The Trial and Execution of the Traitor George Washington

by Charles Rosenberg

  “He let himself get a lot closer to death than that,” Black said. “But when I left he was alive and well, although presumably now in prison.”

  After a fine dinner and a good night’s sleep, Black headed back to London. He and North dined at 10 Downing upon his return and imbibed a not-insubstantial quantity of fine wine. After both the food and the wine had dwindled down, North said, “You’re absolutely sure he escaped?”

  “Very sure, my Lord.”

  “I still don’t understand exactly how the two of them did it. Do you really not know, General?”

  “I truly have no idea, my Lord. However they did it was well plotted and well hidden from us until the last moment, although it is being investigated.”

  “Well, it’s more or less what I wanted, really. And the news from Cornwallis is good. He has prevailed in a major battle in South Carolina at a place called Guilford Courthouse. I think victory is finally near.” A broad smile crossed his face.

  Black at first said nothing in response but instead cast his mind back to their first meeting, in what now seemed a faraway time, albeit in a room not fifty feet away from where they were dining. Then they had known each other not at all. Now they had achieved the sort of intimacy that comes about when one man has, in however guised a form, asked another man to kill for him. So Black didn’t think it would be out of place to ask a question of the First Minister that had been gnawing at him. Had the mission to America made the King any more sovereign in the colonies than on the day Black first set foot aboard the Peregrine? Then again, as he thought about it, the answer was so obvious there was no point in asking.

  Black suddenly realized that his failure to respond aloud to North’s statement of confidence in ultimate victory was fast becoming awkward. North was sitting there, staring at him, twirling the stem of his wine glass in his hand. Black raised his own glass high and said, “To victory, and to the King, our sovereign, long may he reign over us.” Whoever us was now, or might one day be.

  * * * * *

  Historical Notes

  Independence of the United States

  In October 1781, the American army, led by George Washington, defeated a large British army under the command of Lord Cornwallis, who surrendered on October 19. The band played “The World Turned Upside Down,” but the war did not end immediately. It dragged on in one way or another for almost two years.

  In September 1782, Henry Laurens was prisoner exchanged for Lord Cornwallis, left the Tower and went to France to join Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay as peace commissioners.

  Finally, on September 3, 1783, the United States and Great Britain entered into the Treaty of Paris. The peace commissioners, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens and John Adams, negotiated it on behalf of the United States; David Hartley and Richard Oswald on behalf of Great Britain and King George III. It was signed for the United States by Franklin, Adams and Jay. Laurens was too ill to attend the signing.

  Article 1 of the treaty says:

  His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States [there follows a list of the states] to be free sovereign and independent, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.

  There were no conditions or restrictions placed on the independence of the United States. Article 1 is the only portion of the treaty still in effect.

  George Washington (1732–1799)

  It is said that sometime in 1783, almost two years after the Battle of Yorktown but before the formal signing of the Treaty of Paris, George III was sitting for a portrait by the American painter Benjamin West. The King asked West what Washington would do after the colonies achieved independence. West supposedly replied, “They say he will resign his commission and return to his farm.”

  West reported that the King had said, in response, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

  Although Washington delayed returning permanently to his farm for quite a few years after the Revolution ended, he proved himself indeed the greatest man in the world, not only by resigning his commission as commander of the armed forces of the United States in 1783 but, later, by stepping down from the presidency at the end of his second term in 1797 and retiring to Mount Vernon, where he died on December 14, 1799, at the age of sixty-seven.

  The idea of kidnapping Washington during the Revolutionary War may not be entirely fiction. In June 1776, Thomas Hickey, a member of Washington’s Commander-in-Chief Guard (sometimes called the Life Guard) was court-martialled, tried for mutiny and sedition and hanged in front of a reported twenty thousand spectators in New York City. His crimes involved passing counterfeit money and planning to defect to the British, along with others. There were rumours at the time, however, that he was involved in a plot to assassinate or kidnap Washington. These rumours were later promoted and expanded by historians of the nineteenth century.

  But the kidnapping pendulum swung both ways during the Revolution. In September 1781, Prince William Henry, the eldest son of George III, was serving as a midshipman aboard the British battleship HMS Prince George, the flagship of Admiral Digby. At some point that month, it docked in New York. An American spy, Colonel Mathias Ogden, reported to Washington that the Prince, who was sometimes quartered ashore in Hanover Square, was not well guarded. He proposed that the Prince be kidnapped, providing Washington with a major asset to trade in a prisoner exchange. Washington, by letter dated March 28, 1782, praised Ogden’s “spirit of enterprise” and authorized him to attempt to carry out the plan. Washington cautioned, though, that the Prince was to be treated with “all possible respect.” However, the plot was discovered and foiled by increasing the guard, and the Prince eventually returned safely to England. Many years later, in 1830, he succeeded his father and reigned as William IV.

  George III (1738–1820)

  Until Queen Victoria, George III was the longest-reigning monarch in British history, having reigned from 1760 until his death in 1820. In the later years of his reign, he suffered from recurrent mental illness, and a regency was finally established in 1810, whereby his eldest son ruled as Prince Regent. Based on the King’s reported symptoms, many modern physicians believe he was likely suffering from a hereditary blood disease called porphyria, although there are dissenters from that diagnosis.

  The King was never fully reconciled to the independence of the American colonies. Indeed, in March 1783, some six months before the Treaty of Paris was signed, the King drafted an abdication notice, but never delivered it.

  Frederick, Lord North (later 2nd Earl of Guilford) (1732–1792)

  Lord North stepped down as First Minister in March 1782. He returned to an influential role early in 1783 as Home Secretary, in a coalition with his old enemy, Charles James Fox, a Whig. That ministry fell in late 1783, but not before it had managed to negotiate and sign the Treaty of Paris, thus truly ending the American war. North, who never regained power, began to go blind in 1786 and died in London in August 1792 at the age of sixty. He thus presumably lived to hear about the accession of George Washington to the Presidency of the United States. I could find no record of what North may have thought about that event.

  Henry Laurens (1724–1792)

  Henry Laurens was the fifth President of the Continental Congress and presided over it during the adoption by the Congress of the Articles of Confederation in 1777 (the Articles were not fully ratified by the thirteen states until 1781). He resigned that position and then went to the Netherlands on a diplomatic mission and was captured by the British on the high seas. He was charged with treason and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was held under harsh conditions. After the Battle of Yorktown, he was prisoner exchanged (in a deal he brokered himself, with assistance from Edmund Burke and Benjamin Franklin, amongst others) for Lord Cornwallis. Cornwallis had
been paroled to England after the Battle of Yorktown, having agreed as a condition of his parole not to participate in any military actions against the United States. Laurens eventually went to Paris as a peace commissioner to help negotiate the Treaty of Paris. He returned to the United States after the treaty was signed and largely retired from public life in 1784. He died in 1792 at the age of sixty-four.

  Samuel Huntington (1731–1796)

  Samuel Huntington was a Connecticut lawyer who served as President of the Continental Congress from 1779 to 1781. He was a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. After the Revolution, he served as the Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court and as the governor of the state. Huntington County, Indiana, is named for him.

  Charles Thompson (1729–1824)

  Charles Thompson was the permanent secretary of the Continental Congress. His name is affixed to the first published version of the Declaration of Independence, as Secretary of the Congress.

  Although not a delegate, he was integral to its functioning, having served in the role for the entire fifteen years of the Congress’s existence. He also had a significant role in foreign affairs and has been said by at least one biographer to have served as a virtual prime minister. Earlier Thompson had been a leader of the Philadelphia Sons of Liberty. He fell out with some of the other Founders over various actions and issues and never obtained an office in the new federal government.

  Patience Lovell Wright (1725–1786)

  The wax sculptor, Patience Lovell Wright, was a real person. She practiced her craft in New York, Paris and London. Her wax sculpture of Prime Minister William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham (done after his death) can be seen in the Westminster Abbey Museum. She died in London in 1786.

  Acknowledgements

  I am deeply indebted to the many people who have helped me write this novel. Chief among them are my wife, Sally Anne, for her encouragement to get going on writing it when it was only an idea bumping around in my head (not to mention her excellent editorial comments on each chapter as it was written, as well as her comments on the finished manuscript); my son, Joe, who also bugged me to write it and whose comments on structure and arc, once I got started, were extremely helpful (not to mention that he came up with the title!); my editor, Peter Joseph, who not only acquired the book for Hanover Square, but whose careful edit of the manuscript has improved it greatly, in ways both large and small; and Gina Macdonald, my excellent copy editor, who not only did a terrific job smoothing grammar, syntax and text and bringing the manuscript into compliance with the style manual, but also checking many hard-to-find facts and ferreting out a variety of anachronisms that had escaped me, despite my earlier efforts to find them all. I also want to thank the proofreader, Katie McHale; the publicist, Shara Alexander; Mary Sheldon, Natalie Hallak and the entire production crew at Hanover Square. Last, but hardly least, I am indebted to my wonderful agent, Erica Silverman, without whom this novel would never have seen the light of day.

  A special note of thanks is also owed to Jacque BenZekry, who has been such a great cheerleader for the project as it has gone forward.

  Various other friends have not only read the manuscript and given me their notes on it but, in the process, lent me their particular expertise—thank you, Roger Chittum and Mike Haines, for your knowledge of ships under sail; Clint Epps, for your insights into Revolutionary War weapons and culture; Brinton Rowdybush, for your knowledge of American diplomacy in the eighteenth century; Amy Huggins, for your knowledge of eighteenth-century costuming; John Brown, for your comments on New Jersey geography; Jeff Davison, for pointing out that no one could have drunk from a bottle of beer in America in 1780 since the first bottling in the United States didn’t take place until much later; Maggi Puglia, for your great tour of the Dey Mansion and your knowledge of how Washington’s headquarters functioned while he was there; and Gemma Smith, for your informative tour of the Benjamin Franklin house in London (now listed at No. 36 Craven Street, but numbered as No. 7 during the time that Franklin lived there). And last but not least, Diana Wright, for your help with my website and all things social media.

  Whatever errors might be in the book are, of course, mine alone.

  As always, still other friends and colleagues have given unstintingly of their time to read early drafts and provide general comments or to support my efforts in other ways. They include Melanie Chancellor, Dale Franklin, Lorie Stromberg, Tom Stromberg, Sam Ahn, Mi Ahn, Daniel Wershow, Alison Balian, Roger Toll, Mary Menzel, Dan Martin, Jack Walker, Belinda Walker, Wendy Joseph, Marty Beech, Hwa Kho, Ping Lee, Miriam Singer, Linda Brown, Maureen Gustafson, Elaine Katz, Lauren Gwin, Deborah Coontz, Maxine Nunes, Joel Davison, Jessica Kaye, Richard Brewer, Gayle Simon, Maryglenn McCombs, Tyson Butler, Carolyn Denham, Prucia Buscell, Deanna Wilcox, John Shelonko, Bob Vanderet, Mindie Sun, Diana Wright, Dick Birnbaum, Pamela Okano, Annye Camara, and all of those Facebook friends who suggested names for the ship.

  I have had an interest in the American Revolution since grade school, when my fifth-grade teacher had me memorize Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.” Over the years since, I have read dozens of books and articles about the Revolution, some of them now lost to memory. The research on this novel involved reading dozens more. I was, however, particularly impressed by what is “out there” now that wasn’t when I first began to read on the subject: online resources, which are today quite amazing. Those I found particularly useful included the digital resources at the British National Archives, Founders Online (supported by the US National Archives), as well as the website of Mount Vernon.

  I must also mention Wikipedia. I know that it is often criticized and can sometimes fall short of pristine accuracy, that it can be guilty of bias or miss important facts. But, carefully used, it makes possible an initial dive into a pool of knowledge that is both broad and deep. And its footnotes frequently lead to specialty books and articles that would otherwise be difficult to find. I am grateful to the Wikimedia Foundation for supporting it, along with the thousands of volunteer contributors and editors who strive to make it an ever more useful tool.

  ISBN-13: 9781488080579

  The Trial and Execution of the Traitor George Washington

  Copyright © 2018 by Charles Rosenberg

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