The First Conspiracy

by Brad Meltzer

  17

  As the Massachusetts winter continues, cold and sickness combine to create yet another problem for the Continental army: Their ranks are shrinking.

  Desertions and illness deplete the troops’ original numbers—numbers that were already lower to begin with than what Washington hoped for.

  The army anticipates another potentially catastrophic loss of men in the new year, when the initial six-month enlistment period for many soldiers will come to an end, and officers fear many will choose not to reenlist.

  In late November 1775, Washington is presented with a decision to potentially ease this problem. It’s a decision that will force him to reassess his plan for the army—and to redefine who can be an American soldier.

  The question, raised by his war council, is this: Should freed blacks be allowed to enlist in the army?

  George Washington, a man raised in the planting classes in Virginia, has lived in proximity to slavery his whole life. In 1759, at the age of twenty-seven, when he took the hand of the wealthy young widow, Martha Custis, in marriage, he gained ownership of her late husband’s land and property, 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.

  There is no particular indication that during those years Washington ever seriously questioned the institution of slavery. He seemed to have no problem profiting from a practice that we now regard as a moral atrocity. As a Virginian landowner, and as a man who embraced the ethical codes of his privileged social position, 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.

  For one thing, by traveling to northern cities like Philadelphia and Boston, Washington becomes aware of the burgeoning antislavery movement. In these cities, free blacks—some of them educated and interwoven into the fabric of society—are far more common. Some of the most prominent northerners in the revolutionary movement—people like John Adams, his wife, Abigail Adams, and their friend the influential Philadelphia political thinker Benjamin Rush—are opposed to slavery, and even link the cause of liberty in the revolution to the broader cause of liberty for enslaved peoples.

  Washington, simply by being in proximity to people like Adams and Rush—and because he is otherwise deeply aligned with them in the mission of the war—is now at least exposed to the ideas of the antislavery movement, although he does not immediately embrace them.

  In fact, when the possibility of enlisting black soldiers is first presented to Washington in late November 1775, he maintains his prejudice. Although some black soldiers had served in the Massachusetts militia and fought bravely in the Battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, Washington initially holds to a Virginian’s narrow view of what sort of soldier he wants in his new national army.

  “Neither negroes, boys unable to bear arms, nor old men unfit to endure the fatigues of the campaign are to be enlisted,” he codifies in the army’s general orders of November 12. In this characterization, he crudely ranks potential black recruits in the same low category as whites too young or too old to fight. Even those black soldiers who have fought in the previous battles will not be eligible.

  Soon, however, circumstances force a change.

  In late December, an unusually fierce snowstorm bears down upon the sick and ill-equipped troops in the camps around Boston. More soldiers drop out or are incapacitated by cold and illness. Even more than before, the officers expect low reenlistment numbers.

  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 little ceremony he writes this simple note to John Hancock at the Continental Congress: “it has been represented to me that the free Negroes who have served in this army are very much dissatisfied at being discarded. As it is to be apprehended that they may seek employ in the [British] army, I have … given license for their being enlisted.”

  The Continental Congress immediately ratifies Washington’s decision. From that day on, just like that, the Continental army is integrated.

  Within a few months, hundreds of black soldiers are training and serving in Washington’s army. That number will keep growing, and throughout the course of the long war black enlisted men will varyingly comprise between 6 and 12 percent of the Continental troops. Washington never reconsiders his decision, and black soldiers fight bravely in every major battle of the war.

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

  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.

  Make no mistake, Washington’s transformation on slavery took decades, and it happened gradually. But it’s pretty clear where this transformation began: in the cold, cold trenches outside Boston, on the eve of the first full year of the Revolutionary War.

  18

  Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island

  January 1776

  At the start of 1776, the world is about to change. Some of the most powerful men in the colonies are working to shape the massive forces of history.

  Yet not every facet of history is decided by persons who hold positions of power. Sometimes ordinary people—farmers, laborers, servants—can alter the course of world events.

  Indeed, in some ways the fates of George Washington and William Tryon, two players on the world stage, will be determined not by fellow politicians or generals, but by a team of largely forgotten small-time crooks.

  Their criminal operation begins neither on the battlefields around Boston, nor in the heated political cauldron of New York City. It starts somewhere else, a place where small-time criminal operations are known to thrive.

  Long Island.

  This particular operation begins during a cold winter week in early 1776 when a man named Henry Dawkins travels from Manhattan to the small town of Cold Spring Harbor, in Nassau County, Long Island.

  Dawkins is an artisan. For years, he worked as a silversmith and engraver of some reputation. Originally from London, he moved to the colonies in 1754, and settled in Philadelphia. After apprenticing for a silversmith for a few years, he opened his own shop in the city and ran this advertisement in the 1758 Pennsylvania Journal:

  Henry Dawkins, Engraver from London.… Engraves all sorts of maps, shopkeepers bills, bills of parcels, coats of arms for gentlemen’s books, coats of arms, cyphers, and other devices on plate; likewise seals, and mourning rings cut after the neatest manner and at the most reasonable rates.

  Dawkins’s shop was busy, at least at first. His work became respected in the field, and his name appears on some prestigious work. Dawkins is credited with engraving the first-ever representation of the College of New Jersey—later known as Princeton University—and he crafted ornamental sil
ver for some of the wealthiest families in Philadelphia and other cities in the region.

  However, like many colonists at the time, Dawkins’s career suffered when the colonies’ disputes with England began. The various trade embargoes of the early 1770s hurt the economy, stripping wealthy citizens of disposable income. Artisans struggled to survive. Sometime during this period, Dawkins left Philadelphia and came to New York, perhaps to try his luck in a new city.

  If luck was what Dawkins was looking for in New York City, he didn’t find it. We don’t know exactly why, but by the end of 1775, Dawkins was locked in a city jail. How long he spent there is also a mystery, but shortly after spending New Year’s Day of 1776 behind bars, he was released.

  Now he’s on his way to Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island.

  Accompanying Dawkins on the journey is another person, by the name of Israel Young. These two men are recent friends—or at least acquaintances. They first communicated while Dawkins was in jail. Young had apparently sought Dawkins out because he heard of the prisoner’s trade skills. He visited him at the prison to discuss his work. That’s how Dawkins later remembered it, anyway. At some point during these conversations between Dawkins and Young at the jail, the two men hatched a plan.

  Now, with Henry Dawkins a free man, Israel Young has invited the engraver to stay at his house on Long Island, where he lives with his wife, and which he also shares with his younger brother Isaac Young.

  The Young brothers’ wooden house in Cold Spring Harbor is small and unremarkable, but the dwelling has one important feature: a private attic. Not a large attic, but just big enough to house a machine that the Young brothers recently acquired in New York City and transported to their home.

  The machine is a printing press, purchased by Young for the price of twelve pounds and four shillings. On Dawkins’s advice, Israel had selected what’s known as a rolling press, comprised of a cylindrical drum that rolls paper under changeable engraved plates.

  These men didn’t acquire a printing press to print pamphlets, or books, or signs. They acquired the press for one reason.

  Counterfeiting.

  Here in this attic, Henry Dawkins and the brothers Young hope to strike it rich by mass-producing replicas of the colonial paper currency. With Young’s new press, Dawkins’s engraving and printing skills, and a private attic in which to work, they believe there’s almost no limit to the number of counterfeit bills they can create.

  This team of Long Islanders has reason to be optimistic about their plan. Counterfeiting is widespread all over the colonies at this time, and difficult for authorities to monitor.

  Previously the Crown had controlled the currency and printed all the money. Counterfeiting was difficult. But recently, as discord grew between the colonies and the mother country, the new colonial governments decided to create their own paper money, distinct from the Crown’s, to exert more control over their own economies. Each colony created a unique currency, with a distinct design and numbering system. So now there are a dozen paper currencies floating around; all of them are different, and most are poorly made.

  For counterfeiters, it’s a boom time. One common rule of thumb in the trade is to actually avoid making the fake bills look too clean or professional, because it will then stand out from the real stuff, which is so shoddy. What’s more, because law-enforcement authorities are preoccupied with preparations for a potential war, the pursuit of counterfeiters is a low priority.

  For all these reasons, in the cold early months of 1776, as Dawkins and the brothers Young begin their scheme, they have no reason to think they’ll get caught, so long as they keep the operation to themselves.

  In preparation, Israel Young has acquired some official forty-shilling notes from Connecticut, issued by the Connecticut Provincial Congress. This will be their first bill, and then they’ll proceed to other denominations and currencies from other colonies. Once they engrave the plates, the free money will flow. As Isaac Young brags to his neighbor, he plans to “pay all his debts this summer in Congress money.”

  Sample Connecticut forty-shilling note from 1775, as issued by the Connecticut Provincial Congress. Continental currency of this era was often so poorly made that counterfeiters intentionally added flaws and imperfections to fake bills to make them more realistic.

  Within days, Dawkins sets up the rolling press in the attic. He puts his stool near a small fireplace to fight the frigid temperatures, and then gets to work engraving a plate that can be used to create a nice new stack of Connecticut bills.

  As the operation begins, a key rule for the brothers is to keep the goings-on in the attic discreet, so that Dawkins’s work, and even his presence in the Youngs’ home, can stay secret. “No person was permitted to go into Dawkins’ chamber,” as one visitor later explained, “and Israel Young himself split the wood for fire and carried it up himself.”

  They allow only a few close friends in the home at all, and keep the attic operation as tight-lipped as possible. In fact, the door that leads to the attic is hidden behind a movable bed, so that even the existence of the attic remains mostly secret.

  As these three Long Island small-timers get to work, they have no idea that their little criminal ring will soon intersect with the epic political events of the day, and in a way that none of them could ever expect.

  19

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  January 1776

  Trust no one.

  At least, that’s what George Washington begins to think as he tries to protect intelligence and conceal information from the British army and its spies.

  If nothing else, the Benjamin Church affair proved that even the most trusted confidants, people with spotless records, could be traitors in disguise.

  “There is one evil I dread, and that is their spies,” Washington soon writes, expressing the constant, nagging feeling that his army could be infiltrated at any moment by a secret enemy. It’s as if he walks around with the feeling that no one, either figuratively or literally, has his back.

  In a series of letters to his former aide Joseph Reed in the early weeks of 1776, Washington uncharacteristically unloads his deepest worries. There is almost a sense of panic, that he is shouldering too much, has no one to rely on, and that the army could be facing ruin. These fears sometimes keep him up at night. “The reflection on my situation, and that of this Army, produces many an unhappy hour, when all around me are wrapped in sleep.”

  These dark nights of the soul reflect a genuine feeling not just in Washington himself, but among his aides and allies, that the General is bearing too much responsibility, and that the army has placed too much reliance on one man.

  There is a growing sense, in the army’s ranks and among the public alike, that the Continental army will live or die solely with George Washington.

  This circumstance raises the terrifying question of what might happen should Washington’s safety not be protected. With the army surrounded by enemies, the fear is real that George Washington could somehow be seized or stabbed in the back at any time.

  What the Commander needs is safety, security, and loyalty from a few carefully selected men.

  In his general orders for March 11, 1776, Washington sends out a special request to the commanding officers of each regiment: to deliver him four handpicked soldiers. He doesn’t want just any four soldiers; he offers specific instructions for who can qualify.

  His Excellency depends upon the Colonels for good men, such as they can recommend for their sobriety, honesty, and good behavior; he wishes them to be from five feet, eight inches high, to five feet, ten inches; handsomely and well made, and as there is nothing in his eyes more desirable, than cleanliness in a soldier, he desires that particular attention may be made, in the choice of such men, as are neat, and spruce.

  He further specifies that they must be “drill’d men”—meaning experienced soldiers instead of newcomers. In short, he wants the colonels to send him the very best soldiers he’s got.


  According to Washington’s instructions, the men arrive outside his headquarters at twelve noon sharp the next day, standing at attention. Then, from these assembled soldiers, Washington personally selects a smaller number, about fifty, of those who meet his standards.

  His goal is to create a superior new unit of the army.

  These men will be only the elite. They will receive unique training and be given unusual privileges. They will travel personally with the Commander-in-Chief and other top officers, and they’ll be trusted to guard the army’s cash and other critical documents. They will carry out special duties that require skill and discretion.

  Above all, they have one absolutely critical responsibility: to protect the life of George Washington.

  Washington’s idea for this new unit is likely modeled on European armies, many of which contain some sort of special honor guard entrusted with the most critical tasks connected to their high-ranking generals. The French have the elite Gardes Françaises, and the British army has the Royal Horse Guards to attend to top officers and to the king himself.

  Although inspired by European examples, Washington’s version will have a uniquely American flair. They’ll have a special uniform in the Continental colors of blue and white, and carry their own distinct banner. The banner depicts a revolutionary soldier holding the bridle of a horse; next to the soldier stands Lady Liberty, bearing a flag and flanked by an eagle and a shield.

  Banner created for George Washington’s personal unit of bodyguards, formed in March 1776. The banner bears the unit’s memorable motto: “Conquer or Die.”

  The banner also displays the elite unit’s special motto. “Conquer or Die.”

  In official army documents, this group of soldiers is given the name “the Commander-in-Chief’s Guard.” Sometimes they are also referred to as “His Excellency’s Guards,” the “Generals’ Guard,” or “Washington’s Bodyguards.” Among the soldiers, however, one simple appellation soon becomes most common: the Life Guards.