1776: Thomas Hickey, plotting against George Washington

ExecutedToday.com ^ | June 28, 2013 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1776, Continental Army soldier Thomas Hickey was hanged before “a vast concourse of people” for a plot that might have strangled the American Revolution in its crib.

That revolution was a highly uncertain venture at this moment, and in a different timeline Thomas Hickey might have been a British hero for squelching it. “These are the times that try men’s souls,” revolutionary firebrand Thomas Paine wrote late in 1776. Hickey had to face his trial in the flesh.

George Washington had holed up in New York City in the spring to fortify it against an expected British invasion — an invasion that did indeed arrive and eventually drove the Continental Army all the way to Philadelphia.* As Paine beheld, the wrong turn of events here could have been decisive. The Continental Army was badly outnumbered and afflicted by desertion. The Continental Congress itself had to abandon Philadelphia not long after boldly declaring independence on July 4.

Whatever one might say of the great-man historiographical mood, you’d have to think that knocking out the rebel army’s top general at this juncture would have been a coup for the British.

In June of 1776, New York was tense ahead of the fighting. A British ship of the line sat forebodingly in the harbor, and even as she awaited the coming British force, her crew members rowed freely ashore for provisions. Plots went abroad among the mixed population of “Patriot” and “Loyalist” citizens. Nathan Hale would soon earn his martyr’s laurels in New York, trying to reconnoiter behind enemy lines as Washington staged a series of losing battles and a gradual...

[packagingguy]

2020-2021 Democrats, plotting against George Washington.

[NonValueAdded]

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Recessional of the Sons of the American Revolution:

“Until we meet again, let us remember our obligations to our
forefathers who gave us our Constitution, the Bill of Rights,
an independent Supreme Court and a nation of free men.”

Dr. Benjamin Franklin, when asked if we had a republic or a monarchy, replied "A Republic, if you can keep it."
Were we ever as close to losing it as we are now?

[Lurkinanloomin]

We lost it on Usurpation Day, January 20, 2009.

The founders specified natural born citizen to exclude the children of foreigners who themselves are born with the foreign nationality of their foreign parent(s) and are therefore not NATURALLY Americans.

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[Red Badger]

[Vigilanteman]

Interesting sidenote: Most revolutionary war era colonists wore muslin light trousers. The Continental blue of the regulars was still a few years away that time.

The reason was because undyed plain muslin cloth saved the cost of the dye.

Hickey was so dressed at his hanging and the assembled crowd was able to see his trousers darken, if you catch my drift.

[frogjerk]

The unhappy fate of Thomas Hickey, executed this day for mutiny, sedition, and treachery, the General hopes will be a warning to every soldier in the Army to avoid those crimes, and all others, so disgraceful to the character of a soldier, and pernicious to his country, whose pay he receives and bread he eats. 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.

-Washington’s general order, June 28, 1776

[freefdny]

Hickey supposedly admitted that it was “lewd women” who led him down his evil path. The old Garden of Eden defense.

[Bigg Red]

Thanks for the ping. I was not aware of this incident.

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[Pharmboy]

Honey traps are an old methodology...Delilah/Sampson