Mayor Mathews and several others were packed off to Connecticut to serve jail time—a lenient sentence for a treasonous plot—and either escaped or were let go without a trial. Washington decided to make an example of Hickey and ordered every brigade to witness his hanging at eleven A.M. on June 28, 1776. The gallows were erected in a field near the Bowery, and twenty thousand spectators—virtually the entire New York population—turned out to watch. Hickey waived his right to a chaplain, calling them “cutthroats,” and managed to hold back tears until the hang-men actually looped the noose around his neck.⁴⁹

In his general orders for the day, Washington drew a rather bizarre lesson from Hickey’s fate. He hoped the punishment would “be a warning to every soldier in the army” to avoid sedition, mutiny, and other crimes “disgraceful to the character of a soldier and pernicious to his country, whose pay he receives and bread he eats.”⁵⁰ The next sentence gave a strange twist to the whole affair. “And in order to avoid those crimes, the most certain method is to keep out of the temptation of them and particularly to avoid lewd women who, by the dying confession of this poor criminal, first led him into practices which ended in an untimely and ignominious death.”⁵¹ This coda, with its sternly puritanical lesson, shows that Washington may have been more worried about health hazards posed by the Holy Ground than by treasonous plots.

CHAPTER TWENTY

All London Afloat

BY THE SUMMER OF 1776 the British were convinced that they would make quick work of the rebel forces and took comfort in a superior, complacent tone. Braggadocio—always a poor substitute for analysis—grew fashionable in official circles in London. At the start of the year, Lord Rawdon assured the Earl of Huntingdon that “we shall soon have done with these scoundrels, for one only dirties one’s fingers by meddling with them. I do not imagine they can possibly last out beyond this campaign.”¹ Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, reacted contemptuously to the notion that the sheer number of colonists could overpower royal forces. “Suppose the colonies do abound in men, what does that signify? They are raw, undisciplined, cowardly men.”² George Germain, secretary for the American colonies, cherished the hope that all that was needed was a “decisive blow.”³ What was required was a show of force so huge and terrifying that the deluded colonists would tremble at the assembled might of the British Empire.

While Great Britain did have a respectable army, it paled beside those of France, Austria, and Prussia. It was the Royal Navy that was peerless in Europe, and New York Harbor was a big enough basin to absorb this giant fleet. Awaiting these ships, Washington had his men strain every nerve to detect their arrival, even sleeping with their arms and “ready to turn out at a minute’s notice.”⁴ On June 29 patriotic sentries stationed on Staten Island signaled to Washington that forty British ships, the first installment of the fleet, had been spotted off Sandy Hook and would soon glide majestically through the Narrows. The news touched off hysterical activity in Manhattan. Writing in rapid, telegraphic style, Henry Knox informed his brother: “The city in an uproar, the alarm guns firing, the troops repairing to their posts, and everything in the height of bustle.”⁵

Washington had decided to make a costly (and in the end, mistaken) gamble of trying to hold New York. In fairness, it must be said that Congress had assigned a high priority to retaining the city. A day earlier Washington had issued an urgent summons to Massachusetts and Connecticut to dispatch militia posthaste to the city, and he now accelerated preparations for an imminent British attack, having his men pile up sandbags everywhere. Faced with incessant work, the tireless Washington noted that he was “employed from the hour of my rising till I retire to bed again.”⁶ Prompted by fear, a tremendous exodus of women and children left New York, crossing paths with an influx of militia. “On the one hand,” wrote the Reverend Ewald Shewkirk, “everyone that could was packing up and getting away; and on the other hand country soldiers from the neighboring places came in from all sides.”⁷ Reflecting the parlous state of things, Washington exiled Martha to the comparative safety of Philadelphia. To make their separation tolerable, she asked Charles Willson Peale to execute a miniature watercolor of her husband clad in his blue uniform and gold epaulettes.

Until reinforcements arrived, Washington was woefully shorthanded. He had fewer than 9,000 men, with 2,000 too sick to enter combat. Meanwhile, he steeled himself for the advent of 17,000 German mercenaries who would form part of a gigantic expeditionary force—the largest of the eighteenth century—that might total 30,000 soldiers. When this first wave of ships grew visible from Manhattan, an armada of 110 warships and transport boats, the sight was impressive, almost dreamlike, to behold. “I could not believe my eyes,” Private Daniel McCurtin wrote after peering at the panoply of British power. “Keeping my eyes fixed at the very spot, judge you of my surprise when, in about ten minutes, the whole bay was full of shipping . . . I declare that I thought all London was afloat.”⁸

These were the same ships that had evacuated Boston in March and marked time in Halifax before sailing south to New York. Fortunately for Washington, this advance guard under Major General William Howe, his former nemesis from the siege, decided not to force the issue. Some British ships dropped anchor off Gravesend, Long Island, and newly arrived British soldiers camped on Staten Island, but no offensive action materialized. General Howe was biding his time until the bulk of the fleet, sailing from England under the command of his brother Richard, Admiral Viscount Howe, joined him in New York.

In general orders for July 2, Washington tried to rouse his untried men with impassioned words. He had a genius for exalting the mission of his army and enabling the men to see themselves, not as lowly grunts, but as actors on the stage of history. “The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves . . . The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage . . . of this army.”⁹ That same morning an alarming incident occurred when five British men-of-war passed through the Narrows and seemed on course to attack patriot forts. Confronting this threat, the Continental Army reacted with notable esprit de corps. Colonel Samuel Blachley Webb wrote in his diary that “never did I see men more cheerful. They seem to wish the enemies’ approach.”¹⁰ Despite his uneasiness, Washington was encouraged by this spirited response, telling Hancock that “if the enemy make an attack, they will meet with a repulse as . . . an agreeable spirit and willingness for action seem to animate . . . the whole of our troops.”¹¹ In the end the British ships approached no closer, and Washington concluded that General Howe had deferred action until his brother’s arrival. Thus far Washington had commanded the Continental Army for an entire year without engaging in a single battle, but he knew he would shortly experience his first decisive test.

AN UNWAVERING ADVOCATE of independence, Washington thought his compatriots would eventually come to share his belief. “My countrymen, I know, from their form of government and steady attachment heretofore to royalty, will come reluctantly into the idea of independency,” he wrote that spring. “But time and persecution brings many wonderful things to pass.”¹² In May, to his delight, the Virginia Convention in Williamsburg favored independence, and his neighbor at Gunston Hall, George Mason, drew up an eloquent Declaration of Rights that featured the lines “That all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights . . . among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”¹³ Thomas Jefferson would prune and shape these words to famous effect. Still another Virginian, Richard Henry Lee, introduced a congressional resolution on June 7 declaring “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.”¹⁴ On July 2 Congress approved Lee’s resolution, then spent the next two days haggling over the precise wording of the Declaration of Independence. The final text was approved on July 4. Congress had two hundred broadsides printed up and disseminated throughout the colonies.