The Plot to Kill George Washington

In June, 1776, details about the conspiracy to poison George Washington and decimate the leadership of the rebellion came to be known. The plot rested on convincing members of Washington’s most trusted retinue to turn against him.

“General Washington was among the first that were to be sacrificed,” wrote Army Surgeon (and future Massachusetts governor) William Eustus in horror. After, “every General Officer [including next-in-command General Israel Putnam] and every other who was active in serving his country in the field was to have been assassinated.”  He noted that the conspirators also planned to set fire to New York, destroy warehouses of powder, jam the cannons, and destroy King’s Bridge so no aid could travel along the Boston Post Road.  

British Governor William Tryon coordinated the plot from a warship in New York Harbor, where Loyalist visitors regularly rowed out to meet him in the spring of 1776. Although Washington knew nothing of the conspiracy, he was troubled by this open communication and urged the Committee of Safety and Congress to increase patrols. Efforts to disrupt contact between Tryon and the plotters were half-hearted; in May, Israel Putnam reported that jailed Tories were receiving frequent visitors. “The bad women confined in jail are constantly visited by men of as bad characters.”

The plot began to unravel when Thomas Hickey, an Irish-born Connecticut soldier, was arrested on charges of counterfeiting. Hickey had initially joined the patriot cause and was actually a member of Washington’s trusted Life Guard, but at some point had switched loyalties. While in jail, he bragged about his knowledge of the plot and his success at recruiting others. But as so often happens, he bragged to the wrong person, the plot was revealed, and Hickey was charged with sedition.  On June 28, 1776, he was hanged in New York in front of a crowd of 20,000, thus becoming the first person executed for treason in the (future) United States.

Plotting the ‘Sacricide’ of George Washington, Gary Shattuck,

Journal of the American Revolution.

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