The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington

by Brad Meltzer

A new idea has slowly been forming, borrowed from philosophers in Europe and filtered through the specific experience of the American colonists. At the heart of it lies a fundamental question: 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?

Such a simple idea today. But back then, this was a radical concept—

and a dangerous one. In pamphlets, a new word is being thrown around—“liberty”—and this word represents an incredible threat. It’s not just a challenge to the powerful royal family in England; it’s a challenge to centuries of vested power and authority everywhere, a threat to royal families all over Europe and indeed the world. As...

It’s not just Washington’s appearance that makes him stand out, though. The Congress is full of highly educated talkers who use ornate, flowery language. Washington never went to college. He speaks simply or, more often, he listens. As the other delegates compete to talk as much as possible, Washington exerts a gravity and power by withholding opinions. He has, as John Adams later puts it, the “gift of silence.” But when he does speak, the words have conviction. That Washington would make such a strong impression is in some ways a surprise, given that he is not really a new face to the other delegates, or at least that he shouldn’t be. He also attended the First Continental Congress,

In other words, the colonies need to form a national army, a Continental army.

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.

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

war, when he pursued the hand of the young widow Martha Custis, a woman of far greater wealth than himself. And, once he was married and established as a prosperous landowner, his reputation got him elected to a seat in Virginia’s House of Burgesses, a body that then appointed him as one of the delegates to represent the colony at the Continental Congress.

I beg it may be remembered by every Gentleman in this room, that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.”

found.… I can answer but for three things: a firm belief of the justice of our cause—close attention to the prosecution of it—and the strictest integrity.

discovery of the greatest and vilest attempt ever made against our country,” he writes. “I mean the plot, the infernal plot, which has been contrived by our worst enemies.”

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.” And the target of this...

Humphrey Bland’s A Treatise of Military Discipline, originally published in 1727 and considered the “bible of the British army.” It has been fifteen years since Washington

order to persuade young men to become soldiers—and to win the faith and confidence of the public—it is essential always to appear confident, to appear organized, and to appear disciplined, even under the worst circumstances.

Congress, was caught in the awkward position

reception to two politically opposed leaders on the same afternoon. The committeemen, doing their best, first instructed the greeting militias to be “ready to receive either the Generals or Governor Tryon, which ever shall first arrive, and to wait on both as well as circumstances will allow.”

England, in 1729. Raised in an aristocratic family, as a young man he was inclined toward military service, enlisting as an officer to serve the British army against France during the Seven Years’ War in Europe.

“Tryon’s Palace,” became a symbol of royal luxury and greed at a time when many rural residents lived in near poverty.

the troops have 308 barrels of powder, a modest but serviceable amount. But soon, a brigadier general named John Sullivan sheepishly informs him that the number is a mistake, and doesn’t account for the powder already used during the Bunker Hill battle. The real number is thirty-eight barrels. As Sullivan describes it, after he informed the general of this laughably small amount, Washington “did not utter a word for half an hour.” The army has barely enough ammunition for training drills, let alone to fight a battle. The enemy forces are just across the Back Bay in Boston, barely a mile away,

New York, New York June 1776

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.

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.

Dr. Benjamin Church, long one of the most respected Patriots in Boston, is a full-fledged traitor and a spy, secretly delivering intelligence to the enemy.

Dr. Church had been secretly consorting with the enemy for a period of almost two years, providing intelligence on the early Patriot movement in Boston, and later sending dispatches to the British with details from his visits to the Continental Congress.

If you can’t trust a man like Dr. Benjamin Church, who can you trust?

Allegiance in the conflict is not determined by language, birthplace, or race, but simply by whatever a person declares his or her loyalty to be at any given moment.

Apart from the Patriots and Loyalists, yet more colonists have allegiances that are up for grabs. They’ll switch to whichever side will benefit them at any given moment, or whichever side will pay them more, or whichever side they think is most likely to win. Throughout the colonies, these divided and shifting loyalties create an environment of distrust and confusion within cities, within neighborhoods, even within families. Dramatic examples abound, even among the most prominent players on both sides of the struggle.

army’s positions. So, the lesson from Dr. Church and these other spies is obvious. Espionage is important; but so is counterespionage. Intelligence is important; but so is counterintelligence. This is the defensive side of spycraft—and it isn’t easy. To be clear, there was no such word as “counterintelligence”

piece of intelligence that will alter the fate of the colony. According to Tryon’s spy, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia just sent a secret authorization for the rebel governments in each colony—to kidnap or seize royal officials or private citizens whom they suspect are unfriendly to the American cause. In the words of the Congress: Resolved: That it be recommended to the several provincial Assemblies or Conventions, and councils or committees of safety, to arrest and secure every person in their respective colonies, whose going at large may, in their opinion, endanger the safety of the colony, or the liberties of America.

From the safety of the ship Tryon sends one more message to the Mayor: Finding your letter of yesterday insufficient for that security I requested … my duty directed me, for the present instant, to remove on board this ship, where I shall be ready to do such business of the Country as the situation of the times will permit. The citizens, as well as the inhabitants of the Province, may be assured of my inclination to embrace every means in my power to restore the peace, good order, and authority

all started on that day when the officers of the Continental army marched through the city, right under his nose, led by their Commander, George Washington. Though the Patriots may think they’re rid of their Governor, they couldn’t be more wrong. Tryon isn’t going anywhere. In fact, he’ll soon have a brand new plan—a plan designed to change the course of history.

“The Small Pox is an enemy more terrible in my imagination, than all others,” as John Adams will write. “This distemper will be the ruin of every army from New England if great care is not taken.”

Should freed blacks be allowed to enlist in the army?

including a total of eighty-five slaves. Over the next sixteen years, as Washington accumulated more wealth and land, he acquired several dozen more slaves.

Washington probably never even considered that black men and women are or should be equal to whites, either legally or morally. But as with so many others, the war forces George Washington to reevaluate his beliefs.

The situation is dire. Washington needs more men—and he needs them fast—if he wants his shrinking army to survive in the coming year. Washington’s northern generals impress upon him the practical wisdom of allowing blacks to serve in the army. As Massachusetts General John Thomas puts it regarding black soldiers he led at Bunker Hill: “I look upon them in general [as] equally serviceable with other men … many of them have proved themselves brave.” Washington also learns that the black soldiers who served so well in the Massachusetts militia are now resentful that they can’t join the new Continental army. As a result, officers worry that these black fighters will now go straight to Boston and offer their services to the British. Just before the end of the year, Washington does what he must often do during the war. He adapts. With

Remarkably, the Continental army remains the most integrated fighting force in American history until the Vietnam War.

On March 8, 1776, Howe sends a message to the Continental army that would have been unimaginable only a few weeks ago: All British troops will now evacuate Boston. They’ll leave without harming the city if the Continental army allows them to retreat peacefully.

It’s almost unthinkable that the British army would allow itself to be humiliated on the world stage by the ragtag colonial forces. Surely the mighty British must retaliate. Surely they will now unleash their full power against the colonies and crush the rebellion for good. But the question remains: Where and when will the British strike back? Tryon is one of the first to learn the answer. New York City. The British will now send the full force of their army and navy with a plan to occupy Manhattan and make it the new seat of war. The colonial army will try desperately to defend it. That means something else. George Washington will be coming back to New York City. It’s around this time, and soon after this realization, that Tryon, in the dark underbelly of his ship, begins to formulate a plan. For this plan to succeed, the Governor will need to marshal all his resources, all his spies, and all his men. It’s a complex scheme and a deadly one. Everything about it must be secret. It’s a plot against the Continental army. Against the army, and against the army’s leader. It’s a plot against George Washington.

There is good reason to believe that Tryon has applied for some troops … so that you will see the necessity of your being decisive & expeditious in your operations in that quarter—the Tories should be disarmed immediately … you can seize upon the persons of the principals.… And happy should I be, if the Governor could be one of them.

Charles Lee is an inspired choice to carry out Washington’s multipronged mission. Although he is British by birth and background, and only emigrated from England to the colonies a few years earlier, Lee has since become one of the fiercest and most outspoken Patriots—and one of the first to argue for full independence from England. Lee is so famously hot tempered that during his service as a British officer in the French and Indian War, one of the Native American tribes who fought beside him gave him the nickname “Boiling Water.” Disheveled in appearance and prone to profanity, Lee often said he loved dogs more than people, and rarely traveled without a pack of canines, including a Pomeranian named Spada, a dog that from a distance was sometimes mistaken

unusable without extensive repair. A body called the City Watch was supposed to be guarding this huge cache of critical weapons, but according to the Town Major, many of the City Watch were secretly Loyalists, or had been bought off by Loyalists, and therefore sabotaged the very cannons they were supposed to be guarding.

Such was New York City in the early months of 1776: full of dark plots and schemes—with rumors of yet more to come.

There seems to be something bigger afoot in New York, a greater organization that is tying these schemes together. Lee begins to suspect that all signs point to one person as the mastermind: the exiled Governor, William Tryon, who haunts the city from the Duchess of Gordon in the harbor.

the two captured men are hauled before the local authorities, they point the finger at a third man, someone named Thomas Vernon, whom they insist is the ringleader.

Trafficking such as this with the British ships is now forbidden. It’s a punishable offense. Still, this infraction alone would not normally warrant Stirling’s personal attention.

According to the men, Vernon’s primary mission from Tryon is to seek out Continental soldiers or militiamen whom he can induce, by either force or persuasion, to switch sides to the British. One of the prisoners provides more details: [Vernon] went on board … the Duchess of Gordon, and there conversed with the Governor … who urged him to be active in procuring as many men as possible…; that above fifty or sixty soldiers now in town in the Continental service were engaged by the said Vernon for the service of the Ministry.

Governor Tryon is bankrolling a scheme to bribe Continental soldiers or militiamen to betray their army and side with the British forces. According to the testimony, Vernon has already coerced dozens of former Continental soldiers—probably militiamen raised in New York, or perhaps some of the troops General Lee brought

Tryon’s most audacious feat of the season is to plant a mole at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia—a mole who can therefore deliver to him regular updates of the highest-level proceedings in all the colonies. Tryon accomplished this by somehow arranging for his own former servant to be hired by an oblivious congressman, James Duane from New York, to serve as the congressman’s valet and personal aide. While Duane employed the valet, Tryon simultaneously paid the young man to send him regular updates from the inside.