Chapter 10 The criminal who saved Washington’s life -- one IACK KETCHAM

Early June 1776, in a New York City jail cell we find Isaac Ketcham sitting on the thin blanket covering the wooden slab that serves as a bed in his small, dark cell.

The evidence the sheriff had gathered left no doubt that Ketcham was guilty of counterfeiting American dollars. Six days before, Ketcham had been arrested and jailed and was now awaiting his trial, just four days away. 

He was slouched forward with his head down and his elbows on his knees as he stared unseeing at the stone floor, terrified at the certainty he would be convicted and sent to prison for ten years, with nothing to do but pace back and forth in a tiny, dark, cold cell, eat miserable food, and sleep on a wooden cot with murderers and robbers for company. 

He’d searched in his mind for every conceivable way to escape, or bribe the guards, or trick the judge or jury into believing him to be innocent but it could not be done. 

Then he heard the sound of footsteps approaching and turned his head to see two guards stop at the door to his cell, clutching the arms of an average-sized man whose ankles and wrists were shackled. The door clanged open, and the man was pushed roughly into the cell with the ankle chains clanking on the stone floor.

  Enter Thomas Hickey

The deputies tossed a blanket at the man, removed the ankle and wrist chains, walked back into the hall, slammed the barre door, and twisted the big key in the lock. One of the guards growled, “There’s a cellmate for you, Ketcham. Another counterfeiter just like you.”

Ketcham looked at the man for a moment in the dim light – average height, heavy shouldered, young swarthy – then turned and stretched out full length on his low cot with his face to the wall. It wasn’t until the jailer brought their meager supper of boiled cabbage and a piece of fatty mutton on wooden plates that Ketcham finally asked, “What’s your name?”? What did you do?”

There was a long pause. “I was a bodyguard for George Washington.”

Ketcham’s mouth gaped open. “You were what?”

“Bodyguard for George Washington.”

Ketcham was astonished. “How did you get mixed up in counterfeiting?”

The young face sobered. “That’s a long story.”

Ketcham laid his wooden plate on the floor. “We’ve got time. Tell me.”

For half an hour young Hickey talked, haltingly at first, then with a rush. When he finally stopped talking, Ketcham was sitting like a statue, mesmerized in disbelief.

Hickey shrugged. “That’s the whole of it. My trial for counterfeiting is in two weeks.”

Ketcham slowly shook his head. “I never heard anything like it.”

It was well past midnight before Ketcham suddenly sat up on his blanket, eyes wide open with a thought that had struck in his sleep. For half an hour he sat in silence, making a plan. 

The following morning when the guards brought their breakfast of boiled mush, Ketcham quietly whispered to one of them, “Bring me paper and a pencil. I’ve got to write a statement for the judge.”

When the evening meal was delivered, the folded paper and piece of lead pencil were delivered. In the dark of the night Ketcham struggled to print a brief message.

“If you want to save George Washington,   I must talk to you in private.    [Signed] Isaac Ketcham.”

 Here comes the Judge

Two days later the guards came to the cell, shackled Ketcham’s ankles and wrists, and walked him out of the jailhouse to the courthouse, where the jdudge was waiting in his chambers.

“Judge sir,” Ketcham began. “I was told things b y a man in jail that concern George Washington and most of his staff. William Tryon, David Matthews, Richard Hewlett, and I don’t know how many others are plotting to kill him.”

For a moment the judge sat stunned, then broke out into laughter. “I don’t know what your ploy is, but William Tryon is governor of the state. David Matthews is mayor of New York. And Richard Hewlett is one of themost prominent men on Long Island. You’re headed back to your cell, and don’t you ever bother me with such nonsense again.”

Ketcham raised his hand and exclaimed, “That man who told me is Thomas Hickey. He was put in my cell yesterday. Hickey was a bodyguard to Washington! He told me the whole plan last night! Check the record! Thomas Hickey is to be tried for counterfeiting, but no one knows about the plot on Washington’s life.”

The judge sobered then called for his clerk. “Get me the court record on Thomas Hickey. His trial is in two weeks.”

One hour later, with Ketcham till in his office, the judge opened the Hickey file and carefully read it. Thomas Hickey, a personal bodyguard for George Washington, was to be tried in two weeks for counterfeiting. There was nothing in the file about a wild plot to assassinate anyone.

He turned a jaundiced eye on Ketcham. “Not a word about an attempt on Washington.”

Ketcham was not to be denied. “But does it say he is a personal bodyguard of Washington?”

‘Yes, matter of fact it does.”

Ketcham leaned forward and thumped the desk. “The assassination is going to happen in the next few days. What will happen if you ignore this warning and then find out it is true?”

For a time, the judge leaned back in his chair in thoughtful silence, then called his clerk. “Get the highest-ranking officer in the Continental Army you can find over here at once.”

Conspiracy Exposed

Half an hour later a full colonel and a major walked into his chambers with puzzled expressions on their faces. The colonel asked, “You sent for me?

“Yes.” He pointed at Ketcham. “This man is in my court on the charge of counterfeiting. He claims that last night a soldier named Thomas Hickey was put in his cell and told him of an unbelievable plot to assassinate General Washington and his entire staff in the next few days. Thomas Hickey was a personal bodyguard for the general.”

The colonel said, “I know Hickey. He was caught counterfeiting.”

“He’s in my court for that,” the judge answered, “but a plot to assassinate the general is treason, and Hickey is a soldier. That makes it a military matter, subject to a military court-martial. If this assassination is to take place soon, we have no time to lose. You can investigate this much quicker than I. I recommend you spend enough time with this man to determine if there’s anything to this matter.”

The colonel spoke to Ketcham. “Are you willing to swear to all this under oath?”

“I am.”

The colonel glanced at the major next to him, then back to the judge. “Hold him here for ten minutes. I’ll send an armed escort to bring him to my quarters. We’ll start the investigation today.” The colonel turned on his heel and left the judge’s chamber with the major right behind. When the door closed, Ketcham stood and confronted the judge.

“If I help to save George Washington, sir, I demand they you dismiss all counterfeiting charges against me. Is that agreed?”

The judge stared. “So that’s what you’re after.”

“Yes.”

A sour look crossed the judge’s face as he stood, and for a time he paced, then turned back to Ketcham. “I make no promise. I can only tell you that saving General Washington will be given due consideration in your case.”

Within minutes, four guards, armed and uniformed, arrived to escort Ketcham back to the colonel’s chambers, where the officer confronted the shackled man. Seated behind a huge oak desk, the colonel leaned forward, eyes like lightning. “Before this ridiculous thing goes any further, Ketcham, I have to have solid proof that this plot you speak of it true. If you have such proof, tell me now.”

Ketcham took a deep breath. “Right now General Washington’s headquarters is at 180 Pearl Street here in New York. Beneath his office is a cellar. In that cellar you should find two barrels marked SALTED COD. Instead of fish, they’re full of gunpowder. The plan is to blow them up and with them, the entire house and the general and his entire staff.”

He paused for a moment, then went on. “Also, less than 10 days ago the men with Hickey tried to poison Washington. They put poison in some green peas Washington was to eat for supper. Washington’s house cook smelled something odd in the peas and threw them out into the yard, where the chickens ate them. The chickens all died; you can ask the cook.”

 Evidence Found

The colonel called for his adjutant. “Assemble Company B immediately, then have my horse saddled. We leave at once.”

Thirty minutes later the colonel, escorted by soldiers with fixed bayonets, was admitted to the anteroom of Washington’s headquarters, only to be told the general was away until later afternoon. Five minutes later the colonel descended the stairs into the cellar beneath Washington’s office, unlocked the door, and with lanterns held high, entered the dank, dark room. In the center of the floor were two huge barrels with SALTED COD stenciled prominently on the sides. A soldier bashed the top of one barrel open, and the colonel stared in shock at the black granules of gunpowder.

“Quickly,” he ordered, “get those lanterns out of here, and take these barrels back to a safe place in our munitions store.”

He marched upstairs and confronted the startled cook. “Tell me about poisoned peas and dead chickens.”

“Yes sir,” stammered the cook. “Last week, I smelled something bad in those peas that was for Genr’l Washington, and I threw them out in the yard. The chickens are them, and most all of them died. I told my commanding officer, but I don’t know what he did about it.”

Half an hour later the colonel was back in his office desk facing Ketcham. “All right. Let’s hear the rest of it. Who else is involved in this mess?”

“William Tryon, David Matthews, Richard Hewlett. And at least 50 others in this town.”

The colonel was incredulous. “The governor, the mayor?”

“Both”

“What part were they to play?”

“Hewlett had merchants poison the peas just before they delivered them to Washington’s cook. Tryon provided the gunpowder from the state militia. Matthews had men who secretly smuggled it into the cellar at Washington’s headquarters. There’s at leas 50 other men who are ready to kidnap Washington if the gunpowder doesn’t kill him, along with as many officers as they can. Hewlett and Tryon have agreed to close down and barricade all streets leading into New York after Washington’s gone and to cut off the city form any attempt by the American army to save either Washington or his staff, or the other officers.”

The colonel bolted out of his chair, “Let’s go see this Mr. Hickey!”

The Conspirators Rounded-Up

Fifteen minutes later the colonel, with his adjutant secretary carrying a pencil and pad of paper, and Ketcham at his side, confronted Thomas Hickey in his jail cell.

“We know about the dead chickens and the gunpowder. We know about Governor Tryon and Mayor Matthews, and Richard Hewlett, and the plan to kill Washington’s staff and the American officers and isolate New York City. You’re going to tell us the names of all the other conspirators in this treachery, and you’re going to do it now! Start talking!”

For one hour Hickey talked while the adjutant wrote it all down. Then the colonel glared at Hickey. “You are under military arrest for mutiny, sedition, and treason against the American army. You will face a court-martial at the earliest date possible. You will remain her until transferred to a military stockade.”

He turned to his adjutant. “We will return to headquarters and immediately assemble every available officer. Our men must find and arrest every conspirator as quickly as possible, before they realize they have been discovered.”

Within hours, New York Mayor David Matthews was seized in his office, arrested, and taken to jail. Somehow New York governor William Tryon learned that the entire plot had been discovered and instantly fled to the New York waterfront, where he secretly bribed his way onto a British merchant ship anchored in the harbor, the Duchess of Gordon, and cowered below decks in hiding for weeks. Richard Hewlett, the rich and powerful merchant, leaped into a carriage and disappeared northward on Manhattan Island.

For the next several days the frantic search for the other named conspirators continued, under direction now of General George Washington. Several of the guilty parties fled into a swamp, where they were surrounded and arrested. Some fled to placed unknown and were never found. General Washington was given daily reports, one of which informed him that “we are searching for the conspirators and hanging them as fast as we find them.”

What happened to them

With the conspiracy utterly destroyed, it was determined the evidence against New York Mayor David Matthews was insufficient, and the charges against him were dismissed.

New York Governor William Tryon waited until the British occupied New York in September 1776 before he came out of hiding to become a hero to England and a traitor to America.

Richard Hewlett was never seen again.

Private Thomas Hickey was tried at a military court-martial, found guilty of mutiny, sedition, and treason, and on June 28, 1776, pursuant to written orders of General George Washington, was publicly hanged before a great throng of New York citizens and 20,000 soldiers of the Continental Army.

As for Isaac Ketcham, the criminal who exposed the entire plot and saved George Washington from the conspiracy to assassinate him and his entire staff, no record could be found regarding whether the charges against him for counterfeiting were ever dismissed.

 --Another Version --

America's earliest conspiracy included a plot to foil the Patriot rebellion—and perhaps even kill the future first president.

By Sarah Pruitt (History.com; 8 Feb 2019, updated 4 Feb 2020)

In late June 1776, as a massive British fleet prepared to invade New York, a complex drama played itself out at the headquarters of General George Washington’s Continental Army in New York City: a former bodyguard of the general was set to be hanged for conspiracy against the Patriot rebellion—and against Washington, himself.

On June 28, some 20,000 people gathered in a field just north of the city and watched a private in the Continental Army mount the gallows on charges of sedition, mutiny, and treachery. The doomed man was Thomas Hickey, an Irish-born former British soldier who had joined the rebel cause after the outbreak of war in 1775.

More importantly, Hickey was a member of Washington’s Life Guard, the elite squad tasked with protecting the commander in chief, on whose shoulders the entire fate of the rebellion appeared to rest.

Now, Hickey would become the first Continental soldier to be executed for treason, thanks to his participation in a shadowy plot to foil the rebellion—and possibly even to kill or kidnap Washington. The plot apparently involved the royal governor of New York, the mayor of New York City and more than a dozen others, though Hickey would be the only one to hang for it.

INFANTRYMEN OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY DURING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.  

In their book The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington, Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch revisit the tumultuous events of the spring and summer of 1776, just before the British invasion of New York began the first large-scale conflict of the Revolutionary War. Through close examination of the existing evidence, they trace the development of the Hickey plot, as well as the efforts used to root out the conspiracy, including the formation of a “Secret Committee” whose methods would foreshadow today’s espionage and counterintelligence work.

Conspiracy in the Air

When George Washington arrived in April 1776 in New York to prepare for the British counterattack, he was well aware that threats lay all around him. Many in New York, where the powerful merchant classes depended on secure trade with Britain, still hoped for reconciliation with the mother country. 

From his exile aboard a British merchant ship anchored in New York harbor, William Tryon, the royal governor of New York, sought to undermine the Patriot cause by enlisting Loyalist support in New York and the surrounding regions.

Almost as soon as he arrived, a suspicious Washington tried to crack down on communication between Tryon’s ship and New York colonists. In May, at his request, the New York Provincial Congress formed a “Secret Committee” to uncover conspiracies among New York’s Loyalists. According to Meltzer and Mensch, the ‘Secret Committee’, led by the prominent New York Patriot John Jay, was “a small early prototype of an intelligence agency—a team dedicated entirely to gathering information, identifying dangerous parties, and uncovering hostile plots.”

A Plot Is Uncovered

As Washington urged the Continental Congress to send more troops to New York, Tryon and his fellow Loyalists decided to try and recruit some of these soldiers for the Loyalist cause. Apparently, they succeeded.

In mid-June 1776, Thomas Hickey and another Life Guard soldier, Michael Lynch, were arrested and imprisoned for passing counterfeit money. While in jail, they told a fellow prisoner, Isaac Ketcham, that they—along with several other members of the Life Guard—were involved in a plan to undermine the Patriot cause on behalf of the British.

Seeking leniency for himself, Ketcham told authorities what Hickey and Lynch had said. Acting on this information, as well as the testimony of other witnesses who had come forward separately, the committee tracked the conspiracy, arresting and interrogating David Mathews, mayor of New York City, along with dozens of other suspects. Even Washington’s housekeeper, a woman named Mary Smith, appears to have been implicated, although it’s unclear whether she was actually involved or not.

On June 26, Hickey faced a court-martial. After four witnesses testified against him, including Ketcham, he was found guilty and sentenced to death for “sedition and mutiny, and also of holding a treach’rous correspondence with the enemy, for the most horrid and detestable purposes,” according to the general orders issued from Continental Army headquarters the next day.

Rumors and Reality

Two days later, the future Massachusetts governor William Eustis, then an army surgeon, was in the crowd at Hickey’s execution, which took place near the intersection of today’s Grand and Chrystie Streets, near the Bowery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Writing to Dr. David Townsend at the time, Eustis called the Hickey conspiracy “the greatest and vilest attempt ever made against our country...the plot, the infernal plot which has been contrived by our enemies.” To describe the unthinkable—a plot against the life of the revered General Washington by the very people he most trusted—Eustis even coined a new word, “sacricide,” from the Latin words meaning “slaughter of the good.”

By that time, rumors were swirling about the conspiracy, horrifying Eustis and many others. In the most sensational (false) story, Meltzer and Mensch recount, Hickey had attempted to kill Washington by feeding him poisoned peas.

In fact, the details of the Loyalist plot foiled by the Secret Committee’s investigations remain vague. Washington himself never mentioned a threat to his own life, even in the letter he wrote to John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, on the very morning of Hickey’s execution. Nor do any of the official examinations of the committee mention a plan to kill Washington.

Nevertheless, Meltzer and Mensch argue that evidence suggests the plotters intended to kill (or at least kidnap) Washington, and that Washington and the committee likely kept this under wraps to avoid causing panic—and betraying weakness—just as the British were preparing to invade.

The Aftermath of the Hickey Plot  

Hickey may have been dead, but Washington couldn’t afford to rest. In his letter to Hancock on June 28, the general also noted that a fleet of 130 ships had sailed from Halifax (Nova Scotia, then a British colony) in early June, including General William Howe and a large number of reinforcements. Within days, the main body of the British fleet had landed at Staten Island, unloading their forces in preparation to strike.

On July 2, 1776, Washington issued more orders to his waiting troops. “The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.” 

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, delegates to the Continental Congress debated the historic declaration drafted by Thomas Jefferson, abandoning forever the idea of reconciliation with Britain and launching a new phase of the colonies’ war for independence. 

BY: SARAH PRUITT

Sarah Pruitt is a writer and editor based in seacoast New Hampshire. She has been a frequent contributor to History.com since 2005 and is the author of Breaking History: Vanished! (Lyons Press, 2017), which chronicles some of history's most famous disappearances.

[https://www.history.com/news/george-washington-bodyguard-assassination-plot] 

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

February 4, 2020

Original Published Date

February 8, 2019