11/30/2023 0 Comments American revolution spy network![]() ![]() The ring’s very existence wasn’t discovered until the 1900s, and to this day no one knows for certain how many members it had.Īfter the war Washington asked Congress to reimburse him $17,000-nearly half a million dollars today-for his espionage expenses. None of the Culper spies were ever caught, and even Washington himself never learned exactly who was in the group. He simply out-spied us,” a British intelligence officer allegedly said after the war. “Washington didn’t really out-fight the British. In 1781 the British surrendered, thanks in part to the intelligence gathered by the Culper Ring and their networks. Washington’s espionage experiment paid off. Benjamin Tallmadge by Ezra Ames Famous Spies Nathan Hale - Hale was an American spy who was caught while gathering information in New York City. (Washington’s code name was Agent 711.) Washington also asked physician James Jay (brother to John) to invent an invisible ink that could be revealed only with another chemical and would “relieve the fears of such persons as may be entrusted in its conveyance.” Unauthorized use is prohibited.Įmploying the tools and tricks of the 18 th-century spy trade-hiding secret messages in hollow feather quills, using “dead drops” to transport letters-the Culper operatives unmasked enemy spies, busted a money counterfeiting plan, and stopped the British from sabotaging a French aid mission to the colonies.Īfter important letters were lost during an enemy raid, Tallmadge invented a “numerical dictionary” code that matched 763 cities, names, and words to numbers. /rebates/&252fspy-network. In a volume lacking footnotes and offering only a smattering of sources, the. These start with the title and subtitle of the book: George Washington’s Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution. During the Yorktown campaign, the Marquis de Lafayette found an. ![]() Kilmeade’s work is also filled with supposed statements of fact that can be disputed. James Armistead Lafayette (R) at Yorktown, standing with Marquis de La Fayette (L). He also strayed into historical fiction by filling the book with invented dialogue without indicating that the words were never spoken by the participants. Bakeless did not provide a primary source for Townsend’s employment as a journalist for Rivington so this part of Townsend’s role is unclear. They provided him with much information, some of which he ignored when it didn’t fit into his narrative. 15 Rose, Washington’s Spies, 146-151 John Bakeless, Turncoats, Traitors & heroes: Espionage in the American Revolution (New York J.B. In preparing his 2013 bestseller with coauthor Don Yaeger and other writers, he convened gatherings of local historians from Culper-connected locations such as Setauket and Oyster Bay. The most prominent writer in that category would be Fox News co-host Brian Kilmeade, who lives on Long Island. And while they may have sought information from Long Island historians who have spent decades studying the subject, they didn’t always listen to them. And later writers have often repeated that material without researching or even questioning it. Pennypacker’s books, which lack footnotes, transformed some anecdotal information and legends into fact. But the series did get people reading and talking about espionage during the war.Īs with Turn, Pennypacker and many of the authors who have written about the Culper Ring subsequently have strayed from the truth. These included having the ring created in 1776 rather than two years later, depicting Setauket as a neighborhood of stately stone homes rather than wooden structures, having the hamlet occupied by regular army redcoats rather than Loyalist troops, portraying Abraham Woodhull’s minister father as a Tory socializing with the occupiers rather than showing the reality of him being a Patriot sympathizer badly beaten by soldiers trying to find and arrest his son and, most ludicrously, having Woodhull and the happily married and older Anna Strong engage in a secret affair. Unfortunately, it took great liberties with the facts. ![]() Interest in the Patriots’ intelligence network soared when the AMC television series Turn: Washington’s Spies aired for four seasons between 20. So when Long Island historian Morton Pennypacker revealed him to have been Robert Townsend of Oyster Bay in 1930 and then proved it with document analysis nine years later, it generated considerable attention. ![]() Most of the spy ring operatives identified themselves or were identified after the war, but not Culper Junior. The biggest mystery was the identity of Culper Junior, the chief spy in Manhattan in the later years of the war. In more than a dozen books, researchers have tried to sort out who was involved and exactly what their roles were. Historians have long been fascinated by the intelligence efforts undertaken by enthusiastic amateurs. ![]()
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