"Astounding," Wolfe said when Benjamin had finished the story. "That certainly wasn't covered in my high school history of the Revolutionary War."
"Nor anyone else's," said Benjamin. "For decades after the war, it simply wasn't spoken about, by either side. Once the Treaty of Paris was signed and the war successfully over, certainly the conspirators didn't want their names associated with such a betrayal. And for Washington's side… well, he thought the country too fragile to know it had survived its birth by a pair of spectacles.
"And years later, when some of the facts came out, the argument was it had all been something of a joke, a tempest in a teapot. Other historians, however, my father for instance, have taken it more seriously. He thought Hamilton's group didn't necessarily want a real coup, just the threat of one, a 'crisis' that would allow them to establish martial law, get the money the army was owed, and establish a more powerful and restrictive central government, and not the general democracy of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin… well, the majority of the Founding Fathers. But true democracy was something Hamilton and a few others had been opposed to ever since the Revolution began."
"And who besides this Gates was definitely involved in this almost coup?"
"That's always been a little vague, though one of the ringleaders was almost certainly Hamilton."
"But there's no proof?"
"Well, not what you would call proof. You see, the group that supported Gates-a General Alexander McDougall, a Colonel Walter Stewart, and a Major John Brooks-had exchanged letters during the whole affair. Some of them came to light years later, and in them they'd used code names to refer to one another. McDougall's was 'Brutus.' "
Wolfe laughed. "How appropriate."
"And there were mentions in some of their letters to another group, or club, whatever you want to call it, which supposedly included Gates and some other proaristocracy types, a sort of anti -Masonic society. These letters made reference to another code name, someone they called 'the Indian Laird,' in a way that suggested he was either the founder of this anti-Masonic group, or a very prominent member."
"Indian Laird?" asked Wolfe.
"Alexander Hamilton was born in the West Indies. And he was the illegitimate grandson of a Scottish laird."
"All right, that gets us Hamilton's connection to the conspiracy perhaps. But not Fletcher's interest in it."
"A prominent New Englander was also implicated in the plot. One Gouverneur Morris. He was famous-or perhaps infamous is a better word-for stating that no successful country ever existed without an aristocracy, and that voting should be restricted to those who owned property."
Wolfe chuckled, then a thought struck him. "Morris?" Wolfe said with surprise. "As in Seaton Morris's family?"
"I'm not sure," said Benjamin. "But it would be quite a coincidence, wouldn't it."
"Like Freud, I don't believe in coincidences," Wolfe said. "So you think Fletcher's interest in the diary led him to Morris, and Morris led him to this Newburgh plot? But still, what does either have to do with Indians or Puritans?"
"I don't know," said Benjamin. "I don't understand it yet, really." He was quiet for a moment. "But the other night I read over my father's notes about Bainbridge, and there are extracts from two of his letters. In one of them, Bainbridge used this word 'Puramis' in a rather odd context. And my father had made a very curious mark by that word. I'm not certain, but-"
"Here we are," Wolfe interrupted him, turning into a side road. "Soon we'll have this precious diary in front of us and we can settle all these questions."
Wolfe turned the car through the gates of the Morris Estate-and Benjamin decided the word "palatial" was perhaps an understatement.