Thomas Hickey (soldier)

Thomas Hickey (died 28 June 1776) was a Continental Army soldier who was executed for mutiny and sedition early in the American Revolutionary War. He was the first person executed for treason against what was to become the United States.

Life Guard

In 1776, after the conclusion of the Boston campaign, General George Washington and the Continental Army marched to New York City and prepared for an anticipated attempt by the British Army to occupy the city. The Royal Governor of New York, William Tryon, had been driven out of the city by American Patriots and was compelled to seek refuge on a ship in New York Harbor. Nevertheless, the city had many residents who favored the British side, known as Loyalists.

Thomas Hickey was a private in the Commander-in-Chief's Guard, a unit formed on 12 March 1776, to protect General Washington, his official papers, and the Continental Army's cash. That spring, Hickey and another soldier were arrested for passing counterfeit money. While incarcerated, Hickey revealed to another prisoner, Isaac Ketchum, that he was part of a wider conspiracy of soldiers who were prepared to defect to the British once the expected invasion came. Arrested by civilian authorities, Hickey was turned over to the Continental Army for trial. He was court-martialed and found guilty of mutiny and sedition. He was hanged before a crowd of 20,000 spectators.

Hickey was the only person put on trial for the conspiracy. During the trial, David Mathews, the Mayor of New York City, was accused of funding the operation to bribe soldiers to join the British. Although the charge was never proven, Mathews and twelve others were briefly imprisoned. The conspiracy became greatly exaggerated in rumor, and was alleged to include plans to kidnap Washington, assassinate his officers, and blow up the Continental Army's ammunition magazines. The false rumors greatly damaged the reputation of Loyalists throughout the nascent United States.

Private or Sergeant?

In the transcript of Court Martial for the Trial of Thomas Hickey and Others on 26 June 1776, Hickey is referred to as a "private sentinel" in Washington's Life Guards, under the command of Major Gibbs. There is reason to suspect this transcript is a copy made shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War, when many official papers were being copied for preservation. In Harry Ward's authoritative 2006 book, George Washington's Enforcers, Ward gives Hickey's rank as Sergeant, and notes that Captain Caleb Gibbs was not promoted to Major until July 29, 1778, two years after Hickey's trial. When enlisted soldiers are convicted, it is normal for their punishment to include reduction to the lowest rank, private. A post-war transcript would explain why Hickey is listed at his lowest rank and Gibbs is identified at his highest rank.

Assassination plot

Washington's headquarters in May-June 1776 was at Richmond Hill, a suburban villa outside the city. Samuel Fraunces, a tavernkeeper whose establishment was about a mile away, provided meals for the general and his officers. Washington employed a housekeeper, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson.

Although Hickey was jailed for counterfeiting, and then charged with sedition and conspiracy while in prison, William Spohn Baker, the great late-19th-century Washington expert, believed that the real reason for his execution was involvement in a plot to kill or kidnap Washington:

"Thomas Hickey, one of Washington's Guard, was tried by a court-martial and sentenced to death, being found implicated in a plot to murder the American general officers on the arrival of the British, or at best to capture Washington and deliver him to Sir William Howe. The plot had been traced to Governor Tryon, the mayor (David Matthews) having been a principal agent between him and the persons concerned in it.

Baker obviously was wrong about the specific crimes of which Hickey was convicted, but in 1776, the rumor of an assassination plot was real:

"[June 24, 1776.] A most infernal plot has lately been discovered here, which, had it been put into execution, would have made America tremble, and been as fatal a stroke to us, this Country, as Gun Powder Treason would to England, had it succeeded. The hellish conspirators were a number of Tories (the Mayor of ye City among them) and three of General Washington's Life Guards. The plan was to kill Generals Washington and Putnam, and as many other Commanding Officers as possible."

"[July 13, 1776.] I suppose you have heard of ye execution of one of the General's Guards, concerned in ye hellish plot, discovered here some time past. There was a vast concourse of people to see ye poor fellow hanged."

Two other contemporaneous references to an assassination plot have been published.

Petition to Congress

In a March 5, 1785 petition to the U.S. Congress, Fraunces claimed that it was he who discovered the assassination plot, that he was falsely accused of being part of it, and was jailed until his name was cleared. He wrote (in the 3rd person):

That he [Samuel Fraunces] was the Person that first discovered the Conspiracy which was formed in the Year 1776 against the Life of his Excellency General Washington and that the Suspicions Which were Entertained of his agency in that Important Discovery accationed [sic, occasioned] a public Enquiry after he was made a Prisoner on which the want of positive Proof alone preserved his Life.

Congress's response to Fraunces's petition downplayed the plot, but accepted his role as "instrumental in discovering and defeating" it. For debts incurred during the Revolutionary War, Congress awarded him L2000, a later payment covered accumulated interest, and Congress paid $1,625 to lease his tavern for two years to house federal government offices.

Phoebe Fraunces Legend

Martha Washington's grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, died in 1857. Two years later his daughter, Mrs. Robert E. Lee, posthumously published his memoirs, to which were added extended notes by the antiquarian Benson J. Lossing. One of these notes told the story of an attempt by Hickey to poison Washington:

"When Washington and his army occupied the city, in the summer of 1776, the chief resided at Richmond hill, a little out of town, afterward the seat of Aaron Burr. [Samuel] Fraunces's daughter was Washington's housekeeper, and she saved his life on one occasion, by exposing the intentions of Hickey, one of the Life-Guard (already mentioned), who was about to murder the general, by putting poison in a dish of peas prepared for his table."

Custis's actual memoirs do not contain the story, it was added by Lossing in the 1859 notes, but this distinction is not obvious to the reader. In 1870, Lossing repeated the story and introduced the housekeeper into Hickey's court-martial:

"The guardsman was tried by a court-martial, and on the testimony of the housekeeper and one of the corps, whom the culprit had unsuccessfully attempted to corrupt, he was found guilty of 'mutiny and sedition and of holding a treacherous correspondence with the enemies of the colonies' and was sentenced to be hanged.[*]
[*]"These facts were related to a friend of the writer (Mr. W.J. Davis), by the late Peter Embury, of New York, who resided in the city at the time, was well acquainted with the general's housekeeper, and was present at the execution of Hickey."

Lossing's information was third-hand (as he freely admitted). This part of the story is undermined by the trial minutes of Hickey's June 26, 1776 court-martial, which contain no housekeeper's testimony.

In the January 1876 issue of Scribner's Monthly Magazine, John F. Mines repeated Lossing's story and gave a name to Samuel Fraunces's daughter:

"A daughter of "Black Sam," Phoebe Fraunces, was Washington's housekeeper when he had his headquarters in New York in the spring of 1776, and was the means of defeating a conspiracy against his life. Its immediate agent was to be Thomas Hickey, a deserter from the British army, who had become a member of Washington's body guard, and had made himself a general favorite at headquarters. Fortunately, the would-be conspirator fell desperately in love with Phoebe Fraunces, and made her his confidant. She revealed the plot to her father, and at an opportune moment the denouement came. Hickey was arrested and tried by court-martial."

Mines listed no sources in the magazine article. It was nationally read in the patriotic build-up to the Centennial celebration.
In 1919, Henry Russell Drowne (great-grandson of the 1776 chronicler above) repeated the Phoebe Fraunces Legend in his history of Fraunces Tavern:

"His [Samuel Fraunces's] daughter Phoebe was Washington's housekeeper in the Mortier House on Richmond Hill, occupied by the Commander-in-Chief as Headquarters, in June, 1776, and it was she who revealed the plot to assassinate Generals Washington and Putnam, which led to the apprehension of her lover, an Irishman named Thomas Hickey, a British deserter, then a member of Washington's bodyguard, in consequence of which he was promptly executed on June 28, 1776.

Legend Refuted

Portrait of Samuel Fraunces, unknown artist, circa 1770-85, Fraunces Tavern Museum, New York City.

There is no record of Samuel Fraunces having had a daughter named "Phoebe." The name does not appear with those of his children in the baptismal records of Christ Church, Philadelphia, or Trinity Church, New York. His will, dated September 11, 1795, does not mention a "Phoebe." It is well documented that Fraunces's nickname was "Black Sam," but the 1790 U.S. Census for New York lists him as a "Free white male" and a slaveholder.

New York tax records list both slaves and indentured servants in his household. In 1774, New York physician Peter Middleton treated a black maid in Fraunces's employ. In 1778, Fraunces sold an enslaved 14-year-old boy at auction.

Charles L. Blockson (Author, Bibliophile, Historian, Museum Curator, Lecturer, Scholar, Professor, Essayist, Activist) says that "Phoebe" was the nickname of Samuel Fraunces's eldest daughter, Elizabeth.

If the woman in the Phoebe Fraunces Legend had been Elizabeth Fraunces, she would have been rather young for espionage or a clandestine wartime romance. Elizabeth's birth date of December 26, 1765, means that during the week of Thomas Hickey's June 28, 1776 execution, she turned 10-1/2.

References

• Van Doren, Carl. Secret History of the American Revolution. New York: Viking Press, 1941.
• Article: "Thomas Hickey court martial"
• Ward, Harry M. George Washington's Enforcers: Policing the Continental Army. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006.

Primary documents from The American Archives, published online by the Northern Illinois University Libraries:

• "Court Martial for the trial of Thomas Hickey and others"
• "Warrant for the execution of Thomas Hickey", from George Washington
• Notice from the Provost-Marshal that Hickey had been executed as directed

Notes: