The First Conspiracy

by Brad Meltzer

If Tryon learned anything from his time governing North Carolina, it’s that showing clear strength is the best way to win over a population. In North Carolina, it was pretty straightforward: When there was a rebellion of poor farmers—the so-called Regulators—he crushed it by force and hanged the leaders. Everyone fell quickly into line after that.

  But here in New York, it won’t be so easy. Here many of the rebels are from prominent families and have important connections. Unlike the dirt-poor farmers of North Carolina, Tryon can’t just slaughter them. As the Governor himself put it to the English Parliament, “It would not do to treat the New Yorkers as I did the Regulators; they are a very different kind of men.”

  Even if he wanted to, Governor Tryon knows that the Crown would never let him hire his own militia, much less run it through the city streets to assault his enemies. The politics of the day are too fragile.

  He will have to come up with another plan. Something secretive, something clandestine.

  In a city like New York, knowledge is power, so Tryon’s first move is to establish an intelligence operation to keep tabs on revolutionary activity in the region and to share it with his Loyalist allies throughout the colonies. Using his many connections in the city, he’ll infiltrate rebel circles, both among the politicians and the lower classes. With his spies, he’ll find their weak spots and figure out how to strike.

  William Tryon doesn’t need an assembly, or a congress, or anyone else. The Governor is ready to take matters into his own hands.

  He has money.

  He knows the city as well as anyone.

  He has friends in high places—and low places.

  Tryon is sure that one way or another, his side will win and the rebels will fall. And so will their Commander.

  10

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  August 1775

  Order from chaos.

  At every step, that’s been George Washington’s answer. When his father died, and then when his brother died, he learned to overcome the loss by exercising control, by being more disciplined, by working harder.

  This army in Boston is a mess; but now it’s his army, and it’s his job, in fact his duty, to control it.

  Every day, Washington rides with his generals through the encampments, inspecting, problem solving, imposing rules, and making plans.

  Because Washington’s face isn’t yet known to these men, and because his hastily made uniform doesn’t distinguish him as their leader, Washington places an unusual order with a local seamstress: a single light-blue sash. He wears it diagonally down his chest as a kind of totem, so his men will always recognize him. It’s a “ribband to distinguish myself,” he writes in his journal, and, along with his trademark gray horse, this simple ribbon will soon become a visual icon of the early years of the war.

  No matter the chaos around him, while he’s in front of the men, Washington always exhibits perfect poise, perfect manners, perfect horsemanship, perfect appearance. It’s a small thing, but it sets the tone.

  “His excellency was on horseback, in company with several other military gentlemen,” writes a field doctor named James Thacher. “It was not difficult to distinguish him from the others; his personal appearance is truly noble and majestic.”

  But however impressive his bearing, the problems and difficulties Washington faces are staggering. Every day he has endless meetings and writes letter after letter to the Continental Congress, to other officers, to local committees, and to colonial leaders, trying to coordinate the Herculean task of organizing, feeding, supplying, transporting, paying, and training the thousands of men who have arrived from every direction with only the clothes on their backs.

  With approval from Congress, he quickly appoints dozens of officers, most of them inexperienced, and then he must devise complicated chains of command from scratch, with no existing structure. Most national armies have decades if not centuries of established routines and protocol; Washington is trying to create these systems in a matter of weeks, with poor supplies, untrained soldiers, and inexperienced officers. The logistics are overwhelming, and new problems arise every day.

  He begins a ritual of writing and sending daily general orders for officers to read aloud to all troops at their breakfast, an attempt to establish rules, priorities, and structure. These orders cover every facet of the army’s day-to-day operations, from the most critical issues to the most mundane.

  In his first few general orders, Washington introduces with great formality the names of his top generals. But he also takes tallies of blankets and kettles, responds to complaints that the daily bread is “sour and unwholesome,” and singles out a soldier accused of stealing two horses from a farm: “It is ordered that he be discharged, and after receiving a severe reprimand, be turned out of camp.”

  Desperately, Washington tries to impose discipline on the mass of unruly young men who are living in squalor and prone to cursing, drinking, and fistfights.

  He starts with a regimen of basic cleanliness, for hygiene and appearance. This isn’t so easy, because every time it rains, the fields turn into mud and the open latrine ditches overflow into the muck. When some troops try to stay clean by bathing in a nearby river, Washington must respond to a different problem:

  Where it has been observed and complained of, that many men, lost to all sense of decency and common modesty, are running about naked upon the bridge, whilst passengers, and even ladies of the first fashion in the neighborhood, are passing over it, as if they meant to glory in their shame.

  Clearly, these soldiers are not familiar with The Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior.

  Washington also cracks down on the rampant drunkenness among the soldiers, castigating the officers for allowing liquor in the camps that leads to “the troops being continually debauched, which causes them to neglect their duty, and to be guilty of all those crimes which a vicious, ill habit naturally produces.”

  In addition to liquor, Washington has an aversion to gambling—something he considers unfit for the dignity of a soldier—and in one of his general orders announces a new policy that no “games of chance” will be allowed at the camp:

  Any officer, non-commissioned officer, or soldier, who shall hereafter be detected playing at Toss-up, Pitch & Hustle, or any other games of chance, in, or near the camp or villages bordering on the encampments; shall without delay be confined and punished for disobedience of orders.

  Washington usually appeals first and foremost to the soldiers’ sense of honor and duty as their prime motivation to obey the various rules, sometimes using lofty language to do so. When it comes to soldiers stealing food or clothing from one another, he writes:

  [The General] hopes, and indeed flatters himself, that every private soldier will detest, and abhor such practices, when he considers, that it is for the preservation of his own rights, liberty and property, and those of his fellow countrymen, that he is now called into service: that it is unmanly and sullies the dignity of the great cause, in which we are all engaged.

  Nevertheless, if his appeals to the nobler sentiments of the men prove ineffective, Washington and his generals also impose strict punishments for every infraction, enforceable by court-martial. Punishments range from lashes on the back to expulsion and even imprisonment for serious crimes.

  More than anything, Washington tries to instill in the troops from so many colonies that they are now fighting as one army, joined in a new American cause. Coming from so many regions, and without a common uniform or even a common flag to bind them, the new army will have to unite behind the idea of a shared purpose. In his general orders of July 4, 1775, Washington appeals to this lofty aspiration of national unity:

  The Continental Congress having now taken all the troops of the several Colonies.… They are now the troops of the United Provinces of North America; and it is hoped that all distinctions of Colonies will be laid aside; so that one and the same spirit may animate the whole, and the only contest be, who shall render, on this great and t
rying occasion, the most essential service to the great and common cause in which we are all engaged.

  Unfortunately, Washington’s high-minded plea is, at least at first, a total failure. In the coming weeks the various regional groups and militias quickly devolve into bitter rivalries and jealousies against one another, sometimes expressed with insults, fists, or knives. These petty fights are a constant source of frustration for Washington. Already carrying the massive burden of trying to organize and lead this vast operation, he can’t seem to grasp why his soldiers don’t share his exalted sense of common duty and mission.

  The general’s aggravation reaches something of a boiling point one day in early winter, a few months after he has assumed command. A regiment of backwoods Virginia riflemen had just arrived to join the Continental force, and after their long journey are to be housed in some vacant buildings on Harvard Yard before being sent to the camps. A group of Massachusetts troops, the so-called Marblehead regiment, happen to be recessing in the Yard when the Virginians arrive, and, rather than greet them, the Marblehead soldiers begin to shout mocking insults about the newcomers’ uniforms, which, in the rural Virginia mode, are made of “white linen frocks, ruffled and fringed.”

  A ten-year-old boy named Israel Trask, the son of a Massachusetts officer, is in Harvard Yard at the time and describes what follows. The insults between the Marbleheaders and the Virginians get more heated, and then:

  Both parties closed, and a fierce struggle commenced with biting and gouging on the one part, and knockdown on the other part with as much apparent fury as the most deadly enmity could create. Reinforced by their friends, in less than five minutes more than a thousand combatants were on the field, struggling for the mastery.

  Instead of fighting the British, the soldiers are fighting one another. The unholy brawl continues for several minutes, spilling into every corner of Harvard Yard. Just as the chaos threatens to spiral out of control, the sound of beating hooves fills the Yard, and George Washington himself gallops from around a corner and plunges into the fray:

  With the spring of a deer, he leaped from his saddle, threw the reins of his bridle into the hands of his servant, and rushed into the thickest of the melee, with an iron grip seized two tall, brawny, athletic, savage-looking riflemen by the throat, keeping them at arm’s length, alternately shaking and talking to them.

  At the sight of Washington, the hundreds of brawlers “[take] flight at the top of their speed in all directions from the scene of the conflict,” and “less than fifteen minutes’ time had elapsed from the commencement of the row before the general and his two criminals were the only occupants of the field of action.”

  After incidents like these, at times it seems to Washington that no matter how hard he works, the obstacles and difficulties are insurmountable.

  In a moment of darkness, Washington writes a candid letter to his friend, fellow Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee, expressing his frustration at the never-ending parade of problems: “There [have] been so many great, and capital errors, & abuses to rectify … that my life has been nothing else (since I came here) but one continued round of annoyance and fatigue.”

  The Commander-in-Chief’s growing despair doesn’t go unnoticed by those around him; as one aide writes: “I pity our good general, who has a greater burden on his shoulders and more difficulties to struggle with than I think should fall to the share of so good a man.” And, in a moment of near hopelessness Washington confides to his aide Joseph Reed: “Could I have foreseen what I have and am like to experience, no consideration upon earth should have induced me to accept this command.”

  Yet at the end of the day, Washington knows that the command is his, and he can’t escape it. To give up now, to abandon his charge, would be an act of dishonor that’s simply unthinkable.

  The fact is the army needs George Washington.

  He’s all they’ve got.

  11

  TEN MONTHS LATER …

  New York, New York

  June 1776

  It’s a rainy Thursday in New York City. The city is filthy, full of mud.

  The Continental army is everywhere, living in homes, walking the streets. These soldiers are here to defend the city. Many civilians have fled for fear of what is to come.

  At this very moment, the first wave of the massive British fleet—hundreds of ships carrying tens of thousands of soldiers—is sailing toward the city. They’re only a few days away.

  It will be the first large-scale battle of the Revolutionary War.

  And yet, in this tense moment, word has slowly spread about another danger—not coming from across the ocean but from right here, within the city. Maybe even from within the army.

  On this rainy day, inside one home in the city, a quill touches parchment. A man’s hand scrawls these words in dark ink: “You have no doubt heard of a most horrid conspiracy lately discovered in this place.”

  A conspiracy. In New York City.

  The conspirators will “stop at nothing, however villainous and horrible, to accomplish their designs.”

  Their designs are against the Continental army, and not just against the army, but against its leader. The letter continues: “All our important men were to be seized or murdered.… General Washington was among the first that were to be sacrificed, and the rest in succession, according to their importance.”

  George Washington, murdered.

  Such an act would devastate the army, especially when timed as the British arrive.

  Interestingly, according to the letter, this plan does not originate from British forces. The plot is treasonous—it emerges from within.

  The letter continues: “From the weight of the persons who have appeared to prosecute the inquiry, and the circumstances that have been mentioned, I have no doubt of the truth of the general charge.”

  In fact, at that moment, military and civilian officials are racing to uncover the details of this plot to try to stop it.

  If what’s in the letter is true, the implications are almost unfathomable: George Washington, murdered in 1776, in the first year of the Revolutionary War—murdered before the Declaration of Independence is even signed—before the United States of America even exists.

  The quill comes to a stop. The letter, now finished, is sealed. The writer will send it by mail to Hartford, Connecticut.

  12

  NINE MONTHS EARLIER …

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  It’s late September 1775.

  Washington’s slowly growing army remains in a tense stalemate with the British troops occupying Boston. The Continental forces doesn’t have the troops, weapons, or ammunition to try and win back the city—and even if it did, such action would likely precipitate an all-out war, which the Continental Congress is still hoping to avoid through negotiation.

  The British, meanwhile, don’t have sufficient troops in Boston or nearby Bunker Hill to expand and march to other cities. Washington’s army is spread out in positions fanning out north, west, and south of the city, preventing any real British movement without a major confrontation. England’s position seems to be to avoid more bloodshed, at least for now, while the two sides negotiate.

  Still, both armies know that this stalemate could break in an instant, turning into a battle. In this tense environment both armies are eager for any information about the other—trying to gather intelligence about troop numbers, supplies, plans, and intentions.

  That’s when a stranger appears at Washington’s doorstep.

  One of Washington’s top generals, Nathanael Greene, is the one who brings him. They arrive together at Washington’s headquarters.

  The stranger carries with him a mysterious letter.

  His name, he says, is Godfrey Wenwood. He is a baker from Newport, Rhode Island, whose only claim to fame is a recipe for biscuits—known as “Wenwood’s butter biscuits”—popular among the sailors and seamen who frequent his shop on Bannister’s Wharf in Newport.

  Why has Gene
ral Greene brought a Rhode Island biscuit maker before the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental army?

  The answer lies in the letter. It’s a document written in code, and the baker says he was given the letter and asked to deliver it to British military officials stationed in Rhode Island.

  Washington inspects the document, and indeed it contains a series of jumbled letters, apparently some kind of encrypted message.

  Washington asks the obvious question: Who gave Wenwood the letter and asked him to deliver it to the British?

  The answer: a woman.

  She’s the baker’s former girlfriend, a love interest from the past, who is now a “woman of ill repute”—a prostitute—living here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This former girlfriend unexpectedly came to visit the baker in Newport, and asked if he would deliver the letter, sealed at the time, to one of three British officials currently docked at a ship in Newport. She said she didn’t know what was in the letter, only that she was just delivering it for an unnamed friend.

  The baker explains to Washington that he felt very nervous about the woman’s request. Although British seamen and officers stationed in Newport often visit his shop, he has no allegiance to them—in fact, he sides with the Patriots—and in any case he’s just a humble man who makes biscuits for a living and isn’t looking for trouble. He says that once the woman left, he held on to the letter rather than deliver it. Together with a friend, he opened the seal on the letter to see its contents, and was surprised to see that the enclosed document was in some sort of code.

  The baker chose not to deliver the document, instead simply hiding it in the storeroom of his shop.

  The letter might just have stayed in that storeroom forever, but then the baker’s former-lover-turned-prostitute wrote him a follow-up note, wondering why the intended recipient hadn’t yet received it: “I much wonder you never sent what you promised to send,” she wrote. “If you did [he] never received it, so pray let me know by the first opportunity.”