The First Conspiracy

by Brad Meltzer

  The other man is a soldier. Other patrons in the tavern wouldn’t know this because tonight he wears civilian clothes.

  He’s no ordinary soldier, as he has explained to Forbes.

  He has special responsibilities and serves George Washington directly. In fact, he is sometimes in close personal proximity to Washington, meant to protect him.

  He’s a member of the Life Guards.

  Gilbert Forbes and the soldier continue to talk in hushed tones, as if everything they say is a closely guarded secret. By the end, they seem to be in agreement, as if they’ve made a deal.

  Then, the two men raise their mugs.

  They raise their mugs—and drink to the King.

  PART IV

  A Most Infernal Plot

  46

  New York, New York

  May 1776

  For the men of the counterfeiting operation based in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, the month of May 1776 starts badly—and ends worse.

  After the surprise raid on the home of the Young brothers on Sunday, May 12, the four men involved in the operation—Henry Dawkins, Isaac Young, Israel Young, and Isaac Ketcham—are arrested and taken to New York City.

  They spend the night of Monday, May 13, in New York City’s central prison, literally underneath City Hall, awaiting their turn to testify before the New York Provincial Congress the following day.

  Just as planned, on the morning of Tuesday, May 14, the suspects are marched upstairs to appear before the congress and tell their stories. The congressmen also summon Capt. Jeremiah Wool, the militia officer who led the raid on the Youngs’ home, to provide his first-hand account of the mission.

  The first to testify is Captain Wool. Based on the careful records he maintained of the operation, Wool lays out a detailed and precise step-by-step account of his journey to Long Island, his raid, his discovery of the printing press in the attic, and the subsequent apprehension of the other members of the team in Cold Spring Harbor and Huntington, Long Island. He also presents the physical evidence obtained from the Youngs’ house, including the various plates, inks, and forged bills found in dresser drawers and chests.

  Together with the original witness testimony from the neighbors who suspected criminal activity and reported it to authorities, the account and evidence provided by Jeremiah Wool make quite a convincing case.

  Next, the congress begins to question the suspects themselves.

  By any measure, the testimony from the alleged counterfeiters is, at least for the counterfeiters themselves, a total disaster.

  The authorities had wisely kept the four suspects—Dawkins, Young, Young, and Ketcham—separated from one another in the days prior to their testimony. They had no chance to get their stories straight or come up with any coherent explanation or alibi for the evidence against them.

  Instead they tell wildly contradictory stories of what transpired in the Young brothers’ Cold Spring Harbor home during the preceding months, and how it came to be that a printing press surrounded by fake currency ended up in their attic. None of the suspects’ accounts matches another, which makes it clear to everyone listening that all of them, in fact, are lying through their teeth.

  For the most part, each suspect adopts the strategy of claiming that someone else in the group is the criminal mastermind, and that he who is testifying has played only a small, reluctant, or ignorant role in the matter.

  According to Henry Dawkins, it is the older brother, Israel Young, who is the clear leader and instigator of the group. The scheme began back in December when Dawkins was imprisoned, and “Israel Young frequently came to visit him.” Dawkins testifies that Young took a great interest in his line of work, loaned him some money, and soon encouraged him to board with the Young brothers on Long Island. Dawkins agreed to help Young buy a printing press, but didn’t know the purpose.

  Then Dawkins says that “after he … had been a day or two at Cold Spring, the said Israel Young showed him a large bundle of money, and took out of it a Connecticut bill of forty Shillings, and asked if he … could imitate that for him.”

  So it was Young who instigated the counterfeiting, urged Dawkins into it, and “requested him to do it immediately.” Furthermore, “Israel Young told [him] that he would reward him generously, and that he should never want.”

  As a final note to his testimony, Dawkins says that while he did follow Israel Young’s instructions and engraved some plates that could produce fake currency, Dawkins himself never actually ran the press to make any bills. He instructed Young how to use the press, and “showed him how to press the bills and make them; that any others that have been pressed and made were made by Israel Young, or some of the others concerned.”

  So, in summary, Dawkins was a mostly unwitting accomplice to any counterfeiting, and only engraved a few plates that Israel Young then used for his own purposes.

  When Israel Young testifies, he tells a very different story.

  The elder brother states flat-out that “he never had any hand in counterfeiting money.” He says that he only reluctantly allowed Dawkins to lodge at his home, and that he never loaned him any money.

  Young further claims he was unaware what Dawkins was doing with the printing press in the attic, and knows nothing about engraving plates to print fake currency. He adds “that he does not know that Dawkins cut any plates while he was there” and that he, Israel Young, “never applied to any person to cut any plates for him to print or impress money.” He did, at one point, suspect that Henry Dawkins might be up to something because he once found a mysterious forty-shilling note in Dawkins’s bedchamber, but that “he never asked Dawkins any questions about it.”

  In other words, according to Israel Young, Henry Dawkins was running a one-man counterfeiting operation in the Youngs’ attic, and the brothers were merely oblivious landlords.

  Israel’s younger brother, Isaac, largely backs up his brother’s contention that Dawkins was the sole mastermind of the scheme. He says that “he did not know that Henry Dawkins was engraving plates to print money” and that “he once saw Henry Dawkins rubbing a copperplate, but did not know what it was for.” He then makes the somewhat remarkable claim that he personally didn’t even know the printing press was in the attic until Captain Wool discovered it during the raid.

  Isaac also says that when he started to suspect that maybe Dawkins was printing something that looked like fake money, he spoke to his brother about it, and they agreed that if Dawkins was indeed counterfeiting money, they would “not have any hand in it” because “it was a sin.”

  Theological considerations aside, the brothers’ alibi that they lived in the house for two months with Dawkins and had no idea that he was counterfeiting money in their attic is basically impossible to believe—and fails to account for the fact that Captain Wool and his team found sample fake bills, plates, and ink in almost every drawer and cupboard in the Youngs’ home.

  When all is said and done, the congressmen come to the only rational conclusion. The team was all in it together, and the idea that anyone in the house didn’t participate was ridiculous.

  Their guilt firmly established, the team is sent back down to the prison to await their sentence.

  There’s only one question: What about the fourth conspirator, the neighbor Isaac Ketcham?

  Ketcham, it turns out, is the only one of them who tells the full truth in City Hall that day. He admits that he knew that Dawkins and the Youngs were trying to forge currency, and that he had accepted their mission to try to find the right paper stock.

  As he puts it, he “had not been concerned in making the money, but that he was taken into the business to provide them with paper.” He explains that his one excursion to Philadelphia was a failure, and that he had nothing else to do with any of it.

  Truthful as Ketcham’s testimony may be, after hearing so much nonsense from the others, the congressmen don’t seem eager to parse the truth from the fourth member of the team. Nor are they inclined to consid
er that his role in the affair was relatively small. To the congress, they all seem like a band of liars and crooks, and so Ketcham is thrown back into jail with the other three.

  At this moment, Isaac Ketcham must seriously wonder if he will ever see his children again.

  Unbeknownst to Ketcham, however, he is about to receive some help from a most unexpected source.

  47

  New York, New York

  June 1776

  The Life Guards.

  They’re George Washington’s elite unit. His trusted bodyguards. The most disciplined men. The best-trained soldiers.

  In an army otherwise made up mostly of untrained neophytes, hayseeds, and former criminals, the Life Guards are supposed to be a beacon of excellence and the pride of the service.

  Much remains unknown about the Life Guards’ personnel and their whereabouts in New York City in the spring and early summer of 1776. And there are surprisingly few records maintained of their daily work. The names of many soldiers who served in the earliest version of this elite squadron have been lost to history, casualties of scattered record keeping or documents later destroyed.

  Also, the Life Guards’ precise duties were often kept secret or only spoken verbally, given their frequent proximity to the Commander-in-Chief and his innermost circle of advisers. The Life Guards’ daily assignments were apparently not meant for the rank and file to know, let alone be put in a written form that could leak to the public or the enemy.

  Still, through the haze of secrecy and the passage of time, records remain of at least some of their names and occasional evidence of their whereabouts in the early summer of 1776.

  One group of the guards in particular is known to hang around as a sort of posse, both on and off duty. Of the roughly fifty guards total, this little group of a half dozen is often seen together, socializing or walking the streets, getting to know their new city just as the other soldiers and officers do when they’re not on the clock.

  Who exactly are the members of this group?

  There’s William Green, a drummer, and supposedly something of a leader among them; James Johnson, a fifer, who is often seen alongside Green; and Michael Lynch, a private of unknown origin. There’s a young soldier named John Barnes, originally from Massachusetts. And finally, there’s Thomas Hickey, who first joined the guards as a private, but soon became a sergeant. Hickey, originally from Ireland, is described in one record as “five feet six inches high, and well-set,” and also “dark-complexioned.”

  Only two years earlier, Hickey was a soldier in the British army, stationed in Connecticut. As hostilities mounted between the colonies and the British, Hickey deserted the British army and joined the Continental side. This phenomenon was far from unique; in fact, the superior skill and training of former British soldiers made them valuable recruits for colonial militias and the Continental army. Perhaps because of his prior military experience, Hickey is described as “a favorite” of Washington’s.

  It is hard to know exactly when and how it came to be that in the early summer of 1776, this group of Life Guards—Green, Barnes, Lynch, Johnson, Hickey, and a few others—began to drift away from the course of duty.

  Surely the taverns have something to do with it. Both in and out of uniform, these soldiers are seen frequenting some of the less reputable beer halls and public houses in the city, mixing and crossing paths with questionable characters.

  In these taverns, there is naturally a lot of drinking. Even more dangerous, there is a lot of talking. Some of the Life Guards, it seems, begin to talk too much. They complain about the Continental army, speak ill of it, sometimes even curse it—and do so loudly enough that other patrons notice.

  To be sure, low morale is a problem throughout the whole army during this period in New York. The reasons, by this point, are obvious: poor conditions, bad food, shortage of supplies and weapons, and lack of good officers. There is endless frustration about the low pay, and even more so, about not getting paid on time or at all.

  The soldiers suffer from dysentery, “camp fever,” syphilis, and smallpox. Men who originally signed up to fight instead find themselves doing hard labor, spending hours, days, weeks, and months in the mud or dust, digging ditches and building fortifications. Remarkably, by the end of May 1776, the Continental army under Washington’s personal command has been in existence for eleven months and still hasn’t fought a proper battle.

  Beyond all these complaints, there is also the growing awareness that when these soldiers do fight their first real battle—right here in New York—they may be in for a catastrophic defeat. Even the greenest new recruits soon gain an understanding of the stakes of the war, and it doesn’t take much military knowledge to grasp that the small Continental army is badly outmatched trying to protect a skinny island against a coming assault from the world’s largest navy.

  Some of the soldiers are mostly immune to this fear. These are the men who joined to fight out of pure patriotic zeal, and for the noble ideal of liberty. These are the ones truly intoxicated by the spirit of the “Glorious Cause.” For these men, the mix of long hours and long odds are not a deterrent.

  For many others, however, concerned with more pedestrian matters like bad pay, bad conditions, and the likelihood of being slaughtered, a forbidden but practical question quickly arises: Is it possible they’re fighting for the wrong side?

  Of course, the Life Guards, the supposed paragons of duty and discipline in the Continental army, should be the last ones ever to ask this question.

  And yet, some do. One or two of them—among those in this group comprising Green, Barnes, Lynch, Johnson, and Hickey—don’t just ask it, but do so publicly, in the taverns.

  It seems to begin with the drummer, William Green. One night in the first week of June 1776, Green is at a tavern while off duty. He is drinking—and perhaps talking too loudly.

  Another man at the tavern, a stranger, takes an interest in Green, and the two of them start drinking together. Soon, they fall into a “conversation on politicks.”

  The stranger is short, with a stocky build. He describes himself as a gunsmith who runs a shop on Broadway.

  His name, he says, is Gilbert Forbes.

  Whatever they discuss regarding the issues of the day, they seem to be in agreement, because after this first conversation, they find one another to talk some more. The conversation always turns to a consistent theme: the inferiority of the Continental army and the likelihood of British victory. As Green later describes it, “I had repeated conversations with Forbes afterwards, and he was always introducing politicks, and hinting at the impossibility of this country standing against the power of Great Britain.”

  Forbes seems to enjoy their conversations. Then, as Green later remembers, “He invited me to dine with him one day.”

  That’s how Gilbert Forbes would end up at the tavern called Corbie’s, seated at a table with one of George Washington’s Life Guards, speaking softly.

  By the time their dinner is over, the two men have made a deal.

  48

  New York, New York

  June 1776

  William Leary is coming to New York City, and he’s on a mission.

  He’s been sent by his boss—Robert Erskine, who runs the Ringwood Ironworks iron mill in Goshen, New York—to track down some millworkers who have recently fled their work. In particular, he’s after a laborer named William Benjamin, who just left the mill a week or so ago and hasn’t been seen in Goshen since.

  Why go to so much trouble to track down a missing laborer or two?

  Erskine, who runs the mill, is a Patriot. So when rumors begin to circulate that some workers at his mill are leaving Goshen to join a treasonous British plot against the Continental army, Erskine isn’t about to stand by.

  That’s why he sends his foreman, William Leary, to personally chase down a few recently departed workers—including Benjamin—and to find out more about this supposed plot. Leary, after asking around and following Benjamin�
�s trail, has traced him to New York City.

  Now, at roughly ten in the morning, Monday, June 3, Leary arrives in Manhattan in search of his man.

  Under his belt, Leary carries two loaded pistols. Just in case.

  Based on leads he acquired along the way, Leary ends up at an address on Broadway, where Benjamin is rumored to be staying. Across the street, on the other side of Broadway, is a sign for Hull’s Tavern.

  When Leary enters the address, sure enough, there’s William Benjamin, the laborer who ran away from Erskine’s mill. He must be startled to see his former foreman walk in the door.

  What happens next happens fast.

  Leary makes a grab for Benjamin—but it turns out that Benjamin isn’t alone. A man whose name Leary remembers as “Forbes,” who owns the residence where Benjamin is boarding, is also present. As Leary later recounts it, “Forbes ran and got a pistol for Benjamin to defend himself.” Benjamin, now wielding a loaded weapon, prepares to do so—but Leary still comes after him. A struggle ensues, and Leary takes “hold of Benjamin and prevent[s] him from using the said pistol.”

  During the scuffle, Forbes disappears.

  Still, Leary has found the man he was originally looking for, and is ready to report him to the authorities. He drags Benjamin out of Forbes’s residence, and escorts him by force from Broadway toward the Hudson River. Here, at a dock for ferries bound for New Jersey, he finds a few militia officers to whom he can hand over the prisoner to be detained.

  Although Leary has found his main target, his work in Manhattan is not done.

  Soon, either from asking around or possibly just by hanging around the taverns near Forbes’s place, Leary encounters another familiar face from Goshen: James Mason, a part-time miller who was also briefly employed at Ringwood.

  With Mason, Leary takes a different approach. Rather than simply seize Mason, he decides to learn as much as he can about this secret network of apparent traitors with whom his former co-workers have joined forces.