Washington's Spies

by Alexander Rose

  Even if it seemed that the excitement was ending, Woodhull was getting jumpy, as he always did when soldiers were nearby. While naval activity was decreasing, the British were making threatening troop movements all over Long Island. On November 5, Captain Nathan Woodhull told him that the “Prince of Wales American Regt.” was at Jamaica on their way to Huntington, and there was “much talk about their coming to this place soon, and we are greatly alarmed about it. Should they come here I [Abraham Woodhull] shall most certainly retreat to your side as I think it will be impossible for me to be safe.”49 A week later, Woodhull was beside himself with worry. On November 10, he had arranged to meet Townsend “at a house he appointed twelve miles west from here, and set out with all my letters to meet him, and just before I arrived at the appointed place I suddenly met a foraging party of 40 horse and 200 foot and about 100 wagons. Was much surprised but after answering a few questions passed them unmolested.” However, “to my great mortification Culper Junior did not come that day. I waited all the next … I am much concerned.”

  The reason for Townsend’s absence was probably due to either sickness or a reluctance to venture out to a secret rendezvous when British troops were on maneuvers. Woodhull, however, nervous at the best of times, was close to the end of his tether. “I am tired of this business, it gives me a deal of trouble, especially when disappointment happens.” It required his every reserve of fortitude to stay in the game. As he confided to Tallmadge, he “could not consent to be any longer an assistant if I was not almost an enthusiast for our success. I [have suffered] a full year’s anxiety, which no one can scarcely have an idea of, but those that experience. Not long since, there was not the breadth of your finger betwixt me and death. But so long as I reside here my faithful endeavours shall never be wanting.”50

  Just as Woodhull was faltering, Townsend hit gold and revived the Ring’s spirits. If anything proved to Woodhull the necessity of his staying on, it was his colleague’s news that the British “think America will not be able to keep an Army together another campaign. Truth reasons that [the Americans’] currency will be entirely depreciated, and that there will not be provision in the country to supply an Army [for] another campaign. That of the currency I am afraid will prove true, as they [the British] are indefatigable in increasing the quantity of it. Several reams of paper made for the last emission struck by Congress have been procured from Philadelphia.”51

  What Townsend had stumbled upon, most likely in his conversation with various officers and officials in Rivington’s coffeehouse, was the British campaign to undermine the American war effort by destroying the Continental currency. New York was the nexus of this counterfeiting trade. Though coin clipping and forging were hanging offenses, and counted in Britain as high treason, the orders to churn out hundreds of thousands of fake dollars came from as august a figure as Lord Germain, as the Americans discovered in January 1780, when one of their privateers boarded a Royal Navy vessel carrying a letter from Sir Henry Clinton confirming that “no experiments suggested by your Lordship; no assistance that could be drawn from the power of gold, or the arts of counterfeiting, have been left unattempted.”52

  Indeed, as early as four years before, Governor Tryon had supervised a counterfeiting operation aboard the Dutchess of Gordon, his maritime headquarters floating off New York. Later captured by Patriots, one Israel Young, who was up to his neck in the business, saved it by testifying to the Provincial Congress that an acquaintance of his, a hatter and felon named Thomas Vernon, had been aboard the Dutchess and had told him that “they had on board a number of Rivington’s types and one of his printers” and that he had seen a chest full of fake—and professionally done—bills, though in Vernon’s expert opinion the paper used was “rather thicker” than the original. Vernon had recruited Henry Dawkins, a noted forger already in jail for counterfeiting, for Tryon, who contracted to pay the latter “a hundred pounds for his trouble.” Vernon had found, he told Young, “a plate to strike Pennsylvania money” in Dawkins’s chest while rifling through it for things to steal—no honor even among forgers, it seems. (Dawkins was also jailed, but after being released some years later, he was engaged to engrave the seal of the State of New York.)53

  In 1777, the British had shaken Patriots’ confidence in their genuine dollars by telling them they were really fakes. Royalist papers like Hugh Gaine’s New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury printed public “editorials” noting, by the by, that “there has lately been … a large distribution in the country of counterfeited Continental bills, so admirably executed, as not easily to be discerned from those issued by order of the Congress. This has contributed not a little to lower their value, and will be one effectual bar to their repayment or liquidation.”54 Gaine, of course, was fully aware—as were his British overseers—that this report would be digested and worried over in Patriot areas. A couple of months later, aiming to rile up the rebels against their own leaders, the Gazette cleverly spun the story that it was Congress perpetrating the fraud “in order … to increase the credit of the Continental currency.” Warming to its theme, the paper added that “many reams have been brought over by merchants and others, and distributed for that purpose.”55

  The British still needed willing conduits to circulate the fake notes. One way of finding volunteers was to advertise all the free money available. One classified ad in the newspapers blatantly declared: “Persons going into the other Colonies may be supplied with any number of counterfeit Congress-Notes, for the price of the paper per ream. They are so neatly and exactly executed that there is no risk in getting them off, it being almost impossible to discover that they are not genuine. This has been proved by bills to a very large amount, which have already been successfully circulated. Enquire for Q.E.D. at the Coffee-House from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. during the present month.”56 Such were the machinations of British intelligence that when Washington was sent a clipping of the ad, he stormed to Congress that it proved “that no artifices are left untried by the enemy to injure us.”57 By November 1777, Rivington’s paper could observe that Continental bills had plummeted to seven to the silver dollar and that in Congress-controlled areas “the necessaries of life have risen to such exorbitant prices as makes them almost unattainable to those not concerned in the rebel army.”58

  A year later, the situation grew catastrophic as counterfeits flooded the rebel states and covert Loyalists paid their taxes with them, even as Washington insisted on death penalties to deter distributors.59 John Blair and David Farnsworth, two New Hampshire Tories in the pay of British intelligence, were caught in Danbury, Connecticut, on October 7, 1778, carrying no less than $10,007 in American dollars printed in New York. Washington directed that it was “necessary to have them executed” and, quite profanely, ordered “a sensible clergyman to get as ample a confession from them as possible” for further intelligence on their masters.60

  On December 16, 1778, belatedly grasping the efficacy of British dirty tricks, Congress recalled the bills of credit it had authorized at Philadelphia in May 1777 and at Yorktown in April 1778. “Counterfeits of those emissions,” stated Congress, “have lately been issued by our enemies at New York, and are found to be spreading and increasing fast in various parts of these United States.”61 It did no good—despite a coup occasioned by the capture of the Glencairn, bound for New York, by the Deane, an American frigate. Before Glencairn was boarded, a sailor saw a crate being thrown overboard and fished it out. In it were discovered “materials for counterfeiting our currency, consisting of types, paper with silk and isinglass in it &c.” intended, its original keeper confessed, for British forgers working for the government.62

  By the summer of 1779, Continental bills became, literally, “not worth a Continental,” having depreciated to 30 to a silver dollar, and a soldier’s monthly pay being worth no more than two shillings in hard British currency. In New York itself, where a single guinea bought 200 dollars, you could use the stuff as wallpaper.63 Matters were not helped by Congress�
�s own free-and-easy recourse to the printing press to finance the war: In 1774, a man lucky enough to possess £100 could purchase 8,190 pounds of beef; seven years later, the same sum bought 25 pounds’ worth.64

  It was amid this drastic state of affairs that Townsend reported that the British had procured from Philadelphia “several reams of paper made for the last emission struck by Congress.”65 Now in possession of the actual blank paper, the enemy no longer would have to use a thicker substitute, and could accordingly print perfect copies of the Congressional notes. Upon receiving this missive, Washington composed a lengthy letter to Congress, warning them of the danger (while referring allusively to “a confidential correspondent in New York”).66 On March 18, 1780, partly as a consequence of Townsend’s intelligence, Congress was forced to retire and recall all its bills in circulation, effectively declaring bankruptcy to save itself. (Fourteen months later, a French subsidy and a Dutch loan helped rescue the country.)67

  Washington’s satisfaction with his “intelligencers,” as he liked to call them, was short-lived. It all began with Washington’s resurrected desire in December that the Culpers find a faster way of sending their reports. For the winter, he was to be based in Morristown, New Jersey, and was understandably worried that the letters’ route through Connecticut was too circuitous. “It would be a very desirable thing [if] a channel of communication [could] be opened a cross the North river, or by way of Staten Island,” he told Tallmadge. “If C—— can fall upon a line which he thinks he may safely trust I wish it to be adopted; but if this cannot be accomplished he will continue his communications in the old channel, and make them as constant as the season will admit.”68

  Still swollen with pride with Townsend’s counterfeiting scoop, Woodhull had shrugged off his previous doubts and was unusually chipper in his reply, partly because the troops he had so feared had turned out to be inexperienced militiamen. “I have the pleasure to inform you my fears are much abated since the troops have been with us,” he wrote to Washington, adding, “Their approach was like death to me. Did not know whether to stand or fall. Had they been the Queens Rangers or Legion should have been with you before now.” He had been especially happy to learn that his nemesis, Colonel Simcoe, who had beaten up his father and made threats, had been captured and was being held in New Jersey. Indeed, “were I now in the State of New Jersey without fear of Law or Gospel, would certainly 344 Gqm. Ucngqi [kill Col. Simcoe], for his usage to me.” Regarding a change in the route, Woodhull said he was intending to meet Townsend in New York on Christmas Day and would discuss it with him then.69 Unfortunately, Woodhull forgot to mention it.

  Washington wasn’t amused. In early February 1780, annoyed that Woodhull had dropped the ball, he instructed Tallmadge to “press him [Townsend] to open, if possible, a communication with me by a more direct rout than the present. His accts. are intelligent, clear, and satisfactory, consequently would be valuable but owing to the circuitous rout thro’ which they are transmitted I can derive no immediate or important advantages from them.” As “I rely upon his intelligence” and “am sensible of the delicacy of his situation, and the necessity of caution,” he wanted to “name one or two men to him who will receive and convey to me (through others) such intelligence as he may think important.” Woodhull, in other words, was becoming extraneous to Washington’s needs, and the commander was willing to cut him out and deal directly with Townsend. Washington went so far as to suggest “a much better way” for Townsend to communicate with him so that even “if the agents should be unfaithful, or negligent, no discovery would be made to his prejudice.” His advice? “Write a letter a little in the Tory style, with some mixture of family matters and between the lines and on the remaining part of the sheet communicate with the stain the intended intelligence.”70

  Owing to Washington’s impatient decision to drop Woodhull, who hadn’t sent him anything of interest in months, the Culper Ring came close to fissuring in the spring of 1780 as Townsend sought to explore this fabled passage through New Jersey. Townsend was too cautious to use any of the contacts Washington wanted to offer, and instead employed his teenaged cousin James Townsend (1763–1831) as the secret courier to go across the Hudson.71 As that part of New Jersey was heavily Loyalist, James’s cover story was that he was a Tory visiting his family in a rebel-controlled area and was seeking to recruit men for the British army. Unfortunately, James immersed himself a little too deeply in his false persona (and the bottle) and got carried away when he visited a house owned by the Deausenberrys, secret Patriots who astutely suspected him of being a spy but pretended to be Tories to catch him out. The mission was a disaster.

  What we know of what happened is contained in a March 23, 1780, deposition by John Deausenberry, who said that

  James Townsend came to his house … last evening and appeared to be something in liquor. The arrival, and appearance of said Townsend gave the family suspicion that he was an unusual person, and to know the truth the family retired, leaving only the two young women (daughters of the deponent’s uncle) who undertook to [illegible] Townsend, pretending they were Friends to Britain &c.… [Deausenberry] heard the young women examine Townsend, and heard Townsend tell them that he (Townsend) was within two miles of New York City the day before yesterday, whither he went to carry a quantity of stockings to his uncle, and brother, that he went down with an intention to join the [British] army. But his uncle and brother advised him to return immediately and collect as many others as possible, to go [to] the enemy, when they came up the river, which they expected would be the latter part of the present week, or the beginning of next.… That he (Townsend) has persuaded many a good fellow, and sent them to join the enemy himself, and that he had very frequently in the course of last summer been backwards and forwards to and from the enemy, had piloted several companies to [British positions], and that he had carried in, and brought out, many valuable articles, that he had been taken once by the Damn’d Rebels, and left him confined and chained down flat upon his back, in the Provost three weeks … and finally made his escape by breaking out—this and no more the Deponent heard, for his spirits rose, he flew into the room upon Townsend, and took him prisoner.72

  Dragged to the local Patriot headquarters by the jubilant Deausenberrys, Townsend was frisked, but was found to be carrying nothing more than two folded sheets of paper, on which were written a lengthy poem, “The Lady’s Dress”—in Robert Townsend’s handwriting, and perhaps composed by him. Townsend, of course, had followed Washington’s directions and written his invisible message between the lines. He had done so sloppily, and when Washington later tried brushing the chemical reagent over the text, he rendered it illegible. He gave up about two-thirds of the way through. Luckily, or perhaps not, given their dire quality, one or two stanzas remain. The last three lines are, “You may take the dear charmer for life, / But never undress her—for, out of her stays / You’ll find you have lost half your wife.”73

  Informed that a “British spy” by the name of Townsend had been arrested, Washington was livid, not at the Deausenberrys or at his own men, but at Culper Junior. It took the commander-in-chief’s personal intervention, and a great deal of trouble, to secure the teenager’s release. Townsend, for his part, was not only angry at the embarrassment he had brought upon himself, but scared: The debacle demonstrated just how simple it was to get caught, and his cousin had been fortunate indeed to fall into the hands of the Americans. James could quite easily have fluffed his lines among enemies, and Townsend, like anyone else, feared the sound of soldiers clumping up the stairs to arrest him after James was interrogated.

  As for Woodhull, Tallmadge had filled him in about the Deausenberry venture before he went to New York to visit Townsend in early April. It wasn’t a happy meeting. Townsend was petulant and curt, and Woodhull received “nothing but a short memorandum from C. Junr. on a scrap of paper which he said contained all worthy of notice.” Woodhull, annoyed both at Townsend going behind his back and his foolhardiness
in sending a green agent behind the lines, thought “him exceedingly to blame and guilty of neglect. And have given him my opinion in full upon the matter [and] hope that the like may never happen again.”74 Townsend responded by playing the diva, and told Tallmadge he would “continue no longer” in the business. On April 19, Woodhull again traveled to New York to dissuade Townsend from quitting, but “returned this day after making every effort possible with his utter denial.”75 At this point, Tallmadge stepped in and arranged a joint meeting for May 1 that he hoped would reconcile his warring spies, but it was canceled owing to Townsend’s continued intransigence. A few days later, Woodhull, who disliked dissension, embarked on one last trip to the city to see Townsend. While the Quaker “declines serving any longer” as a correspondent, Woodhull was glad to report that Townsend was still willing to “give verbal information as he can collect” but would relate it only to him in person. It’s clear that James’s capture had seriously unmanned Townsend, and that he was now too afraid to compile written reports, which could be tracked back to him if intercepted. Still, the fact that he would pass on intelligence by mouth would do for the moment, even if poor Woodhull was obliged to assume the risk of going to the city for it.76 Washington, however, was rapidly losing his patience with Tallmadge’s agents. His temper was not improved by Woodhull’s incessant requests for money, such as this one: “I have recd 20 guineas sometime ago, which you sent me and with them have been paying off the expenses already accrued, and find a balance still due me. As soon as convenient could wish you to forward me an additional sum.”77 On May 19, Washington fired off a brusque letter to Tallmadge informing him that as Townsend had quit and Woodhull had seemingly lost his enthusiam, “I think the intercourse may be dropped, more especially as from our present position the intelligence is so long getting to hand that it is of no use by the time it reaches me.” However, he kept his options open by asking Tallmadge to inform “the elder C. that we may have occasion for his services again in the course of the summer, and that I shall be glad to employ him if it should become necessary and he is willing.”78