The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington

by Brad Meltzer

We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately. —ATTRIBUTED TO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, JULY 4, 1776

This is a story of soldiers, spies, traitors, Redcoats, turncoats, criminals, prostitutes, politicians, great men, terrible men, and before it’s over, the largest public execution up until that time ever to take place on North American shores.

Is it natural and just for people to be ruled by the absolute power of a monarch who claims divine authority? Or, in fact, do people have a right—an inherent right—to choose their own government and therefore rule themselves?

A reputation for integrity and honor is something you can take anywhere, and it will never let you down.

George may not have come from wealth, he may not have come from a noble family, but he would always have character—an unimpeachable code of personal honor that could not be taken from him.

“I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man,” he once wrote to Alexander Hamilton; and, in a moment of reflection to his aide Joseph Reed: “I have but one capital object in view, I could wish to make my conduct coincide with the wishes of mankind, as far as I can consistently.”

George Washington may not have been born into nobility, but he could learn to be a gentleman; he could work hard to improve himself; he could, through his character alone, earn the respect of anyone he might meet.

“He is a foe to ostentation and to vainglory.… Modest even to humility, he does not seem to estimate himself at his true worth. He receives with perfect grace all the homages which are paid him, but he evades them rather than seeks them.” No matter the circumstance, he was almost always deferential, always gracious. After all, bragging and boasting aren’t honorable; what’s honorable is doing one’s duty and sacrificing oneself for a noble cause.

For Eustis, writing the letter, the very idea of this plot is so terrible that he can’t even conjure an ordinary word to describe it. Instead, he invents a new one: Sacricide. From the Latin roots, it means “slaughter of the sacred,” or “slaughter of the good.”

it is essential always to appear confident, to appear organized, and to appear disciplined, even under the worst circumstances.

Later, after the war, Washington will return to his position as a slaveholder in Virginia. But his thinking on the subject is never the same. Within a few years, he comes to believe that slavery is morally incompatible with the American ideals he and so many others fought for. He writes of slavery that “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.” In his will, he grants freedom to his own slaves.

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.

Washington’s enduring reputation as a great military leader is not based on his technical skill as a tactician. He would win a few impressive battles, but overall he lost more than he won. What made him great—at least in the particular circumstances of the Revolutionary War—was his sheer staying power, his total devotion to his army, his relentless sense of duty, and a stubborn refusal to ever give up.

He forged a nation—and proved, over and over again, the one truth at the core of both the Revolution and America itself: That in our lowest moments, we can find our greatest strengths.