Washington's Spies

by Alexander Rose

  Clark so stringently guarded his sources that their names are today undiscoverable. Several were Quakers, that is certain. One of them, at no little risk to himself, participated in one of Clark’s mischievous efforts at planting fake intelligence on the enemy. In early November, purporting to be a pro-British Quaker, Clark penned a “few lines to Sir William, informing him that the rebels had plundered me, and that I was determined to risque my all in procuring him intelligence,” signing it with the name of a Quaker “who I knew assisted” (i.e., collaborated with) Howe. His “friend,” described as “an exceedingly intelligent fellow,” brought it to Howe, who “smiled when he saw the pains taken with it,” and told the agent that if he would “return and inform me of your movements and the state of your army,” he would be generously rewarded. Before he left to report back to Clark, the agent took the opportunity to walk around Philadelphia, busily memorizing where the army’s ammunition dumps were and eavesdropping on soldiers discussing an imminent attack by Howe.90

  Washington was most pleased with Clark’s initiative, telling him that he thought “you have fallen upon an exceeding good method of gaining intelligence and that too much secrecy cannot be used, both on account of the safety of your friend and the execution and continuance of your design, which may be of service to us.” The general, in excellent spirits at the thought of deceiving Howe, composed a completely invented summary of the Continental army’s strength—adding, as a nice touch, a memorandum detailing his intended movements—and sent it to Clark for subsequent delivery to Howe’s headquarters.91 Clark would feed disinformation to Howe via this agent several more times over the coming months.92

  Clark’s favorite cover story for his agents was that they were low-level smugglers sneaking food and basic supplies in and out of the city. As British stockpiles were running low, they were generally allowed to pass checkpoints unhindered (perhaps after bribing the guards), but to make life easier, Clark somehow acquired a sheaf of blank passes allowing the bearer the right to travel freely within British lines. Generously, he even sent one to Washington, though he kept several for his own spies.93 These passes, which required the signature of a senior officer, must have been stolen from some unsuspecting colonel’s desk by one of Clark’s operatives. Indeed, the most irritating aspect of Clark’s job was suspicious American patrols stopping his agents as they went about their secret business. On December 3, he complained to Washington about Colonel Warner, whose Pennsylvania militia “took up one of my friends going into Philadelphia, which has prevented my getting some very material intelligence, as I had formed a channel through which everything, in that way, would have come with secrecy.”94 He recovered quickly from the loss, however, and within a week he had managed to send “several spies into the city” to discover the enemy’s plans to raid the surrounding countryside for fodder and supplies.95

  Still, despite his ingenuity, some of Clark’s people were caught by the British, and may have been hanged, but none revealed the whereabouts and name of their mysterious manager.96 One had a very close call when, as he approached an enemy checkpoint, a farmer grabbed him by the coat and loudly called out that he had caught a “damn’d Rebel.” As the guards came to investigate, the spy spurred his mare and left his accuser “lying in the road.” By happenstance, American soldiers soon after took the farmer prisoner, much to Clark’s satisfaction. “His name is Edward Hughes, is a papist, and lives in Springfield,” Clark remarked. “I hope an example will be made to deter others.”97

  Clark, in any case, was always looking out for potential recruits, and easily replaced his lost operatives. Just two days after one of his men was taken, Clark had invested “a young fellow of character” (recommended “by a gentleman of my acquaintance in whom I can entirely confide”—a euphemism for agent) as his newest spy and had dispatched him into Philadelphia with orders “to mingle with the British officers,” a task he boasted would be “easily effected.”98

  By late December, as the two armies settled into their winter quarters—Howe, rather comfortably, in Philadelphia; Washington not so comfortably at Valley Forge—Clark knew that his stint as spymaster was ending. His shoulder wound had not healed, and he was exhausted from the strain of three months’ unceasing work and danger. He, unshaven and long unbathed, visited Washington in person to beg his permission to visit his wife, whom he hadn’t seen in more than a year.99 The commander-in-chief unbegrudgingly released his faithful retainer from his burdens, and introduced him to Henry Laurens, the president of the Congress, as being an “active, sensible and enterprising” soldier who “has rendered me very great assistance since the army has been in Pennsylvania by procuring me constant and certain intelligence of the motions and intentions of the enemy.”100

  Washington had hinted that Clark might not continue “in the military line” owing to his health, and Laurens offered him a desk job as auditor of the army’s expenses, which the former spy gladly accepted. Clark also informed General Greene that he was obliged to resign as his aide-de-camp, and thus retired from not only the army but the secret world, too, and willingly entered the realm of respectable obscurity craved by so many spies, then and now.101

  As dusk settled on Major Clark’s espionage career, that of Major Tallmadge was about to dawn. Tallmadge’s regiment accompanied Washington throughout the Philadelphia campaign, and were assigned to General Sullivan’s division at the Battle of Germantown, where they led the advance against the British, only to later withdraw amid the confusion caused by the late arrival of General Greene and a fog sweeping in. As the American army wintered at Valley Forge in late 1777, Tallmadge had a few adventures as he ranged far and wide with his troopers. “I had to scour the country from the Schuylkill to the Delaware River, about five or six miles, for the double purpose of watching the movements of the enemy and preventing the disaffected from carrying supplies or provisions to Philadelphia. My duties were very arduous … by reason of the British light horse, which continually patrolled this intermediate ground. Indeed it was unsafe to permit the dragoons to unsaddle their horses for an hour, and very rarely did I tarry in the same place through the night.”102

  Once, at 1 a.m. on December 14 near Germantown, when out with a patrol, Tallmadge heard enemy cavalry nearby, but it was too late to retreat, and they were jumped. “We exchanged a few shots, but finding it impossible with 10 or 12 men to oppose 90 [or] 100,” they succeeded in outpacing them and circled back to the rest of his dragoons’ quarters, only to find they had already heard the news and skedaddled—all except for three unfortunates who had been captured as they fled. As Tallmadge watched from afar, “after taking from [them] their arms, etc., the officers directed that they should be killed. Notwithstanding the entreaties and prayers of the prisoners for mercy, the soldiers fell upon them with their swords, and after hacking, cutting, and stabbing them till they supposed they were dead, they then left them there (one excepted whom they shot) setting fire to the barn to consume any who might be in it. They also coolly murdered an old man of the house, first cutting and most inhumanly mangling him with their swords and then shooting him.”103 Within a week or two, however, Tallmadge’s men captured thirteen troopers, “the Devils that murdered those lads of my troop, wish to God I could take some of them to show that we dare and will retaliate such unprecedented barbarities.”104

  In January 1778, the dragoons were ordered to winter at Trenton, New Jersey. Trouble began almost immediately afterward. The five hundred sailors already billetted on the town made finding suitable accommodation difficult, and that was before the inevitable navy-army brawls in the taverns and streets. Colonel Sheldon and Major Blagden, the two chief officers, loathed each other so intensely, Tallmadge worried they might fight a duel, and Count Casimir Pulaski, an exiled Polish nobleman Washington had recently put in charge of the cavalry, resigned when subordinates refused to take orders from a haughty foreigner. A move to new quarters in Chatham, New Jersey, put an end to the brawling, but there remained a shortage of
sabers, pay, boots, horses, and uniforms, and morale plummeted even as the tedium and stress of confinement to barracks rose. While the regiment had had ten troopers killed during the Philadelphia campaign, that winter fully fifty-one deserted or were discharged. To raise the men’s and officers’ spirits, the regiment’s commanders relaxed discipline and allowed more furlough. In February, Tallmadge traveled back to Wethersfield for more than a month to see his old friends and on his return was put in temporary charge of the fifth and sixth troops, when their captains in turn went home on leave.105

  Since almost the day he had signed up, Tallmadge had been one of Washington’s most promising golden boys, but in April 1778 his career, which had hitherto streaked across the firmament like a meteor, suffered an abrupt deceleration. During Tallmadge’s vacation in Connecticut, the dragoon officer Colonel Stephen Moylan—an Irishman recently unhorsed in a most unfraternal joust by one of Pulaski’s aides—had reported to Washington on the state of the cavalry. He singled out the Second Regiment as the most deficient. Of the regiment’s fifty-four horses, ten were scarcely fit for duty. They had been starved “and the blame thrown from the officers on Mr. Caldwell, who acted as a Commissary of Forage.” But “the true reason of their being in such condition,” according to Moylan, “was that few or none of the officers had been with the regiment.”106

  On April 14, Tallmadge was sent a harshly chiding letter from a commander-in-chief disheartened by his favorite son’s dereliction of duty. “I scarce know which is the greatest, my astonishment or vexation, at hearing of the present low condition of your horse.” He recalled that Tallmadge had been “exempted from the fatigues of a winter campaign, & permitted to retire to the best quarters the country afforded” but “for what purpose did I do this? Why to furnish the officers & men it seems with opportunities of galloping about the country and by neglect of the horses reducing them to a worse condition than those which have been kept upon constant & severe duty the whole Winter.” He concluded on a particularly bitter note: “How can you reconcile this conduct to your feelings as an officer, and answer it to your Country I know not.”107

  Tallmadge, horrified at receiving a personal chastisement that impugned his honor, tried to defend himself, but even he must have realized how thin his excuses sounded. He claimed that a third of the officers had been off supervising other duties, that the regiment had received few supplies, and that Caldwell—as well as the saddlers, armorers, and quartermasters—were “indolent and inattentive to duty.” He finished by offering to resign his commission.108 On May 13, Tallmadge tore open the reply from Washington, only to find that the general was neither angry nor mollified, just cold. He had written a noncommittal answer but one which held firm that the officers were “reproachable.”109 And he left it at that. The two, once in fairly regular communication, would not correspond again until the summer. Tallmadge had been frozen out.

  In late May, the regiment was ordered to ride to General Horatio Gates at Peekskill on the Hudson River. On June 3, the Second left Chatham to take up their position at an advanced post at Dobbs Ferry, about nine miles north of Manhattan.110 Two weeks later, Henry Clinton—since May 20 the commander-in-chief of the British army in America following General Howe’s resignation—embarked on the long retreat from Philadelphia to New York. The capital had been impossible to supply and was leaving the army exposed to attack. Clinton wanted to regroup in New York, where at least he could be sure of reinforcements and good forage. At least three thousand Philadelphian Loyalists traveled with him to their new home. Washington and his army, reinvigorated by strict drills and musketry practice imposed by General “Baron” von Steuben, shadowed and harassed Clinton from the day he left, finally striking on June 28 at Monmouth Court House. Though the battle was a draw, Clinton had been unpleasantly surprised by the newfound skills of the Continental army, and he quickened his pace to New York. Washington set up camp in a large semicircle, stretching from the New Jersey Highlands across the Hudson to Dobbs Ferry and then on to the Connecticut coast.

  Clinton was in New York; Washington surrounded it. He needed another Major Clark to enter the den.

  New York was, intelligence-wise, dark and silent. Not just maddeningly senseless to the enemy’s strategy and intentions, Washington now lacked such vital, timely information as troop strength, morale, army gossip, supply levels, naval reinforcements, and even the names of senior commanders. And then along came the hulking shape and commanding countenance of Lieutenant Caleb Brewster, whose fearsome looks belied a quick wit and ribald sense of humor.1

  On August 7, Washington received from him an unexpected letter, written from the port of Norwalk on the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound. That original document has been lost, but we do have Washington’s reply of the next day, from which we can gather that the lieutenant offered to report on the enemy. Having been burnt before by overzealous amateurs, Washington was curtly specific about what he expected and wanted from this new and untried source.

  First, “do not spare any reasonable expense to come at early and true information; always recollecting, and bearing in mind, that vague and uncertain accounts of things … is more disturbing and dangerous than receiving none at all.” Bearing that admonition in mind, Brewster was instructed to keep an eye out for naval transports, “whether they are preparing for the reception of troops and know what number of men are upon Long Island. Whether they are moving or stationary. What is become of their draft horses. Whether they appear to be collecting them for a move. How they are supplied with provisions. What arrivals. Whether with men, or provisions. And whether any troops have been embarked or elsewhere within these few days.”2

  Brewster’s approach had come just at the right moment. Washington was in the midst of coordinating the Franco-American attack—a benefit stemming from the new Treaty of Alliance between the two countries—on British-held Newport, Rhode Island. The French had gleefully learned of Americans embarrassing their ancient foes at Saratoga the year before and were now willing to deploy French troops in the hopes of doing it again. To this end, a fleet of twelve ships of the line and five frigates, together carrying 11,384 sailors and soldiers, and commanded by Admiral Charles-Hector, Comte d’Estaing—a man blessed with so many quarterings of nobility he could realistically claim descent from the last king of the Visigoths—sailed from the Mediterranean port of Toulon in mid-April and had arrived on July 8 at Delaware Bay after an exceedingly languid and comfortable voyage. (Had d’Estaing traveled just a little faster, mused Washington, he would have caught Clinton ferrying his soldiers from Philadelphia to New York across the Delaware. If that had happened, the British commander would have shared Burgoyne’s fate; the loss of two armies within less than a year would have caused a collapse of confidence in London and perhaps have led to a military withdrawal to Canada.)3 Having missed the British, d’Estaing headed for New York, there to seek combat with the inferior forces of Admiral Howe. Beat the British at sea, and their army would starve.

  Howe may have been weak on paper—he had just six 64-gunners, three 50s, and six frigates, while d’Estaing brought the Languedoc, a 90-gun behemoth, one 80, six 74s, and a 50—but New York harbor was a formidable redoubt and Howe’s expertise at tactical deployments unsurpassed. D’Estaing, who possessed a lion’s bravery but a cat’s caution, weighed discretion against valor and decided in the former’s favor. A few hours after his arrival on July 22, as Howe’s crews beat to quarters and braced for the first thunderous broadside, d’Estaing ordered his captains to sail south out to sea. He had already concerted with Washington to meet the American general John Sullivan several miles north of Newport, there to land some four thousand French soldiers and marine riflemen, for their joint attack on the port. He arrived on July 29 and began disembarking the troops on Conanicut Island, to the south just opposite Newport, where the British garrison of six thousand was commanded by General Robert Pigot. Sullivan’s ten thousand men were to cross over from the mainland from the north; Pigot wou
ld be crushed between d’Estaing and Sullivan’s advances.

  The attack was scheduled to begin on August 10, but things began going badly the day before. Sullivan jumped the gun and began ferrying troops over to the island, and then Admiral Howe unexpectedly appeared, having mustered no fewer than thirteen ships of the line. D’Estaing immediately recalled his troops, thereby leaving Sullivan in the lurch, and put to sea. As the French fleet approached, Howe led his pursuer into the Atlantic. By the late afternoon of August 11, d’Estaing and Howe were formed into lines of battle, and as the French prepared to attack the British rear—now fortified by Howe’s heaviest warship, the Cornwall of seventy-four guns—the admiral saw d’Estaing’s fleet suddenly call off the chase as a freshening wind pushed rain-heavy clouds toward them both.

  Over the next two days, the two fleets were ravaged by a violent thunderstorm, which scattered their formations. Hardly a vessel remained unharmed, especially after the storm had passed and individual ships began preying on damaged ones, not always successfully. The Languedoc may have lost her bowsprit and all her lower masts, and a broken tiller rendered her rudder unserviceable, but even so, d’Estaing’s flagship remained a dangerous beast, as the Renown discovered to her cost when she attacked it. The fifty-gun Isis was pounced upon by the seventy-four-gun César, but she put up a spirited fight and the French captain lost his arm when a cannonball tore away the wheel. The Apollo—which had briefly served as Howe’s flagship—was fortunate in only having her foremast fall overboard.