Late in the morning of June 28, 1776, a dense crowd thronged a field near New York's Bowery to witness the execution of Continental Army private Thomas Hickey. A stocky, swarthy Irishman who had served in the British army before deserting and enlisting in the rebel forces now fighting for independence, he was sentenced to hang for sedition and mutiny and treasonous dealings with the “enemies of the United American Colonies.”
In “The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington, ” Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch maintain that Hickey not only participated in a plan to sabotage New York's defenses as the British were poised to attack but contemplated something worse—the assassination of the Patriots' revered commander in chief.
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