Cannons for the Cause

by Martin Ganzglass

  The 14th Continentals, the Marblehead Mariners, looking smart in their short blue jackets and white oiled canvas breeches, were drawn up to the left of Will’s regiment, at the corner, almost to the side of the gallows. He looked in vain for his friends, Lieutenant Nathaniel Holmes, Adam Cooper and others. The Mariners’ Colonel, John Glover sat motionless on his horse in front of their ranks facing the gallows, his red hair tied back with a black ribbon, protruding from the bottom of his blue tri-corn.

  The Militia men across from Will and on the sides surrounding the scaffold platform stood in their homespun clothes in an undisciplined lounging stance. They were armed with an odd mixture of muskets and fowling pieces held askew at all angles. Some casually rested the stocks on the ground.

  Almost the entire population of the city, said to be twenty thousand, had turned out for the hanging. Ordinary citizens filled the long grassy field closest to the gallows platform and beyond up the slopes of the hill a hundred yards away. Most were men, young and old, some well dressed on horseback, others common laborers and n’eer do wells. Several barefoot boys had climbed the nearby trees for a better view. Here and there, like butterflies among moths, a few women in their colorful bonnets and dresses sat in carriages fanning themselves.

  “Oh, the Tory traitor will soon do the gallows dance,” a man’s voice said from behind Will.

  “Why do you say that?” his companion asked.

  “Look at the knot on the noose,” the first man replied, pointing with his dirt encrusted hand past Will’s right ear. “Tis a gallows knot, they have tied. It will strangle him. The hangman’s knot breaks the neck,” the man said with authority.

  “Serves him right, the treacherous bastard,” his companion said. “Trying to poison General Washington and his staff. I heard he put arsenic in the General’s food. It could have killed Mrs. Washington too.”

  “True enough,” a third man chimed in. “They say their plan was when the Redcoats landed, Hickey and his conspirators were going to seize the General and his staff, while the Tory traitors among us blew up our powder and then turned the cannons, loaded with grape shot, on our troops.”

  “I do not see,” Sergeant Merriam said in a loud voice to Isaiah and Will, “how one can both plot to poison General Washington and to seize him.” He snorted derisively. “General Howe would like nothing better than to take our General back to London for trial.”

  “And what do you know about our whore-faced New York Tories,” the first man responded, noting that Sergeant Merriam’s Boston accent marked him as a stranger. “Before you and your fellows arrived, Mayor Matthews and the Royal Governor were entertaining British Naval Officers in their homes with their elegant balls and dinners and such, while the Redcoats and their ass bag sympathizers threatened and terrorized decent patriots in the city.”

  “Good thing they caught Mayor Matthews,” his companion added. “They should hang him next.”

  “And Governor Tyron too,” another man shouted. “I heard he escaped to one of those ships of the line in the harbor. It mounts seventy four guns I am told, ready to bombard and burn New York to the ground.”

  “Would you not think, the Royal Governor would want a city to govern,” Sergeant Merriam said loudly, turning his head to partially look at the men behind them. “If the city is filled with loyalists, why would he burn their homes and property?”

  Merriam leaned closer to his friend Corporal Chandler. “If these men were true patriots instead of undisciplined rabble and gossip-mongers, they would either be in the militia or working on constructing the fortifications in Brooklyn. All they are good for is spreading rumors.”

  “You may make all the smart talk you want,” the man who had spoken first yelled at Merriam. “The city is crawling with armed traitors, scheming away in their secret meetings, ready to rise up on a given signal. The only way to rid us of those pockey scum is to hunt them down like rats and ride them on a rail.”

  “Oh we had some grand Tory rides this past week,” his companion said, laughing. “There were so many of the traitors, we almost ran out of tar and feathers.”

  Will shuddered remembering how close he had come to being tarred and feathered in April and his narrow escape from the mob. Adam, his friend from the Marblehead Mariners had carried him away from the frenzied crowd, while Lieutenant Hadley and others had held them at bay.

  “Steady lad,” Isaiah said, noticing Will rub the faint scar over his eye. “You are in uniform and one of us now. General Putnam’s men made short work of these ruffians, dispersing them and putting an end to their mob justice. These loud mouth patriots are long on talk and . . .”

  He was interrupted by a drum roll signaling the arrival of the prisoner and his guards. A uniformed drummer boy, no older than ten, led the troops into the square. A small round snare drum hung from broad white straps that crossed his narrow chest. He bit his lower lip concentrating on maintaining the beat with two hardwood sticks. Behind him, forty soldiers marched ten abreast. The long bayonets on their muskets glinted in the late morning sun. Hickey, bare headed with his hands tied behind his back walked between two Lieutenants of Washington’s Life Guards. They gripped the condemned man by his arms, their long unsheathed swords held upright in their free hands. An officer on horseback and another forty soldiers followed. The entire procession came to a halt directly in front of the scaffold and faced the gallows. The officer rode forward, dismounted and climbed the platform. The crowd was quiet as Hickey was led up the stairs.

  Commands rang out and the regulars came to attention. The militias behind the gallows shifted into some semblance of military order. Will watched the officer on the platform.

  “That is Captain Gibbs, Commander of the General’s Guards,” Merriam whispered. “A Massachusetts man.”

  Gibbs unrolled a scroll of paper and read it in a loud clear voice. “By Order of General Washington, with the concurrence of Generals Heath, Spencer, Greene and Putnam, in conformity with the verdict of the Court Martial of the 26th of June of One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy Six, duly and properly convened, finding Sergeant Thomas Hickey guilty of mutiny and sedition, said Thomas Hickey shall be stripped of all rank and insignia and hung by the neck until dead.” Gibbs tucked the scroll in his waistcoat and nodded to the guards. “Bring the prisoner forward,” he commanded.

  The prisoner stood bareheaded, his black hair unkempt and his cheeks covered with stubble. He was stocky, about five feet six, with a wide flat forehead, a narrow chin and a tight thin line of a mouth, which seemed mismatched to the rest of his head. He looks so ordinary, Will thought. Like any common soldier. What could have driven him to try and kill the Commander in Chief?

  Hickey smirked as Captain Gibbs drew a straight razor from his jacket. He mockingly bared his neck as if preparing to be shaved. Gibbs ignored him and methodically cut the buttons off Hickey’s uniform and then his Sergeant’s stripes. The sound of the razor slicing through the wool fabric was like a saw rasping through soft wood.

  One of the guards lowered the noose and placed it over Hickey’s head while the other brought a wooden stool and helped the prisoner, his hands still bound behind him, to climb up. The officer attempted to tie Hickey’s feet around the ankles. The condemned man kicked the officer’s hand away. He made another failed attempt before Captain Gibbs waved him off.

  “Does the prisoner wish to say any final words before the verdict is carried out?” Gibbs asked.

  If there were to be an attempted rescue, it would have to occur now. Will felt the tension among the troops around him. He gripped his musket tightly and scanned the people massed on the hills. The crowd shifted forward. Will felt the pressure from those behind his file. He kept his eyes forward and hoped the pushing was from their eagerness to see the execution.

  Hickey looked out over those in front of him, their faces upturned, watching him. He swiveled his head slowly within the looseness of the noose, taking in the people to his left and right. He made an effort to loo
k at those behind him, but decided against trying further, given the narrowness of the stool. He smiled, as if pleased with the enormous numbers who were present. He licked his lips, marshaling his thoughts and then bellowed out, “God damn you all. May you all be blown to hell.”

  “No priest for this one,” some one from the crowd yelled back.

  “I have no need for one,” Hickey shouted back. “They are all charlatans.”

  Those were his last words. Captain Gibbs kicked the stool out from under Hickey with his booted foot. Hickey’s body jerked down, his legs moved wildly as if he were trying to run on air, his neck seemed to stretch up from his violently twitching shoulders as his entire body struggled against the rope tightening around his throat. His eyes bulged frantically and blood trickled from his nose. His death spasms made his body turn and as his back now faced Will and the others, a dark brown stain appeared on the seat of his pants.

  “He was a Tory shit all right,” someone yelled from the crowd. Others laughed at the now limp corpse hanging from the gallows.