Hercules Mulligan, Spy on the Inside Pt. 1

Hercules Mulligan was indeed a real person who passed intelligence to George Washington, mostly through two means - one was an enslaved man named Cato, and the other was the Culper Spy Ring.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy
me Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. If you have listened
to or had the extremely good porton to see the
incredible popular Broadway musical Hamilton's, you've probably heard that George

(00:26):
Washington knew his plan for the Battle of Yorktown was
going to work because he's had a spy on the inside.
That's right, Hercules Mulligan's who we're talking about today. I
kind of want to do I kind of want to
say it like they say it in the song in
the play, but I would have to go way off
the microphone because it's very energetic. Uh. Hercules Mulligan, like

(00:48):
the other people in Hamilton's, was indeed a real person,
and he passed intelligence to George Washington mostly through two
different means. One was an enslaved man named Kato and
the other was the culper spy ring. But before or
he started spying on the British for the future president
of the United States, he was this kind of rabble
rousing New York member of the Sons of Liberty, which

(01:08):
is the same organization that in Massachusetts had pulled off
the Boston tea Party. So Hercules Mulligan's story, it's kind
of a long one, and it spans a lot of
the Revolutionary War, some elements of which require a little
bit of a refresher if you are not steeped in
Revolutionary War history. So we're gonna tackle it in two parts.
That's right, We're doing two parts about Hercules Mulligan. I
know folks are probably tempted to pause right now and

(01:31):
start emailing us about all the other people from Hamilton's
that we should do episodes. I just wanna. I want
to assure you we already have that list, like, uh,
every possible person, place, event and pamphlet has been suggested
except actually Hercules and Mulligan. Nobody asked us to talk

(01:52):
about Hercules Mulligan. I just wanted to, which is kind
of funny that. I mean, it's one of those things
where we have gotten show the request for basically every
bit of minutia related to that play. That I'm shocked
that this particular stone went unturned because it's a pretty
fascinating one. M So to kick it off, Hercules Mulligan

(02:16):
was born in Ireland in seventeen forty two, Hugh and
Sarah Cook Mulligan. Around seventeen forty six, his parents immigrated
to the colonies with him, his brother Hugh, and his
sister Sarah, and at that point Hercules was the youngest,
although another brother, Cook was born after they arrived. So
the reasons for immigrating aren't really documented anywhere, but it's

(02:37):
likely that the family paid their own way rather than
traveling under an indenture that would have to be worked off,
which is another common way that people made their way
to the colonies. The elder Hugh Mulligan appears on the
New York list of Freeman of the City in seventeen
forty seven, approximately a year after they arrived, and indentured
servants weren't considered freeman, and since in the typical indenture

(03:00):
asked for about seven years, it's unlikely that the Mulligan's
had ever been subject to one. At first, Hercules his
father worked as a wigmaker, and he moved from there
into work as a merchant. Eventually he got a job
in law enforcement, which was a very common occupation for
Irish immigrants in the colonies for centuries. I would ask, yeah,

(03:21):
I mean there's still that's still sort of a a
little bit of a trope at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
For a long time though, like that, the recent Irish
immigrants were one of the major contributions to law enforcement
labor force. Hercules education came through a private tutor and
by the standards of the day, it seems like he

(03:42):
was quite well educated. He also grew up to be
tall and personable and very flamboyant. He retained an Irish accent,
and he he tended to gain people's trust really quickly
and including total strangers. He was one of those people
who was everybody's best friend basically from the moment that
they met. He was all that, such a good storyteller
that people like to say that his family was from Blarney,

(04:04):
which they were not. They were from a town called
Coleraine in the camp In County and Trimp. Both of
hercules brothers became merchants, which was a trade that Hercules
tried his hand dead, but he didn't really take to him.
He later became a clothier, ultimately running his own business,
employing several skilled tailors. Over the first few years of
his career, he moved his shop from one location to another,

(04:26):
as various circumstances demanded it. By seventeen seventy one, he
was described as New York's most fashionable merchant Taylor. One
of Hercules Mulligan's most famous friends was Alexander Hamilton's. Hamilton's
was born on the island of Nevas in seventeen fifty five,
making him about fifteen years younger than Mulligan. When Hamilton's

(04:47):
came to the Colonies from the Caribbean in seventeen seventy two,
he brought with him several letters of introduction. One of
them was directed to the New York office of a
trading company where Hamilton's had worked in St. Croix. That
firm was the house of Cartwright and Company. Hercules brother
Hugh was part of the and company. He was a
junior partner in this particular firm. He would eventually buy

(05:10):
out his partners and own the firm outright, which made
him a really powerful family connection for Hercules to have.
So it was through Hugh Mulligan that Hercules and Hamilton's
first met, and Hamilton's made a good first impression on Hercules,
who took an immediate liking to him. Hercules helped get
him enrolled in school, and later on he allowed Hamilton's

(05:31):
two board in his home while he was attending King's College,
which later became Columbia University. Hamilton's continued to live with
Hercules Mulligan after the latter married Elizabeth Sanders on October
seventeen seventy three. She was the niece of an admiral
in the Royal Navy, and in seventeen seventy six, Mulligan
moved his home and his business to twenty three Queen Street,

(05:52):
just off Wall Street. This is a much nicer kind
of uh fancier area of town than where he had
been located before. It was where his business would stay
for the rest of his life, and that is also
when Hamilton's stopped living with him uh and that shop
really became known as one of the finest clothiers in
New York. This move to Queen Street was in the

(06:13):
early years of the Revolutionary War, so to very briefly recap,
Patriots were seeking American independence from Britain. Loyalists, on the
other hand, were loyal to the Crown. Hercules Mulligan was
a patriot through and through, Like his family's reasons for
immigrating to the colonies. His reasons for this point of
view aren't really documented anywhere, and most biographies simply boil

(06:36):
it down to, well, he was Irish and the Irish
were overwhelmingly in favor of independence. That's really there, you go.
It's like some of them the tone is like, well,
obviously he was Irish, do um, which I would just
like to say, Irish people are not monolithic in their
vieunds uh toward toward England. But overwhelmingly, yes, uh, overwhelmingly

(07:01):
Irish folks were more in favor of independence. Um. When
it came to independence. Hercules Mulligan was really committed and outspoken,
to the point that some historians suggest that he might
have actually influenced Alexander Hamilton's in his views. Hamilton's political
opinions upon arriving in North America from the Caribbean aren't
really particularly well known or well documented. We don't quite

(07:23):
know what his thoughts were in that direction when he
first got to New York. Regardless, long before he became
a spy, Hercules Mulligan was an activist, and we're going
to talk a lot about that. After we first paused
for a word from one of our sponsors, Hercules. Mulligan

(07:48):
was already active in resistance against British rule long before
he ever met Alexander Hamilton's. In seventeen sixty five, he
arranged for the distribution of a publication that was vehemently
against the Stamp Act. To do this, he enlisted the
help of Laurence Sweeney, who was the only letter carrier
at New York in New York City at the time.
Sweeney was caught and then the publication was deemed to

(08:11):
be seditious, but he refused to name anyone as its
source when he was interrogated. He instead made it this.
He made this sort of off the cuff, a thing
about how it come, had come from an iron works
in New Jersey, and that became kind of an inside
joke among Patriot publications after that. They would print it
in the letters down at the bottom of their pamphlets

(08:31):
and stuff. The Sons of Liberty was founded at about
the same time, and Mulligan joined, becoming one of its
first New York members. He made no secret whatsoever of
this fact, and he was a prominent speaker and a
Sons of Liberty rally held in New York in July
of seventeen seventy four. Later that year, Mulligan was elected

(08:52):
to the Committee of Observation that was established in New
York on November. These committees were established in basically all
of the colony for the purpose of monitoring and resisting
the so called oppressive acts. These were laws that had
been passed in the wake of the Boston Tea Party,
more or less to punish the colonies in Massachusetts specifically.
You can learn more about these laws in our podcast

(09:14):
called Thirteen Reasons for the American Revolution. As the war
went on, the Committees of Observation went on to observe
loyalists in general as well. It kind of kept tabs
on people whose views they didn't agree with. In March
of seventeen seventy five, the Committee of Observation announced its
intention to hold a meeting and elect New York delegates

(09:34):
to the Second Continental Congress, which was to convene in Philadelphia.
The Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from the
thirteen Colonies, the first of which was convened in response
to Britain's intolerable acts. At a very very very basic level,
the first Continental Congress set out to decide how the
colony should respond to the intolerable acts. The Second Continental

(09:55):
Congress would decide how the colonies should respond to the war.
I remember sitting through what seems like extraordinarily long lessons
in history class as a child on the Continental congress ees. Uh,
that is not that's like not even really a synopsis.
That's the tiniest possible explanation of what they were um

(10:17):
and what what all was discussed there. This meeting to
elect New York's delegates was to take place at the
Exchange on Mark's March sixth, and at this point New
York's residents included both loyalists and patriots, as well as
a lot of people who just wanted the war to
be over and otherwise didn't particularly care when we or
the other. When the Loyalists heard about this meeting that

(10:39):
the Committee of Observation was organizing, they decided to have
their own sort of pregame meeting to try to get
a loyalist slate of delegates elected. The Patriots, on the
other hand, heard about the loyalists plan to try to
work up a strategy to send only loyalist delegates, so
the Patriots had their own meeting as well to try

(11:00):
to figure out how to beat the Loyalist numbers once
the vote was held. In the end, the Loyalists did
muster up a pretty large number of voters to attend
this meeting at the Exchange. The Patriots, though, had a
lot more thanks to Hercules Mulligan, Captain Isaac Sears, and
Richard Livingston who basically marched through New York and rounded

(11:20):
up every person they could possibly find to bring to
the meeting themselves. They basically vote brigaded this meeting, and
the Loyalists not surprisingly cried foul, saying that only people
listed on the official voting roles should be able to vote.
The Patriots countered that this was undemocratic and that every
citizen should be able to vote. The Committee of Observation

(11:40):
agreed with the Patriots, and the patriots slate of delegates
was elected to the Second Continental Congress, which would ultimately
go on to adopt the Declaration of Independence. This really
just feels like a flame war on Reddit to me, well,
it feels a lot like modern politics in many regards. Yeah. Also,
in ste In teen seventy five, afterward of fighting in

(12:02):
Lexington and conquered Massachusetts, reach New York, the Sons of
Liberty decided to try to ban British vessels from entering
or leaving the port of New York, and to do
this they stole the Crown the crown collector's keys to
the Customs House. If they controlled the Customs House, then
they would control who entered and left the harbor. The
Sons of Liberty would later go on to establish a

(12:22):
Committee of Inspection to make sure that British goods couldn't
enter or leave the port. Hercules Mulligan was involved in
this effort and was on that committee as well. While
all of this was going on, the Sons of Liberty
also moved to try to take over the running of
New York itself, choosing a committee of one hundred people
to handle things until a permanent government could be established.

(12:44):
On this committee, known among other things as the Committee
of one hundred, was Hercules Mulligan. He was very committee busy.
There were so many committees going on in UH in
the early days of the Revolutionary War, so Mulligan's attivities
as a patriot in the early days of the revolution
went on from there. Some of them were above board

(13:05):
and some of them were not. On top of all,
these committees and this administrative work. He also, for example,
aided in the theft of muskets from the Loyalist City Corporation,
which they then distributed to members of the Sons of Liberty.
A little later on in the war, he was one
of the people who helped tear down the statue of
King George the Third and on the Bowling Green on

(13:26):
July nine, seventeen seventy six, just after a public reading
of the newly signed Declaration of Independence. He's reported to
have actually been the person who broke down the gate
to get to the statue and then tied the rope
that was used around it around the King's neck. He
put his skills as a tailor to work for the
war effort as well. Mulligan had been helping to recruit

(13:47):
and organize military units in New York. When Alexander Hamilton
was commissioned as a captain of the Provincial Company of Artillery,
Mulligan was the one who made a uniform for him
and then helped recruit the necessary men, which was one
of the terms for Hamilton's being given the role in
the first place. Yeah, it's basically okay, if you're gonna
be given this role, you need to you need to

(14:09):
recruit this many people to fill your to fill your team,
and Hercules Mulligan helped him do that. Based on all
of this extremely obvious activism and having his name repeatedly
associated with patriotic activities, Hercules Mulligan might not seem like
the most logical choice for undercover espionage on behalf of
the Patriots. He was, I mean widely known as a

(14:32):
patriot and a member of the Sons of Liberating Liberty,
but he wound up being a spy anyway, which people
talk about. After a sponsor break in the summer of
seventeen seventy six, David Matthews, mayor of New York and

(14:52):
a loyalist, needed a new coat. He went to Mulligan's shop.
By this point it had moved to its final location
at number twenty three Queens Street, which had a reputation
of being extremely fine and well stocked with quality fabrics,
laces and trims, and which employed a number of very
skilled tailors. As we mentioned earlier, apart from the clothier's
reputation for quality, Matthews had been a regular customer there

(15:15):
for quite some time. Mulligan provided his customers with food
and beverages during their visits, and Matthews had a reputation
for being a heavy drinker. Eventually, alcohol seems to have
gotten the better of Matthew's judgment, and he started talking
about how the British we're going to kidnap George Washington
and if that plan failed, their backup was to poison
his favorite meal of buttered peas ham and lettuce. According

(15:38):
to Matthews, many of Washington's own guard had not been
paid and they were bitter enough about it to be
willing to betray him to the Loyalists in exchange for money.
Buttered peas ham and lettuce. It kind of makes me laugh.
That's uh an interesting favorite meal to have. Uh. Mulligan

(15:58):
took advantage of this situation. He angled for more details,
and when it seemed clear that this kidnapped attempt was
going to take place within the next few days, he
finished Matthews fitting. He closed up his shop, and he
headed to Washington's home in Greenwich Village. He ran into
Alexander Hamilton's along the way and told him about this
plot and went back to work, apparently having the forethought

(16:19):
to realize that being seen going into Washington's headquarters would
mean no other loyalist would ever be so careless around
him again. Soon Mulligan's information was confirmed through some other sources.
There were men who were captured in conjunction with other
crimes who, when they were interrogated, named some of Washington's
guard as having turned trader. A man named Thomas Hickey

(16:41):
was arrested, and he and several co conspirators were court
martialed on June seventy six. Hicky's defense was that he
had not actually planned to go through with this whole plan.
He was just trying to get the money and then
not do any of the things that he had promised
to do in exchange for that money. That defense failed,
and he was hanged on Jean thirteen. Other co conspirators

(17:02):
were imprisoned, and Mayor Matthews fled New York for England.
People often like to call Hercules Mulligan the man who
saved George Washington's life twice, and this was but the
first time. In July of seventeen seventy six, British and
Hessian troops started to land in Staten Island. Soon British
General Sir William Howe had established a headquarters there, and

(17:23):
he started recruiting loyalists from around New York, which, as
we said before, there were plenty actually living in New York.
While New York had been roughly even in its proportion
of loyalists to patriots at that patriots, at this point,
this huge influx of British troops really tipped the balance.
It also made things increasingly precarious for George Washington and

(17:44):
the Continental Army. Washington had about eighteen thousand troops on
Long Island defending New York, but several of his advisers
thought it would be wise to secretly evacuate because their
positions were not easy to defend. Washington, however, did not
take this advice, and as a result, the Battle of
Brooklyn Heights, also known as the Battle of Long Island,

(18:04):
was devastating for Washington's fighting force, especially after they wound
up essentially penned in by the ocean. It took a
diversion and a nighttime escape made possible by sailors from Massachusetts,
for Washington to evacuate ten thousand or so remaining troops
to Manhattan, using much of the same strategy that had
been suggested for an earlier secret escape. Washington thought Manhattan

(18:28):
would be nearly impossible to defend, especially considering how much
water around it was now controlled by the British. Congress
denied his proposition to burn the city down so that
loyalists couldn't have use of it. After a second assault
on September, the Patriot forces escaped through Harlem Heights, leaving
the British and full control of New York City and

(18:48):
ready to punish any Patriots they found. One of the
first orders of business was to basically draw up the
names of everyone who had been disloyal from their point
of view, and one of the names on Realist was
Hercules Mulligan on every committee, on every list. I think
people might have just liked saying Hercules Mulligan, because I do.

(19:14):
On the night of September seventy six, part of New
York caught fire, and there's still debate about whether it
was deliberate, and if so, who would have set that
fire and why, And while he was trying to evacuate
his wife and two year old son, Mulligan was arrested
for the first time. While his wife and child were
allowed to continue on their way, he was taken to

(19:35):
Provost Prison, nicknamed for British Provost Marshall William Cunningham, who
with whom Mulligan did not get along. Cunningham happened to
have been with the patrol that had first captured Mulligan
while he was evacuating, and it was under his orders
that he had been taken into custody. Mulligan spent about
the next two months in jail. This is one of

(19:55):
those things that's not particularly clearly documented about when he
went in and when he went out again. But while
he was there, his respected work as a clothier and
his clientele that included a lot of British officers, turned
into a huge asset. He spent a lot of his
time and friendly conversation full of lots of name dropping
and references to his personal relationships with a lot of
well known, powerful loyalists and officers. Soon the order came

(20:19):
down that he was to be released, thanks in part
to what a service he had done by making all
those officers uniforms. He was freed under the condition that
he not leave New York. In spite of this order,
he crossed the river into Hackensec, New Jersey on November
seventeenth of seventeen seventy six, for reasons that, once again
are not entirely clear. It's possible that he wanted to

(20:41):
join up with Alexander Hamilton's artillery company, which was in
camp there, but regardless of why, he did run into
Hamilton's who persuaded him to return to New York. So,
among other reasons, he could keep tabs on the British
for the Patriots, and that's what he did. And we're
going to talk more about that next time, when we'll
get into how he gradually went from sort of spy

(21:03):
work by happenstance to being an official, basically full time spy. Exciting. Uh,
do you have some listener mail that tied us over
while we cliffhaning these poor people I do. This is
nor mail is from Megan, and Megan says, Hello, Holly
and Tracy. I'm a graduate student spending a year in Nanjing,
China writing my dissertation on theater history. Your podcast have

(21:26):
kept me company on many of my commutes around the city,
so I'm glad that I finally have something interesting to
share with you as a small gesture of thanks. A
few weeks ago, I visited the Jungha Memorial Shipyard here
in Nanjing. The park is very quiet and mostly full
of grandparents flying kites with their children in the shadow
of an impressive statue of jung Ha. However, history fans

(21:47):
will appreciate the fact that this idyllic urban landscape is
built around three remaining trenches out of the many that
jung Ha used to construct the treasure ships. After construction,
he would flood these pits with or in float the
boats out to the yank Ze River, yet another marvel
of engineering. As you mentioned in the podcast, the key
attraction is an enormous recreation of one of Jungha's smaller

(22:10):
treasure ships floating in one of the canals. I have
to say that it's still difficult to comprehend the scale
of these vessels, even when you are staring straight up
at one, or even walking around on the deck. My mother,
a huge Western exploration buff was visiting me at the time,
and the two of us were simply in awe. Recent
excavations have also uncovered some artifacts such as construction tools
and masts from the bottom of the trenches that you

(22:31):
can see in a small museum to the side of
the entrance. If you ever come to Nanjang. There are
many other remnants of the Ming dynasty that you can
still visit today, the city walls, the Ming Tombs, the
ruins of the Imperial Palace, and Lion Hill, where Jungha
lived for the last years of his life. The Chinese
conception of what should be preserved, rebuilt, or completely reconstructed
differs of it from what we might expect in the US. Still,

(22:54):
it is remarkable to see how some things, such as
the construction of these treasure ships have left indelible mark
on the geography of the city. Hinching is the kind
of place where history is always evident around you. Thank
you for talking about Jong Hunt and giving other people
the chance to learn more about it. All the best, Megan,
Thank you so much, Megan. Megan's pictures were great. Um.

(23:16):
I had seen sort of at the stock image places
where we get our imagery for a lot of things
on our website pictures of the ship, but uh, having
one that was taken from somebody actually standing on the
deck of it was pretty awesome. So thank you again, Megan.
And if you would like to write to us about
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(23:37):
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(23:58):
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(24:21):
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