by Brad Meltzer
Mason’s testimony, when combined with Ketcham’s earlier report, suggests that at least five Life Guards total are in on the scheme: William Green, Thomas Hickey, Michael Lynch, Johnson the fifer, and a private named Barnes.
John Jay and Gouverneur Morris hear all of this before noon on Thursday, June 20. It’s a lot to take in. But the evidence is now overwhelming, and the bottom line is this: The plot is real. It’s not a hoax or some fake story from Ketcham to get out of jail.
Powerful people are running it, flush with money. Hundreds of men, including soldiers, could be in on it. At least three other Life Guards, in addition to the two currently in jail, are implicated.
Whatever terrible plans are in place, they could be in motion at this very minute.
John Jay and Gouverneur Morris now know all of this. The question remains, what can they do about it?
59
It’s time to get the Mayor.
For months, George Washington and the New York Provincial Congress had focused their attention on William Tryon as the key “internal enemy” in the colony—and rightly so. But all along they had allowed one of the Governor’s closest allies, New York City Mayor David Mathews, to operate in the city without consequence.
Apparently, that was a mistake.
From multiple accounts now, the Mayor is a key player in Tryon’s plot, delivering money from the Governor that is then used to bribe colonists and Continental soldiers to join a complex Loyalist conspiracy.
On Friday, June 21, the day after Mason’s testimony, the investigating committee decides that when it comes to Mayor Mathews, they need to strike now and strike fast.
However, unlike the other recent arrests, seizing the Mayor might not be as easy.
Mathews is a prominent citizen, with friends in high places. He could have bodyguards or hired soldiers protecting him. Also, as a participant in this plot, Mathews may already have planned a means of escape in case of trouble.
They also know that Mathews’s home is not in Manhattan, but in Flatbush, in present-day Brooklyn, which makes his arrest more logistically complicated. In addition, they need to be sure to seize any papers or other key evidence from Mathews’s home before he can destroy it.
On top of all that, the investigators have to wonder if it’s too late. Despite every effort at total secrecy, there’s certainly the chance that word has leaked to the enemy that the plot has been discovered—in which case Mayor Mathews may already have fled. If so, time is more vital than ever.
Determined not to take chances, the investigators don’t simply issue a warrant for the local militia to arrest Mathews, as they would a normal criminal suspect. Instead, they utilize one of the new powers of the Committee on Conspiracies: access to the army.
For this, they need to take their request to the top. They go right to George Washington.
At approximately one in the afternoon, roughly twenty-four hours after James Mason’s testimony, the team of Livingston, Jay, and Morris, drafts a message to the Commander-in-Chief:
Sir: Whereas David Mathews, Esq. stands charged with dangerous designs and treasonable conspiracies against the rights & liberties of the United States of America—we do.… authorize and request you to cause the said David Mathews to be with all his papers forthwith apprehended & secured & that return be made to us of the manner in which this warrant shall be executed.
Given under our hand this 21st day of June, 1776.
PHILIP LIVINGSTON
JOHN JAY
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
They send the message immediately to Washington’s headquarters. Washington, who knows the urgency of the matter, receives the message and formulates a plan to have his army handle the arrest and seizure.
Because Mathews lives across the East River, Washington decides to send the order to his general, Nathanael Greene, who is already stationed on Long Island with a brigade under his command.
According to Washington, Greene shouldn’t just send out his men in a mad dash that afternoon to try to find the Mayor. Washington has something more precise in mind. To convey his specific instruction, the Commander sends the warrant from Jay, Morris, and Livingston to Greene, and also includes this handwritten note: “General Greene is desired to have the within warrant executed with precision & exactness by one o’clock the ensuing morning by a careful Officer. Friday afternoon 21th June 1776. G WASHINGTON.”
In other words, Washington wants to conduct the arrest in the most tried-and-true method in the history of law enformcement: in the middle of the night. They’ll launch a surprise raid on the Mayor’s home at 1:00 a.m., hoping to catch him while he’s sleeping, and before he can cover his tracks or destroy any evidence.
Out on Long Island, General Greene receives Washington’s message that afternoon. He appoints an officer to be in charge of the raid, a colonel named James Varnum. By nightfall, Varnum has gathered an armed detachment of soldiers, all of them ready to conduct a surprise early-morning raid of the Mayor’s home.
The Continental army is prepared to arrest one of the ringleaders of the conspiracy. The plan is in place. Now, all they have to do is execute it.
60
Flushing, Long Island
June 1776
It’s just after midnight.
On Saturday, June 22, 1776, James Varnum, a colonel under the command of Gen. Nathanael Greene, prepares a detachment of armed soldiers for an overnight raid on Long Island.
Their target is Mayor David Mathews, now a key suspect in a plot against George Washington and the Continental army.
Mathews’s home is in the small village of Flatbush, a few miles to the south and due east of the Continental troops’ camps. The team—probably between a dozen and twenty soldiers on horseback—sets out in the darkness and races across the largely uninhabited Long Island countryside toward its destination.
Once in Flatbush, they quickly identify Mathews’s country home. According to Greene’s later account of the raid, Colonel Varnum and his soldiers quietly “surround his house” in the still of night.
This is their moment.
A stroke of luck. The house is inhabited.
Another stroke of luck. Mathews is home.
As the troops storm inside, just as they hoped, their target has no idea what hit him.
After what must have been a profoundly unhappy wakeup for the Mayor, the soldiers “seized his person precisely at the hour of One.” Mathews’s wife and children, also home and sleeping at the time, are not harmed.
After the Mayor has been seized and his home searched, there is one disappointment: The soldiers find no papers or other evidence related to the conspiracy. As Greene describes in his report, “Vigilant search was made after his papers but none could be found, notwithstanding that great care was taken that none of the family should have the least opportunity to remove or destroy them.”
If the Mayor actually had any documents or other pieces of evidence connecting him to the conspiracy, he was smart enough not to leave them lying around his home.
Still, the authorities have their man. The arrest of Mayor Mathews has gone exactly as planned.
This was no small affair. Imagine what the scene would be today if an armed military unit stormed the home of the Mayor of New York City in the middle of the night, and arrested him on suspicion of conspiring against the United States and working with members of the Secret Service, who are in on the plot.
Exactly. Not a good day.
By the time the sun comes up, Varnum and his soldiers have arrived in Manhattan, delivering their prisoner to the city guard. When the Committee on Conspiracies convenes for a special Saturday-morning session, it learns of the successful arrest.
Exactly five days after first hearing of the secret plot from Isaac Ketcham’s unexpected testimony, the Committee of Conspiracies has—with some help from Washington’s soldiers—successfully apprehended and detained one of the ringleaders of the plot, who also happens to be the Mayor of New York City.
/> Not bad, for a few days’ work.
Still, there is much more to do—and with the British fleet expected to arrive literally any day, time is getting short.
61
New York, New York
June 1776
The investigation never stops moving.
On Saturday, June 22, while Jay, Morris, and Livingston prepare for their high-stakes interrogation of David Mathews—planned for the following morning—they also oversee a flurry of additional activity related to the case.
Only forty-eight hours after James Mason’s testimony, the committee draws up dozens of arrest warrants for additional suspects and sends emissaries to search relevant locations, and round up witnesses.
That Saturday afternoon the committee also conducts five more examinations related to the case, including the questioning of another Continental soldier who was lured by a recruiter to join the scheme. The day’s interrogations contain no huge revelations, but they do corroborate some details from Leary’s and Mason’s testimony, while also providing new leads for additional arrests.
By the end of the day, they’ve created a “List of Tories in New York and Orange County” that includes the names of every suspect so far from either the Manhattan or the Goshen end of the plot. Already at almost twenty names, the list will continue to grow on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.
In the wake of the Mayor’s dramatic arrest, something else happens: More people learn about the plot. The three main investigators, as well as George Washington himself, have thus far tried to maintain the utmost secrecy. By this point, however, they have no choice but to let a few others know about the conspiracy—especially now that army officers and additional congressional personnel are needed to contribute to the effort. As a result, word starts to spread.
That very day, a twenty-three-year-old officer named Samuel Blachley Webb sits down with his journal and writes one of the very first specific descriptions of the plot from the point of view of someone other than the members of the secret committee.
We don’t know exactly how Webb learned about the conspiracy, but only a day earlier he was promoted to be George Washington’s aide-de-camp—in other words, one of Washington’s top personal aides—after serving the same role for Washington’s second-in-command, Gen. Israel Putnam.
Before becoming aide-de-camp, Webb had served as a Lieutenant Colonel when the army was in Boston. Although still a young officer, he has achieved some status—and is now privy to information from both Putnam and Washington himself.
Webb’s journal entry, written on Saturday, June 22, is vivid:
Some days past, the General received information that a most horrid plot was on foot by the vile Tories of this place and the adjacent towns and villages. Having taken the necessary precautions … a number of officers & guards went to different places & took up many of their principals; among whom, was David Mathews Esq., Mayor of the city.
Webb continues, describing even more details. And here, in this journal entry, is the first written documentation of the full extent of the plot:
To our great astonishment we found five or more of the General’s Life Guard to be accomplices in this wicked plan; which was, at the proper time, to assassinate the person of his Excellency & the other General Officers, blow up the magazine, and spike the cannon. It was to be put in execution as soon as the enemy’s fleet appeared, if no proper time offered before.
For anyone in the Continental army, “his Excellency” refers to one person only: George Washington himself.
This remarkable journal entry conveys several things. First, Webb is somehow aware that “five or more” of the Life Guards are accomplices. This number is exactly right. The details of the Life Guards’ involvement could be known only by someone familiar with the examinations conducted by Jay, Morris, and Livingston. Bound by secrecy, these three probably only shared the information with George Washington or, if they got Washington’s permission, maybe with a few top generals.
In other words, Webb is privy to highly confidential information. Perhaps, as a close aide to Washington, he learned it directly from the Commander.
All this makes that second part of his entry even more remarkable: The conspirators’ plan is “to assassinate His Excellency & the other General Officers.”
Much of the record was kept secret to ensure that no one else found out. But if Webb is correct, we have the most stunning part of the conspiracy. Their plan wasn’t just to raise an army or turn soldiers—their plan was to kill George Washington himself.
This goal, by far the gravest and most potentially devastating aspect of the plot, certainly explains the extreme seriousness and speed with which the authorities have responded.
Some might argue that Webb had it wrong—that he was exaggerating in his journal, or maybe heard some faulty information. But that very day, another Continental officer also writes a journal entry that backs up Webb’s. This officer is considerably more senior: Brig. Gen. William Heath.
A respected officer, Heath is one of the top three or four generals in New York. In the privacy of his diary, on that same afternoon of June 22, Heath writes this:
This day a most horrid plot was discovered, in the city and camp. A plan has been laid to massacre the generals of the army on the first approach of the enemy, to blow up the magazines, [and] spike the cannons. A number both of citizens and soldiers are seized and secured among whom are the Mayor of the city. One Forbes, a gunsmith, who it is said is one of the principals, and several of the Generals’ Guard … are also in the plot.
So General Heath, too, confirms the very worst fear about the plot—the plan for the Life Guards or others to “massacre the generals,” starting, of course, with George Washington.
Interestingly, none of the actual examinations that Jay, Morris, and Livingston have thus far conducted have specifically mentioned a plan to kill George Washington—or at least, there is no mention in the official written transcripts. But in this investigation, not everything is put on the record. Clearly, the authorities are keeping some aspects of the plot secret. For example, at some point in the few days after Mason’s testimony, the three suspected Life Guards who were not already in jail—that is, Green, Johnson, and Barnes—were detained and surely must have been questioned or interrogated. Yet, there is no record of when or how these arrests happened, or what was said in any conversations with these men.
In fact, outside the top secret formal examinations, there are no records of any conversations about the plot at all, whether among the investigators and senior officers, or with George Washington himself.
Yet somehow, in the forty-eight hours after James Mason’s testimony, two serious and well-regarded officers with inside knowledge of the investigation, and with personal access to Washington, come to believe that the “horrid plot” includes a plan to kill George Washington.
Which raises the question: Where did this bombshell of information come from—and why isn’t it in the official investigative records?
One possibility is that clear evidence about a plan to kill Washington did indeed emerge over the forty-eight hours after Mason’s testimony—but the Committee on Conspiracies, or perhaps Washington himself, decided that this fact should absolutely not be recorded or shared with anyone, in any public form.
Indeed, there would have been every reason to keep this shocking part of the plot absolutely secret. At that particular moment, with the massive British navy about to arrive in New York for the first full-scale battle of the Revolutionary War, any admission that Washington’s life might be in danger from assassination—let alone that his own soldiers were in on it—would likely cause panic both within the army and in the public.
At best, this revelation would betray weakness at a time when the future of the colonies hangs in the balance. At worst, it would create incredible upheaval in the army at a moment when it desperately needs stability. Militarily, the colonies are severely outmatched. All they have is their faith in the “Glor
ious Cause”—and their belief in the man who has come to symbolize that cause more than any other: the Commander-in-Chief.
The British ships are now expected in less than a week. From everything the investigators have learned, the arrival of the fleet is when the conspiracy will be triggered, and when the traitors will spring into action and raise arms against their fellow colonists.
If Webb and Heath are right, the first victim may be George Washington himself.
The entire future of America could be at stake—and time is running out.
62
During Isaac Ketcham’s initial testimony before the New York Provincial Congress on June 17, he made reference to a player in the plot by the name of “Gilbert Horbush,” supposedly a blacksmith. According to Ketcham, the two Life Guards who shared his prison cell, Thomas Hickey and Michael Lynch, spoke of this person as a leader or key accomplice in the conspiracy.
After Ketcham’s testimony, when authorities try to locate such a person in the city and county records, they draw a blank.
Three days later, when John Jay and Gouverneur Morris conduct a secret examination of William Leary, he specifically recalls that a man named “Forbes” was housing one of the traitors from Goshen, and had even gave the traitor a gun to defend himself when Leary apprehended the man.
“Forbes” sounds a bit like “Horbush,” so maybe these two are the same.
Then, when James Mason is examined right after Leary, he independently brings up the name “Gilbert Forbes” as a key person in the plot who swears in new recruits and administers their pay.
That pretty much confirms it: The name that Ketcham heard as “Gilbert Horbush” must really be “Gilbert Forbes,” given the similarities in the three examinations. Clearly, this Gilbert Forbes should be next on their list of suspects to arrest.