355: The Women of Washington's Spy Ring (Women Spies Book 1)

by Kit Sergeant

  Daniel approached the table. “Attention everyone, attention.” The guests paused midway through conversation to turn their eyes on Daniel. “I have just been informed that General Arnold has defected to the British.” A few cheers from the Loyalist guests went up and Sally had to stop herself from glaring at them.

  “However, John André has been captured by the Americans and is undergoing a trial as we speak.”

  “Captured?” This time Sally had no control over her emotions. “Is he going to be released soon?”

  Papa looked forlornly at Daniel. “He was behind American lines?”

  Daniel nodded.

  Papa said, practically to himself, “He will suffer Nathan Hale’s fate, then.”

  “No!” Sally stood up from the table. “He can’t. They cannot hang a man as fine as André.”

  “That is up for General Washington to decide,” Papa told Sally before she ran into the house.

  Sally trudged upstairs to her room, feeling as though her heart might break. The capture of André had been her fault and she was not sure she would ever be able to forgive herself for it. Sally had never been in love before, but she was quite sure she had loved John André, and now she would be the one to send him to the gallows.

  As Sally’s storm of tears subsided into sobs, she heard the door creep open. She sat up in bed and looked over to see Papa standing in the threshold. “I’m sorry, Sally,” he said, setting something on her dresser before he walked over to the side of the bed with the help of his cane. “I know you cared a great deal for Major André. I think we all did.”

  Sally’s tears began fresh again. Papa had no idea the depth of her feelings, let alone what she had done.

  He held her until her tears ebbed once more, patting her before saying he needed to return to the few guests that remained. “As you can imagine, the party has taken quite a turn after the announcement was made.” He paused at her dresser. “I almost forgot. This was a package that Daniel’s messenger brought for you.” He set it on the bed before he left.

  Sally peered at the package. Her name and address was printed neatly on top, in Robert’s handwriting. A sense of dread built in her chest as she undid the brown paper. It was exactly what she thought it was: a container of Bohea tea. Another tear slipped down Sally’s cheek as she realized that André would never drink the tea she procured for him.

  Chapter LIII

  Meg

  October 1779

  At One Broadway, Meg anxiously awaited the fate of her supposed paramour. The myriad of officers that always came and went was at an even greater number now, but a few of them took pity on her and filled her in on the news as it came. André had been taken prisoner and was now in Tappan, New York, under the guard of Benjamin Tallmadge, a fair man by all reports. One morning Colonel De Lancey marched into the mansion, a deep frown on his face.

  “Guilty,” was all he said when he passed by Meg.

  Clinton had appealed for a prisoner exchange, but the only man Washington wanted in his place was Arnold. “Of course I cannot hand over that duplicitous traitor,” Clinton shouted so loud that all of Broadway could have heard him. “What would it say to the other duplicitous traitors thinking about betraying their supposed country in our favor?”

  In the end, nothing could avail André and he was hanged as a spy in the beginning of October. One of his last acts was to pen a letter to his commander, which General Clinton graciously let Meg read. She took comfort in the words he wrote before he mentioned his mother and sisters:

  I am perfectly and tranquil in mind and prepared for any Fate to which an honest Zeal for my King’s Service may have devoted me.

  He was as noble and faithful to his King at the throes of death as he was in the crux of life.

  The man who brought the letter to Clinton witnessed his death and filled the sorrowful guests in on André’s last moments at dinner that night. “He was brave to the last moment,” the officer said. “The only time I saw him falter was when he saw the gallows. He had begged Washington to be shot as an officer, but the villainous general insisted that he hang as a spy.”

  The rest of the table murmured their agreement as to the man’s opinion on Washington.

  “André’s last words were, ‘I pray you to bear me witness that I meet my fate like a brave man.’”

  “Enough!” General Clinton roared from the head of the table, setting his wineglass down with such force that much of it spilled onto the white tablecloth. Meg was astonished to see the great general put his face in his hands. “Excuse me,” he said, getting up from the table and heading out of the room.

  Meg decided then and there that she’d also had enough. The only tie she had to the British Army had been Major André. And now he was gone. She spent the rest of the night packing her bags, refusing the aid of a servant. The next day she arranged for transport back to the Queen Street townhouse. Nothing remained for her at One Broadway, and the constant reminders of André, the closest friend she’d ever had, wreaked havoc on her fragile heart. Even being under the jurisdiction of her barbarian husband would be more welcome than the endless mourning over André.

  Chapter LIV

  Sally

  October 1779

  Simcoe returned to Oyster Bay only long enough to arrange for the transport of his things. With his puffy eyes and somber demeanor it was obvious that he too was heartbroken over the loss of André. To Sally’s relief, he made no more inquiries for her hand in marriage. After the Rangers quit Long Island, Sally never saw John Graves Simcoe again.

  Robert came home to Oyster Bay after the news of Arnold’s defection had reached New York City. Sally waited until after dinner, when it was just her and him by the fireplace, to query why he came back.

  Robert said simply, “We do not know what Arnold knew.”

  “Are you in danger?”

  “I’m not sure. Ben assured me that Arnold knew nothing about the ring, but at the same time, Hercules Mulligan was arrested.”

  Sally’s grip on the chair tightened.

  “Don’t worry,” Robert told her with a wry smile. “Mulligan’s been arrested before and somehow always manages to get released.” His smile faded as he continued, “I just could not face seeing that traitor Benedict Arnold walking around Manhattan in a British uniform.”

  She wanted to inquire more about André, but wasn’t sure how to approach it. Instead she asked about Elizabeth.

  Robert’s face fell. “She’s headed to Philadelphia now.”

  “You must go to her, Robert.”

  “I can’t. The war is not over yet, and my presence might put her in further danger.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sally knew what it was like to not be able to be with the one you loved most in the world.

  Robert turned to her. “You mustn’t blame yourself for André’s death, Sal.”

  Just hearing his name caused her heart to feel as though it could explode. “Did you—”

  “As soon as I got your message, I sent it through the proper channels. Ben had already heard of “John Anderson”—Arnold informed him that a man by that name would be coming through the lines with a pass from him. André was caught by a bunch of criminals in the neutral ground. One of them was wearing a Hessian coat he’d stolen, and André, assuming they were Loyalists, revealed himself as a British officer. The men searched him and found Arnold’s treasonous information in André’s shoe.” His lips curled into a sardonic grin and Sally remembered Robert’s warning not to hide papers on her person. “Ben told me he would have known the man they captured was an officer anyway, even if he did not get our message about André/Anderson. It was his walk that gave him away. Ben said that he watched him pace up and down the little room and soon knew that the man was no ordinary soldier.”

  Sally, remembering that confident stride, felt her heart sink even lower when she realized that André would walk no more.

  Robert paused for a moment and stared mournfully into the fire. “André was of a most am
iable character,” he said finally. “But he made a lot of mistakes that became his own undoing. The only thing we can do is learn from them and move on.”

  Sally nodded, tears once again filling her eyes. They had all been playing the same treacherous game, but André had lost.

  “Sally,” Robert rose from his chair and walked over, bending down in front of her. “Just think of what could have happened if the British gained West Point.”

  “They would have won the war.” Her words came out with a sob.

  “Exactly,” Robert said, patting her leg before returning to his chair. “Years from now, when the pain has subsided and you reflect back on this time, don’t think about sacrificing the life of your friend John André. Think about how you saved America.”

  EPILOGUE

  The True Fates of the Characters in 355

  The Women

  Elizabeth Burgin was granted permission to return under a flag of truce to collect her children, and upon returning to New York, discovered that her clothes and apartment had been confiscated and given to Loyalists. After she arrived in Philadelphia, she found herself in an unfamiliar town with three children, no clothes or money, and no friends. As Elizabeth herself wrote, “Helping our poor prisoners brought me to want, which I don’t repent.” Leonard Van Buren, one of the men Elizabeth helped rescue, heard of Elizabeth’s plight and gifted her $500 as a thank-you. General Washington himself appealed on her behalf in early 1780, stating in a letter to the Continental Congress “From the testimony of different persons, and particularly many of our own Officers who have returned from captivity, it would appear that she has been indefatigable for the relief of the prisoners and in measures for facilitating their escape. For this conduct she incurred the suspicion of the British, and was forced to make her escape under disturbing circumstances.” Finding it still hard to get by a year later, Elizabeth petitioned Congress, altruistically asking to be paid for “cutting out the linen into shirts… for the army.” Instead of a seamstress job, Congress then awarded her a pension, making her one of the few women of the Revolutionary War to receive the annuity. Nothing is much known about her after 1786.

  Margaret Moncrieffe Coghlan sailed to England where she later claimed she was subjected to “barbarous treatment” by her husband. After they docked, Coghlan abandoned her for two weeks. In typical fashion, she wrote to a former New York acquaintance, Thomas Clinton, to appeal for help. The two purportedly had an affair and Margaret was advised to flee to France. Two years afterward, she returned to England and was rumored to have begun yet another affair with a man named Charles James Fox. More affairs and liaisons with other men of means followed. Years later, while writing her memoirs in 1793, she had this to say about Aaron Burr: “With this Conqueror of my soul, how happy should I now have been! What storms and tempests should I have avoided (at least I am pleased to think so) if I had been allowed to follow the bent of my inclinations and happier; oh ten thousand times happier should I have been with him!” She died in 1795* (most likely date), at the age of 33.

  Sarah Sally Townsend never married and lived out the rest of her life in her family’s house in Oyster Bay—later named Raynham Hall by her descendants—with her bachelor brother Robert. She kept Simcoe’s poem—which was purported to be the first Valentine written in the United States of America—as well as André’s silhouette of her until her death in 1842, at the age of 82. Both were heavily creased, as if she frequently opened them. The window addressed to “The adorable Miss Sally Sarah Townsend” can still be seen at the Raynham Hall museum in Oyster Bay.

  Margaret Shippen Arnold was banned from Philadelphia soon after she arrived after fleeing West Point. She joined her husband in New York and, in 1781, they moved to England with their two sons. Five more children were born afterward, with three surviving past infancy. In 1789, she made a brief visit to her family in Philadelphia, where she was not given the warmest welcome: it was reported that old friends and acquaintances snubbed her while others jeered her on the streets. She died in 1804, at the age of 44, three years after her deeply in-debt husband left this world.

  After her death, Aaron Burr came forward to state that he was at the Hermitage the night she stayed with Theodosia Prevost and heard her confess her own participation in her husband’s treason. Defenders of Peggy Arnold’s innocence have long claimed that Burr’s accusations came out of spite. They claim that Burr once made advances on Peggy only to be spurned by the beautiful debutante. In the 20th century, several letters in the Sir Henry Clinton collection made came to light that make it clear Peggy knew of Arnold’s plotting and most likely encouraged and played a hand in it.

  The Men

  Aaron Burr married Theodosia Prevost and moved to New York City after the British evacuation to open a law practice. After losing the 1800 presidential election to Thomas Jefferson, Burr became the vice president of the United States. He blamed Alexander Hamilton for his lack of success in politics, and challenged him to a duel in 1804. After Burr famously shot and killed his rival, the resulting scandal ended Burr’s political career. Although he was later indicted for treason, he never went to trial for the murder of Hamilton. He died in 1836, penniless and partially paralyzed from an earlier stroke.

  Caleb Brewster married Anne Lewis, the daughter of the wharf owner where he had made most of his landings, and moved to Fairfield, Connecticut, where he became a blacksmith and farmer. In 1793, he joined the predecessor to the U.S. Coast Guard and commanded the USRC Active during the War of 1812 before retiring to his farm in 1816. Unlike his fellow, more tight-lipped, members of the Culper Ring, he was known to boast about his involvement as a courier and sometimes intelligencer. He died in 1827 at the age of 79 and was survived by eight children.

  Hercules Mulligan was able to talk his way out of jail as Benedict Arnold could present no evidence against him. He had breakfast with George Washington when the General returned upon the British evacuation of New York, thereby putting a halt to any plans the Whigs might have had to tar and feather the supposed Loyalist. Washington declared Mulligan a “true friend of liberty,” before he ordered a suit from him. A sign proclaiming that Mulligan was “Clothier to Genl. Washington,” hung outside his Queen Street shop until Mulligan’s death in 1825. He is buried at Trinity Church near his good friend Alexander Hamilton.

  James Rivington was referred to as “726” in the Culper code book. Whether the notorious Tory printer participated in the Ring out of patriotic sympathy or to deepen his own pocket remains a mystery lost to time. Like Mulligan’s shop, Rivington’s printing press was spared of any looting when the Americans returned to New York City. His newspaper, however, could not find a following in the new nation and he was forced to serve time in a debtor’s prison. He died at the age of 78 in 1802—perhaps a tad ironically—on July 4th.

  John Graves Simcoe returned to England shortly after André’s death. He married the heiress Elizabeth Posthuma Gwillim in 1782 and won a seat in Parliament, where he advocated for organizing more militia akin to the Queen’s Rangers. In 1792 he became the lieutenant governor of the mostly Loyalist Upper Canada, where he passed the Act Against Slavery, leading to a full abolition of slavery in that region by 1810. In 1806 he was named commander-in-chief of India, but fell ill on his journey there. He returned to Devonshire England, where he died at the age of 54.

  Benjamin Tallmadge was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1783. Shortly after, he married Mary Floyd, the daughter of the Declaration of Independence signer William Floyd, and fathered seven children. He became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Connecticut in the Federalist Party for eight terms. Although he wrote a book about his experiences during the Revolutionary War, he was notoriously vague regarding his intelligence sources. He died in 1835 at age 81.

  Robert Townsend, like his sister Sally, also never married. Due to the reticence of most of the ring after the war, Robert Townsend’s role was lost to history until historian Morton Pennypacker unco
vered it in the 1930s. Ironically, it was Townsend’s handwriting that gave him away as Culper Junior—in life, one of his biggest fears was that his secret identity would have been discovered due to his unique penmanship. At his death, Townsend left a considerable amount of money to a man named “Robert Townsend Junior,” It is unclear exactly who fathered him: Robert’s older brother Solomon, in a journal in the possession of the Raynham Hall Museum, speculated the boy actually belonged to William Townsend.

  A note on 355 by the author

  Abraham Woodhull’s cryptic mention of a 355, translated from the Culper Code into “lady,” has puzzled historians for centuries. I first heard of her when I researched “forgotten women of history,” and was immediately hooked. There are a myriad of theories for the identity and personality of 355. In his book A Peculiar Service, published in 1956, Corey Ford wrote that he “liked to picture 355 as the opposite of the reserved and sober young Quaker (Robert Townsend): small, pert, vivacious, clever enough to outwit the enemy, but feminine enough to give Townsend a brief interlude of happiness that he would never know again.” According to Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger, authors of George Washington's Secret Six, 355 was the sixth member of the Culper Ring. All of this misinformation seems to stem from amateur historian Morton Pennypacker and his 1948 volume of the Culper Spy Ring legend. In it he cites 355 as being Robert Townsend’s paramour, who was imprisoned aboard the Jersey and later died. However, Pennypacker provided no proof for this wild tale—there is no record that women were never even held aboard the prison ships let alone anyone who would fit 355’s description.