest the condemned try to escape. A cadre of drummers sets the procession’s slow pace, beating tattoo on the ominous “dead march.”
As Hickey walks ever closer to his execution, the sound of the drums seems to grow louder, but that is only because the crowd has become quiet.
It is all as Washington planned.
While the general’s intention is to put the fear of God in those soldiers who would plot treasonously or desert their post, His Excellency also has a much more immediate motivation for this public execution.
The city is deeply divided. Pockets of Loyalists are everywhere. A statue of King George occupies a prominent position on Bowling Green, at the southern tip of Manhattan. The monarch is nine feet tall and made of lead and gold, sitting atop a proportionally large horse. A fifteen-foot-high marble pedestal supports the two. Modeling it after an Italian statue of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, sculptor Joseph Wilton desired that it might “metaphorically assume and actually aspire to the wisdom and grandeur of the ancient stoic leader and thinker.”
In fact, the opposite has occurred. As colonial unrest has risen, George has become a very negative sort of inspiration. So much so, that Loyalists recently placed a black wrought-iron fence around the statue for its protection, fearing vandals would destroy it.
Even now, Loyalist spies wander through this hanging ceremony, counting troop tents, artillery pieces, and cavalry horses.
As Washington sees for himself at this moment, a public execution brings the community together. If only during this procession and in the moments when Hickey kicks spasmodically at the end of the rope, the divisions between patriots and Loyalists will cease. The good people of New York will watch one thing and one thing only: the death of Thomas Hickey.
* * *
The Irishman takes his final steps to the gallows, where a rope with a hangman’s noose dangles from a crossbeam.
The traitor is forced to step into the back of a horse-drawn cart. As Washington looks on, Hickey gazes out at the masses that have gathered to watch his execution. It is a scene that fills him with false confidence. He stops crying.
Utter silence settles over the crowd. All eyes are trained on Hickey. Parents tell their children to pay attention.
The officer of the day reads aloud Hickey’s death warrant. His voice carries over the crowd, distinct and damning.
A calm defiance settles over Hickey as the noose is looped over his head and cinched tightly around his neck—though not so tightly as to cause rope burns before the hanging itself, for this is considered inhumane.
The chaplain offers to pray with Hickey, or perhaps to hear his pleas for penitence, but the condemned man mocks the clergyman for being a heartless opportunist. He sends the chaplain away.
For his last words, Hickey sneers that his accusers may be the next to die.
There is no blindfold. Hickey’s eyes are wide open and his jaw firmly set as he awaits what will come next.
The horse is spurred. The cart leaps forward. Hickey tumbles out the back and stretches the rope.
For the very lucky, the force of the drop is enough to snap the neck, killing the person instantly. But it rarely works like that. Thomas Hickey strangles to death very slowly. His hands are tied, preventing his arms from instinctively clawing at the rope that has already wrenched his larynx away from his trachea, obstructing his desperate attempts to breathe. Simultaneously, the rope squeezes shut his carotid arteries, preventing blood flow to his brain.
Hickey’s legs kick spasmodically as the air is forced from his body. The crowd gasps as his eyes begin to pop from his skull, his lips and nose turn purple.
The spectators know what comes next, and now focus their stares on Hickey’s white uniform breeches. Within seconds, his sphincter muscle is deprived of oxygen, forcing him to defecate. His pants also bulge outward in front, as his penis becomes erect from the rope placing enormous pressure on the brain’s cerebellum.
The crowd looks for these nuances, having seen them at other executions. This is part of the show. Women gasp and cover their mouths, and men close their eyes at the horror. Yet, few look away for very long.
Finally, the kicking stops. Hickey’s dead body swings, its pendulum arc growing shorter until it swings no more.
Rain or shine, Hickey’s corpse will dangle from this rope for a day or even a week—until General Washington feels the time is right to cut him down. A pit will be dug at the base of the gallows, the rope will be cut, the deceased will drop unceremoniously into the earth, and dirt will then be thrown on top of him, there to remain until the next hanging. At Hickey’s own request, no prayers will be said over his body.
As the crowds begin to disperse, Washington mounts Blueskin and gallops back to his headquarters at Richmond Hill, an estate formerly owned by a British Army paymaster.6 He is troubled by Hickey’s execution, and the fact that other conspirators plotting his assassination have not been found. But as the people of New York clog the narrow streets on the way back to their homes, the fate of the colonies weighs heavily on Washington’s shoulders. The general is left to ponder how many of these citizens will stand behind him when the world’s most powerful army and navy invade their city within a few short days.
Public executions are not the most poetic way to bring a city together.
Gathering thousands of people to watch a young man soil himself while strangling to death is also not the most spiritual way to father a nation.
But the fate of American independence does not yet rest upon moral platitudes—right now it depends entirely upon military victory.
Washington needs support.
This is war.
And George Washington will do whatever it takes to win.
* * *
The next morning, June 29, 1776, colonial scouts race to inform George Washington that the Royal Navy is sailing into New York Harbor. White sails fill the horizon as far as the eye can see, they tell the general.
The British have arrived.
Soon, there will be more death.
7
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
JULY 2, 1776
5:00 P.M.
Thomas Jefferson will soon commit treason.
Thick clouds of horseflies fill the Assembly Room as Congress finally ends its second consecutive long day of debate. The time has now come to cast a vote for or against independence from England. The weather outside is hot and sultry, forcing custodian Andrew McNair to open the tall windows to let in a breeze. But with the fresh air come the horseflies, courtesy of a stable next door. The flies swarm the cloth-covered tables, biting the delegates through the thin stockings covering their lower legs.
One week ago, Jefferson submitted his version of the Declaration of Independence for review by his peers. He is proud of his way with the written word and the elegance with which he crafted the document. The Virginian believes that his Declaration has a clear voice and makes a compelling argument for freedom. Yet he knows that the outcome doesn’t belong to him. The case he makes for independence will be scrutinized by congressional subcommittees, which will dissect his words line by line and make their own changes.
Jefferson is not at all happy about this upcoming edit, particularly from men whose writing skills are not his equal. But that is part of the frustrating business of Congress. Every action must be put to a vote, no matter how petty or insignificant it might seem.
The vote at hand, however, is obviously different. Within moments, the term colony may no longer define the territories these men represent. Yet a simple majority will not carry the day. By rule of this Congress,
all thirteen colonies must unanimously choose independence. If just one votes “nay,” there will be no Declaration. Jefferson’s three weeks of careful writing will have been wasted.
Each colony is allowed to cast one vote. However, the number of representatives at the Congress is based upon the size of the territories, so there are more representatives for New York than, say, Delaware. Thus, the majority within each colonial delegation decides which way it will vote. Many are split. Each of the men in this room love America, but not all are convinced that a break from England is best.
Yesterday, as thunder hammered Philadelphia and a driving rain pelted the Assembly Room windows, Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson delivered a lengthy argument to the Congress, stating that a vote for independence was “premature.” It was Dickinson who led the movement one year ago to send George III the Olive Branch Petition promising full support for British superiority in the colonies. The king refused to accept, let alone endorse, the document, but Dickinson has not let go of his loyalty. A separation from England, he told Congress yesterday, would invite an attack by Spain or France. Or, worst case, might even cause a civil war between the colonies themselves.
So, yesterday, when it came time for each delegate to cast his vote, the pale and painfully thin Dickinson stood up and stated his choice: nay. Three other members of the seven-delegate Pennsylvania contingent cast a similar vote. Benjamin Franklin was among the dissenters on the losing side.
In all, nine colonies voted in favor of independence. Two delegations, South Carolina and a deeply divided Pennsylvania, voted against.1
Delaware split its vote, one to one. The colony actually has three delegates, but the thin, cancer-ridden Caesar Rodney is not in Philadelphia, due to obligations with his colony’s militia.
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