Blog

On November 26, 1783 – the day the British finally evacuated New York – General George Washington rode down Broadway with New York Governor George Clinton, amid the applause of thousands. Then Washington quietly rode off to 23 Queen St. (now 218 Pearl St.) to have breakfast with a fashionable tailor named Hercules Mulligan. Why? During the British occupation of Manhattan, intelligence gleaned by Mulligan from loose-lipped British officers had prevented the capture of Washington at least twice. (The stories are told here and here.)  To show his gratitude, Washington not only breakfasted with  Mulligan: he ordered a complete civilian wardrobe from him.

Can’t find any images of Washington out of uniform ca. 1783. Pity.

Sources on Mulligan’s life

From a historian’s point of view, it’s inconvenient when a hero lives near his friends: he never has to write to them. Sixteen-year-old Alexander Hamilton arrived in New York in 1773 carrying a letter of recommendation to Kartwright & Company in New York, one of whose principals was Hugh Mulligan. After Hamilton enrolled in King’s College, he lived for some time at the home of Hugh’s brother Hercules (1740-1825). They remained good friends. It may have been Hamilton who recruited Mulligan to spy for General Washington. But except for the Revolutionary War years and Hamilton’s stint as Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton and Mulligan lived near enough to each other for regular visits. No correspondence between them exists.

With one exception (see below), nothing written by Hercules survives. None of his contemporaries wrote anything substantive about him. Michael J. O’Brien managed to fill a 190-page biography with an elaborate array of genealogical details and historical background, but the book has a Hercules Mulligan-shaped hole where its subject should be. Aside from the spying episode, all I learned from the bio was:

1. Hercules was well known, sociable, and considered trustworthy. His name frequently occurs on legal documents (for example, as executor of a will). Even more frequently, it appears on lists of members of committees and clubs. By the 1760s, he was a member of the Sons of Liberty, and he joined many other revolutionary groups after that. (It’s just as well his British military customers couldn’t check out out his activities on Facebook!)
2. From 1774 to 1787, Hercules and his wife Elizabeth had three sons and five daughters. However many sets of corsets his wife wore, they don’t seem to have been an impediment.

So Hercules Mulligan in Hamilton is the character Lin-Manuel Miranda needed him to be. I’m fine with that. Hmmm, maybe I’ll write more next week on why I don’t obsess over historical accuracy in works of art …

Mulligan’s “Narrative”

The only piece of writing that we have by Hercules Mulligan is a record of his memories of Alexander Hamilton that he jotted down around 1810-1815, at the request of John C. Hamilton (Alexander’s fourth son), who was writing a biography of his father. This was 35 years or so after the events Mulligan was describing. Not surprisingly, he gets some dates and details wrong – for example, he says Hamilton enrolled at King’s College in October 1775 rather than 1773.

The “Narrative” doesn’t add much to our knowledge of Alexander Hamilton, but I enjoyed hearing Mulligan’s “voice,” so I’ll share a couple bits of it.

Hamilton saves the president of King’s College

In  May 1775, when news reached New York of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, a mob set off to the home of Dr. Myles Cooper, the outspoken Loyalist who was president of King’s College. Hamilton, a student at King’s, was already an ardent patriot, but he was also very wary of mob action. (I’ve kept Mulligan’s charmingly erratic spelling and punctuation.)

Dr. Cooper, President of King’s Colledge, was a tory and an obnoxious man and the mob went to the Colledge with the intention of tarring & feathering him or riding him upon a rail. Mr. H got on the stoop of the President’s House and harrangued them in order to give him time [to] escape out of the back of the House which he did & went on Board a Frigate Lying in the North river.

Dr. Cooper’s description of this event – in verse! – is here.

Hamilton, Mulligan, and other American patriots steal cannons

In August 1775, the British warship Asia sailed into New York Harbor. Patriots feared the cannon on the Battery might be captured and turned on the city.

A dozen or so volunteers managed to drag some of the cannons away from the waterfront. Here’s Mulligan’s account – the only one I’ve seen of this incident.

While in Colledge he joined a volunteer uniform company which was commanded by Capt. Fleming. It having been determined by the Committee of Safety that the Cannon which were on the Battery should be removed to a place of greater safety, this Company with others were engaged in making the removal when (28 Augt 75) the Asia fired upon the City and I recollect well that Mr. Hamilton was there, for I was engaged in hauling off one of the Cannons, when Mr. H came up and gave me his musket to hold, & he took hold of the rope. The punt of the Asia had before approached the Battery and was fired upon and a man was killed, she returned to the ship and the fire was then opened upon us. Hamilton at the first firing was away with the Cannon. I left his musket in the Battery & retreated, as he was returning I met him and he asked for his piece. I told him where I had left it, and he went for it, notwithstanding the firing continued, with as much unconcern as if the vessel had not been there.

And for those of us who gotta have visuals: here’s Hercules Mulligan’s signature, reproduced at the end of his “Narrative” in O’Brien’s biography.

More

• The excerpts from “Narrative of Hercules Mulligan of the City of New York” that I’ve quoted above are about a quarter of the whole narrative, which is printed in full in Nathan Schachner, “Alexander Hamilton Viewed by His Friends: The Narratives of Robert Troup and Hercules Mulligan,” The William and Mary Quarterly IV: 2 (April 1947), pp. 203-225 (accessible via JSTOR – thanks to Professor Carrie-Ann Biondi for getting me a copy of this article! ). Schachner also provides a scholarly appraisal of the value of the Mulligan and Troup narratives. For more information about the capture of the cannons on the Battery, see the Founders Online. The 1776 date it gives for the Battery cannons incident must be wrong – by late August 1776, there was far more than one British warship in New York harbor.
• Michael J. O’Brien’s Hercules Mulligan, Confidential Correspondent of General Washington (New York, 1937) is the only biography of Mulligan. O’Brien seems to have been at least as interested in cataloging Irish contributions to the American Revolution as in writing about Hercules. The online articles about Mulligan are all derived from O’Brien’s bio: see this one from Fox News, this one from  The Daily Beast, and this one from a site about Irish emigrants.
• Hercules Mulligan probably advertised in the newspapers of the time, but 18th-c. newspapers are still mostly on microfilm, hence not easily accessible or searchable.
• You know you can look up all these episodes in Chernow, right? The Cooper incident is pp. 63-6 and 69 (with a wonderful excerpt from Hamilton’s letter to John Jay on mobs). The cannons on the Battery episode is on p. 67.
• I’ve occasionally added comments based on these blog posts to the Genius.com pages on the Hamilton Musical. Follow me @DianneDurante.
• This is the sixth in a series of posts on Hamilton: An American Musical.  Other posts are available via the tag cloud at lower right. The ongoing “index” to these posts is my Kindle book, Alexander Hamilton: A Brief Biography. Bottom line: these are unofficial musings, and you do not need them to enjoy the musical or the soundtrack.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my free Sunday Recommendations list and rewards for recurring support: details here.