George Washington's Secret Six

by Brian Kilmeade

  The practice of writing with disappearing inks was nothing new. For centuries people had been communicating surreptitiously through natural and chemically manipulated inks that became visible when exposed to heat, light, or acid. A message written in onion juice, for example, dried on paper without a trace but became readable when held to a candle. Secret correspondence in the British military often had a subtle F or A in the corner indicating to the recipient whether the paper should be exposed to fire or acid to reveal its message.

  But the usefulness of these devices was limited because they were all so well known. Washington wanted something innovative and unknown to the British, and he received just such a solution from none other than John Jay, the statesman and spymaster of the Hudson Valley.

  Sir James Jay, John Jay’s older brother, had traveled to England in 1762 in an effort to raise funds for King’s College in New York. In 1763, he was knighted by King George and remained in England for a time before returning to America just as hostilities were heating up between the colonists and the mother country. Though his political views would shift during the war, Sir James initially sided with the Patriots and used his knowledge of chemistry to develop an ink that became visible only through the application of a specific “sympathetic stain.” Both the ink and the reagent required a complicated recipe and special workshop, making them valuable commodities that were also extremely difficult to manufacture in any great quantity. The younger Jay brother took it upon himself to learn the painstaking process so he could personally make them for General Washington’s use.

  When Washington received his first batch of the ink, he was delighted with the effect. It was, in a way, an unbreakable code, impervious to any of the usual means of discovery. Even if the British suspected a white-ink message in any particular letter, they had no way of revealing it unless they, too, were in possession of the related formula. Because the recipe was Jay’s unique creation, it was nearly impossible for them to decipher these dispatches.

  That small vial of ink must have seemed like the Holy Grail to the increasingly nervous Woodhull—a precious chalice that held a mystical liquid that could save his life. He had been waiting for its arrival for months, ever since the ink’s existence was first mentioned to him, aware of how sparing he must be with its use and yet eager to entrust all of his gathered reports to its protection. He would never fully relax as long as he was living a double life, that much was clear, but he did find great comfort in possessing that ink. He could hardly wait to get started writing back to Washington all that he was witnessing as New York began to thaw from another long winter.

  A CRISIS POINT

  Just a few days before receiving the long-awaited white ink, Woodhull had composed a letter on April 10, 1779, that reveals something of the concern he was feeling for the security of his missive. “Sir. No. 10,” the letter begins, using a crude code to disguise the name of the intended recipient. Immediately, he launched into an apology, stating:

  Whenever I sit down I always feel and know my Inability to write a good Letter. As my calling in life never required it—Nor led to consider how necessary a qualification it was for a man—and much less did I think it would ever fall to my lot to serve in such publick and important business as this, and my letters perused by one of the worthiest men on earth. But I trust he will overlook any imperfections he may discover in the dress of my words, and rest assured that I indevour to collect and covey the most accurate and explicit intelligence that I possibly can; and hope it may be of some service toward alleviating the misery of our distressed Country, nothing but that could have induced me to undertake it.

  It was clear to all involved that Woodhull was suffering from severely strained nerves and might soon quit the whole business were he not reassured as to the value of his information and the confidence the other members of the ring had in his ability to obtain it in total security. Tallmadge therefore undertook a dangerous trip with Brewster back across Long Island Sound to Woodhull’s home in Setauket in order to offer him this support in person, as well as to give him payment for his expenses and pains. However, as if to underscore the fact that Woodhull’s fears were rooted in reality rather than paranoia, several British officers unexpectedly took up quarter in Woodhull’s home at that same time, forcing Tallmadge to keep cover and only see his friend briefly before returning to Connecticut.

  It was a perfect storm of worry for Woodhull: One of the most wanted men in the Continental Army had shown up on his land even as there were British troops making themselves at home under his roof. One or the other would have been quite enough to push him to the brink of nervous exhaustion; the two occurring simultaneously was sufficient to tip him over the edge.

  One evening, Woodhull sat at his writing desk, composing a letter to Washington from his small supply of invisible ink, acutely aware of the presence of British soldiers in the neighboring chamber. Glancing repeatedly at the door as he hurried to finish his report, he sat ready to cover his work and divert attention should he be interrupted. The old house was quiet, which was a comfort and allowed him to breathe a little easier than he might have otherwise.

  Suddenly, the door flew open and two figures barged into the room. Woodhull leapt up, attempting to sweep all his papers to his chest in the process, and overturned the table. It fell to the ground with a crash, scattering its contents and smashing the vial of ink upon the wooden floor. But where Woodhull expected to hear the roar of discovery from a British officer, he instead heard the giggles of teenage girls. Two cousins, who had observed the twitchy depression from which Woodhull was suffering, had taken it into their heads to surprise him in such a manner as to make him laugh. The joke had the opposite effect. “Such an excessive fright and so great a turbulence of passions so wrought on poor Culper that he has hardly been in tolerable health since,” Tallmadge wrote to Washington, recounting the event as Woodhull had told it to him. Woodhull apparently managed to salvage some of the ink, since his next letter to the general was composed in the stain, but his supply was severely compromised, as was what little peace of mind he had remaining.

  Things only continued to worsen for Woodhull. Just a few days later, while in Huntington (about twenty miles away), he was held up by highwaymen who took all the money he was carrying but were unaware that he was in possession of papers that would have proved even more valuable if turned over to the British. Woodhull, according to Tallmadge, “was glad to escape with his life.” It had been a coincidence, with Woodhull simply another random victim of the crime wave that had seemingly taken over Long Island, but what happened next was no coincidence at all. His worst fears were confirmed: Woodhull had become a target.

  MANHUNT

  John Wolsey was just one of many privateers operating in Long Island Sound. Privateers made their living through a combination of smuggling and theft on the water. Akin to piracy in many ways, privateering was a popular profession at the time for residents on both sides of the Sound. That spring, Wolsey, a Connecticut man who made the trip to and from Long Island quite regularly, found himself in British custody. Fearing for his life, he was desperate to secure leniency.

  How he happened to know anything about the doings of Abraham Woodhull is unclear. Perhaps someone at Roe’s tavern had caught on to the scheme and spoke a little too freely when ale loosened his tongue. Perhaps Wolsey noticed that Woodhull traveled to see his sister in Manhattan more often than fraternal duty might otherwise call for, and that Caleb Brewster seemed always to be passing by Wolsey’s own boat on urgent business a day or two after Woodhull’s return. Whatever the case, Wolsey named Woodhull as a person of interest, and his betrayal seemed a credible enough threat to rouse Lieutenant Colonel John Simcoe, a British cavalry officer, from his comfortable lodging in Oyster Bay and to send him over the nearly fifty miles of road eastward to Setauket. With a handful of the Queen’s Rangers in tow, Simcoe intended to arrest Woodhull on suspicion of espionage.

  Sim
coe’s men surrounded the Woodhull house, muskets poised and sabers at their sides, and Simcoe pounded on the door, demanding that Woodhull be handed over. Richard, Abraham’s elderly father who had already lost his two older sons to untimely deaths, must have felt an overwhelming sense of relief that he could report honestly that Abraham was away in the city and not at home. The soldiers searched the house and interrogated the family, but it was quickly evident that the old man had been telling the truth. This was not the outcome Simcoe had desired—he knew that Woodhull would catch wind of his presence before he arrived home and would dispose of any incriminating evidence. Furious that the opportunity to catch a suspected spy red-handed had been squandered, Simcoe ordered the suspect’s father beaten in his stead. The rangers fell upon Richard, bludgeoning him while the rest of the family looked on in horror. Once the old man lay crumpled on the ground, the troops rode off. Simcoe was confident that Abraham, upon his return, would interpret the message loud and clear: “This is what happens to the families of spies.”

  The attack came as a shock to Woodhull. It was terrible to watch his father struggle feebly to recover from the attack even as the summer came on quickly and the heat and flies only seemed to intensify his suffering. Abraham Woodhull realized that though his absence had saved his life, he could no longer afford the suspicion brought on by his frequent trips to New York, and said as much to Tallmadge, who was forced to explain to General Washington what his spies were enduring back home. Washington heard the story with compassion, and wrote back to Tallmadge promising “more of the liquid Culper writes for” and assuring him that “should suspicions of him rise so high as to render it unsafe to continue in New York I should wish him by all means to employ some person of whose attachments and abilities he entertains the best opinion, to act in his place.” Woodhull eagerly took him up on that offer.

  Meanwhile, back in his cozy quarters in Oyster Bay, Colonel Simcoe had little notion of the tangled web he’d woven—that the man he’d tried in vain to arrest was, at that same moment, recruiting to his cause another man who already also deeply hated Simcoe for his own personal reasons.

  CHAPTER 6

  Townsend Joins the Fight

  Espionage was, by no means, a gentleman’s game in the eighteenth century. In a world ruled by honor, a career of deception and duplicity carried little of the allure and intrigue that it would come to enjoy among later generations. Spies were everywhere, but the general rule was that one gathered intelligence for the sake of bragging rights later on, for the money it paid out now, for the glamorous life brought by proximity to those in power, or for sheer ideological fanaticism.

  Mild-mannered, bookish Robert Townsend fit none of those molds. He was no braggart, had no sumptuous tastes or mercenary tendencies, and while he harbored certain tightly held beliefs, he was no zealot. He was a quiet boy from a prominent Long Island family with a history of independent thinking that he had inherited. A peaceable man, he did his best to stay out of the war—until an event forced him to take a stand.

  THE TOWNSENDS OF OYSTER BAY

  Like their Setauket neighbors, the Tallmadges and the Woodhulls, the Townsends were a proud and ancient family by American standards. The fourth generation of Townsends born in America included Samuel Townsend, an outspoken and intrepid man who in 1738, at the age of twenty-one, had purchased six acres of land in the heart of Oyster Bay, near to the water and on the road to the mill. The property, which he christened the Homestead, included a small house of practical design: two rooms built atop two other rooms, with a central chimney to distribute heat throughout. Over the next several years, Samuel hired local builders to expand the structure to a total of eight rooms in the saltbox style. When the renovation and expansion were complete, he moved in, opened a general store, and married a local girl. It was at the Homestead that he and his wife, Sarah, began to cultivate both a fairly sizable orchard as well as a sizable family. There were eight children in that fifth generation of Townsends: four sons, a daughter, another son, and two more daughters. Samuel also acquired a fleet of four ships that traversed the Atlantic—east, north, and south—which, in turn, kept his shop well stocked and allowed him to trade in just about anything from fabric to rum, molasses, spices, sugar, and snuff.

  Besides his small fleet and well-provisioned shop, which was the most prominent in Oyster Bay, Samuel was also well known for his political views, which were often at odds with those in power. In 1758, about halfway through the French and Indian War, he had fired off a strongly worded letter to the New York General Assembly on the subject of the treatment of prisoners. Townsend found fault with the way enemy combatants were being sheltered and provided for by the colonial arm of the British Crown and wasted no words informing the assemblymen of such. He was arrested and brought before the assembly to justify his conduct of insulting them so openly. Several days under lock and key and a stiff fine left him promising no further outbursts—a promise that lasted for a while. As the local schoolmaster noted in his journal, in the weeks following, Samuel “has been as still as a mouse in a cheese.”

  He took on the role of town clerk and when talk of independence began to circulate, Samuel was generally considered one of those who favored a break with the Crown, even though he seemed to consider himself middle of the road on the issue. His stances and politicking gradually got the better of him and again landed him in hot water with the local authorities more than once. His children, in the meantime, were growing into successful adults, their business connections largely unsullied by their father’s reputation as a rabble-rouser and a Patriot.

  ODD MAN OUT

  Solomon Townsend was, by all accounts, the consummate oldest son. He was just as eager a merchant as his father and, after a short apprenticeship, assumed the captaincy of one of his father’s ships. After proving himself for several years with voyages to Canada, Portugal, and the Azores, he took over a European trading route on a three-rigged ship for the Buchanan family, staunch Loyalists related to the Townsends by marriage.

  The second son, Samuel Junior, began working in North Carolina as part of the flax trade, but died in 1773 at the age of twenty-three or twenty-four. As the third Townsend son, William, was employed elsewhere when Samuel Junior passed away, the fourth son, Robert, went south to briefly take his brother’s place before returning to New York.

  Born on November 25, 1753, Robert was in many ways out of place in the Townsend family—as dark and lean as Solomon was blond and broad, and as shy and reserved as William (nicknamed the “flower of the family”) was gallant and flirtatious. His desire was not for adventure or prestige; of a much more bookish disposition than his father or brothers, he preferred to work quietly behind the scenes, managing the ledgers and accounts and inspecting incoming shipments—anything that kept him out of the limelight and the ribaldry that the other Townsend men shared with their sailors and clients. Not that Robert resented their quick wit and hearty laughter; in fact, he rather admired the spirit the rest of his family brought to life. But as the fourth son quickly followed by a long-awaited daughter, he had learned almost from infancy that he had no hope of being heard over his clamorous brothers or coddled as his mother’s darling, so he separated himself by being the quiet one of such a rowdy bunch.

  Old Samuel probably wondered how Robert maintained subdued habits as he watched his young son with his loping gait stride past a rough-and-tumble wrestling match on the family’s front lawn. The Townsend family tree was peppered with Quakers, though Samuel had married a daughter of prominent Episcopalians, which, along with his taste for luxury goods and the occasional bit of ostentatious accessorizing, put him largely on the outs with the Friends among his relatives. But Robert seemed to have inherited all the Quaker tendencies of somber dress, quiet habit, and humble bearing that Samuel had rejected, and they suited him well. Robert’s nature made him fastidious and gave him an eye for detail—traits essential for success in the merchant trade.

 
“Still,” Samuel thought to himself, “the boy could use a little less rigidity in his life.”

  There was likely no small source of amusement in the Townsend family when Samuel secured the terms of Robert’s apprenticeship in Manhattan with Templeton & Stewart, a merchant house in the unfortunately named “Holy Ground” district, a disreputable part of town. The blocks around Barclay, Church, and Vesey Streets were not more dangerous than any other slum in the city, but they were morally treacherous. The district’s proximity to the docks meant it was prime real estate for both profit-conscious merchants who wanted to be near their ships returning from voyages and for ladies of pleasure who wanted to be near randy sailors returning from months at sea.

  Surrounded by brothels, whores, and their clientele, straitlaced Robert distinguished himself at his work and navigated the seedy streets without a whiff of scandal about him in what was almost certainly a very lonely time for the young man. He marked the close of his teenage years in the firm’s employment, dealing with almost every other commodity than the one being plied in the streets and cathouses around it.

  CHOOSING ALLEGIANCES

  Robert was not quite twenty-two when the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. For all of his differences from the rest of his family, he shared something of his father’s Patriotic fervor. The battlefields in Massachusetts seemed far away, though, and many people expected the conflict to resolve itself before formal combat ever crossed the borders of New York State. By the following summer, however, it was clear that such assumptions were wrong. The Declaration of Independence was signed in July, war was moving inevitably closer to home, and all men of fighting age in the mid-Atlantic region were forced to make the difficult decision of whether to enlist—and on what side.