Never forget: We know what happened. We know how the story ends. We’re living in the story today. Yet there are stretches in THE FIRST CONSPIRACY: THE SECRET PLOT TO KILL GEORGE WASHINGTON when you breathlessly await the next chapter, wondering if the general of the American army in the Revolution will live or suffer a more dire fate.
That’s the beauty of this book by thriller and comic book writer, Brad Meltzer, and his co-author,
Josh Mensch. Meltzer and Mensch weave together the various plot threads in such a way
you are sucked in from the first page and the story never lets go. It
is paced and structured like a thriller, with short chapters, but there is one crucial thing they did that brought this story to life.
The words, the entire book, were written in the present tense.
I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the brilliant Scott Brick, and
it took me a minute
or so before I realized the prose was not changing. As a historian, I’m used to reading and writing about history all in the past tense because, well, it all happened in the past. It’s over. It’s done. But with this one stylistic choice, Meltzer and Mensch take you on a journey into a little-know pocket of American history. I hold two degrees in history and even I barely knew this tale.
In the spring and summer of 1776, the Revolution is still not quite that. The Declaration of Independence
isn’t even written yet. Its author, Thomas Jefferson, doesn’t even step foot onto the stage of this book until close to the end. The person on the main stage is the man in the sub-title, America’s first president, George Washington. But when we see him at first, he’s still only a general of the Continental Army, the literal ragtag group of soldiers from far and wide, who
were poorly trained, poorly equipped, poorly paid, and poorly fed. It was Washington’s job to lead them, to bring them together into a semblance of a fighting force, to stand toe-to-toe with the largest and best trained military force in the world
at that time, the British Army.
We stood no chance.
And thus is one of Meltzer and Mensch’s gifts. They reveal the ground level nature of what it was like to be Washington, some of his officers, and the various people in and around New York City who
were involved in this conspiracy. The authors describe the smell, the food, the paranoia about who was a Loyalist and who was a Patriot. All the while, there is a great presence approaching: the British navy. Everyone knows the British are coming to New York. The only question is when are they going to get there.
Like any good story, the hero needs a villain. Here, it is Royal Governor William Tryon. The historical record seems to show it is Tryon, who flees the city and takes up residence on a British warship anchored on the river who hatches the plot to kill Washington. Not only that, the governor recruits spies to recruit additional colonists to turn on their fellows and fight on the side of the crown. Some of those recruits are part of the Continental Army.
In addition,
Tryon’s plan is scheduled to launch just as the masts of the British Navy appear on the horizon.
You see? Sometimes history really is just as good as an action/adventure novel by Clive Cussler or the latest summer popcorn movie.
That, my friends, is exactly the point of THE FIRST CONSPIRACY. Meltzer loves stories. His thrillers like last year’s THE ESCAPE ARTIST proves it. So does his series featuring the Culper Ring. But sometimes, the truth is more exciting than fiction, especially
when it comes to our own American story.
I was in graduate school when David McCullough’s TRUMAN biography
was published. It was a bestseller. I read it and it’s utterly engrossing. But that book read like a novel, and some students and faculty seemed to dismiss the book as popular history.
What’s the problem with that? You want Americans to learn about
history, why not make it more accessible? Why not write a book detailing something so extraordinary like this conspiracy to kidnap or kill George Washington in a manner folks will
actually enjoy reading?
For that’s what Meltzer and Mensch have done. They have taken a small fragment of the life of one man and put it under the microscope and examined it from every angle. Along the way, you learn just how tenuous America’s struggle for independence truly was. It wasn’t the foregone conclusion we think of it today. It was harder than we
could possibly imagine. And if it wasn’t for George Washington and what he
did back in 1776 when he discovered the truth about the conspiracy against his life, then the world would be a very different place.
THE FIRST CONSPIRACY does all of that in a remarkable book that has my highest recommendation.
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