Washington's Spies

by Alexander Rose

  Even so, Arnold had enjoyed a lucky break. In Tallmadge’s reply of September 21, after apologizing for the delay he said that he had received “private accounts from New York” noting the movements of Admiral Rodney with “10 sail of the line” and other warships leaving port to intercept the American fleet returning from the West Indies. Also, that several regiments, which he named, are “to embark in a few days,” perhaps for the South or an attack on the French at Rhode Island. Tallmadge, of course, was extracting intelligence gleaned from a Townsend-Woodhull letter and passing it on, suitably disguised, to a superior officer whom he had no reason to suspect of treason. But what happened is that Arnold, just before his flight to the other side, was now certain that Tallmadge was running a man inside New York itself. When they read this letter soon afterward, Arnold’s British masters started connecting the dots: They already knew that Tallmadge was based in southern Connecticut, they knew that whaleboatmen often smuggled information across the Sound, they knew that fifteen months before that Colonel Simcoe, a close friend of André’s, had been notified there was a spy operating in coastal Setauket, and now they knew that a New York agent was somehow passing intelligence to Tallmadge, almost certainly using a courier. It was pretty good odds that all these individual facts were not random, but linked. To blow the network, they needed to find either Tallmadge, who was unlikely to talk, or, more promisingly, the Setauket connection, the courier, the whaleboatman, or the New Yorker. Any one would do.

  In the meantime, Jameson called his officers (Tallmadge was still out) together to discuss the dilemma of what to do with this Anderson.30 Jameson was particularly worried that no matter how suspicious the situation seemed, he could not avoid informing his superior officer Arnold about it for fear of being charged with insubordination. Instead, he decided to cover his bases by sending André, with his hands tied, to Arnold’s headquarters near West Point with a note stating that papers of “a very dangerous tendency” were being conveyed to Washington, while giving a junior officer, Lieutenant Solomon Allen, the actual papers to bring to the commander-in-chief.31

  In the late evening of September 23, Tallmadge arrived at Jameson’s headquarters, where he heard the story of the capture. He was “surprised,” according to his Memoir, to find Jameson had sent Arnold the letter and the prisoner, and the correspondence to Washington. “I did not fail to state the glaring inconsistency of this conduct to Lieut.-Col. Jameson, in a private and friendly manner. He appeared greatly agitated when I suggested to him a measure which I wished to adopt, offering to take the whole responsibility upon myself, and which he deemed too perilous to permit.” This oblique reference to a “measure” amounted to a proposal to take a unit of dragoons and arrest Arnold, a suggestion Jameson, worried what should happen if Tallmadge’s hunch proved wrong, quickly torpedoed. However, says Tallmadge, after much badgering “I finally obtained his reluctant consent to have the prisoner brought back to our headquarters,” though Jameson, “strange as it may seem,” insisted on “letting his letter go on to Gen. Arnold.”32

  On his return, André was handed over to Lieutenant Joshua King at South Salem for safekeeping. As André had at least three days’ growth of beard, he asked for a man to shave him; King, quite perceptively, noticed that the prisoner had much powder in his hair, leading him to believe “I had no ordinary person in charge.”33 Indeed, “as soon as I saw Anderson” the next morning, recalled Tallmadge, “and especially after I saw him walk (as he did almost constantly) across the floor, I became impressed with the belief that he had been bred to arms.” He asked Jameson to watch him, too, “to notice his gait, especially when he turned on his heel to retrace his course across the room.”34 After Tallmadge and Jameson had left, his jailer told André about the papers being sent to Washington. The jig was up. It was but a matter of time before exposure. At about 3 p.m. André requested that he be allowed to send a letter to Washington, a wish readily granted by Tallmadge.35 When Tallmadge read André’s letter—“he handed it to me as soon as he had written it”—and saw his confession that Anderson in fact was “Major John André, Adjutant-General to the British Army,” his “agitation was extreme, and my emotions wholly indescribable.” Tallmadge wanted to go arrest Arnold immediately, come what may, but there was little point: Jameson’s letter would have reached Arnold “before I could possibly get to West Point.”36

  In the meantime, Jameson’s messenger had arrived at Arnold’s headquarters, where he found the general preparing to receive Washington, who was scheduled to breakfast with him before touring the defenses of West Point. Arnold’s reaction, a picture of forced calm as his terrified eyes focused on Jameson’s handwriting, can only be imagined. He immediately rushed upstairs as fast as his wounded leg would take him to converse with his wife, Peggy, before calling for his horse. Downstairs again, he told his subordinates that sudden business had arisen at West Point and that he would be back soon. He wasn’t. Instead, Arnold galloped to the nearest British outpost and made his escape. While Washington was being given the tour by John Lamb, Arnold’s deputy, Alexander Hamilton received the package from Jameson, as well as André’s confession. Shaken, Hamilton handed the documents to his commander, who was shocked but recovered quickly enough to order Arnold’s arrest and call out the garrison to man the defenses for a possible British attack.

  Tallmadge volunteered to escort André to Tappan, well away from the threat of any British rescue operations and where the main army was waiting. The two spymasters got along well during their ride together. Tallmadge lamented to a friend that he “never saw a man whose fate I foresaw, whom I so sincerely pitied. He is a young fellow of the greatest accomplishments.… He has unbosomed his heart to me, and indeed, let me know almost every motive of his actions so fully since he came out on his late mission that he has endeared himself to me exceedingly. Unfortunate man!”37

  In 1834, when he was eighty, Tallmadge wrote a letter to Jared Sparks, the eminent historian, narrating what transpired during André’s last ride:

  Major Andre was very inquisitive to know my opinion as to the result of his capture.… I endeavored to evade the question, unwilling to give him a true answer. When I could no longer evade this importunity, I said to him that I had a much loved class mate in Yale College by the name of Nathan Hale, who entered the Army with me in the year 1776. After the British troops had entered N. York, Genl. Washington wanted information respecting the strength, position & probable movements of the enemy.

  Then Tallmadge said:

  Do you remember the sequel of this story; “Yes,” said Andre; “he was hanged as a spy; but you surely do not consider his case & mine alike.” I replied, “precisely similar, and similar will be your fate!” He endeavored to answer my remarks, but it was manifest he was more troubled than I had ever seen him before.38

  Tallmadge’s aged memory was playing him tricks. André, being a prisoner in Pennsylvania when Hale was hanged, was hardly likely to have “remembered” the details of an obscure spy in New York in General Howe’s time. Rather more probable is that Tallmadge recounted the story, at which point André remarked that “surely [you] do not consider his case & mine alike.” Unfortunately, Tallmadge did, and told him so.39

  Like Nathan Hale, André had been caught red-handed in the act of espionage, and could not escape his fate. Hale, however, was not the adjutant general of the British army, and there were political implications. André could not simply be executed and be done with. Washington, for instance, was willing to entertain the notion of exchanging André for Arnold, a much bigger fish.40 Sir Henry Clinton, though he adored André and made a touching intercession for his life, could never surrender such a high-ranking defector, not if he wanted any more to come over. Whereas Clinton—who privately seethed that Washington wanted to commit “premeditated murder [and] must answer for the dreadful consequences”—remained outwardly “calm, and deliberate in my resentment” over André’s likely death, and addressed his pleas to his counterpart in stiff, but
civil, language, Arnold wrote hotly to Washington, who was, at best, disinclined to listen to a disgraced traitor, to threaten a “torrent of blood” against American prisoners in retaliation if he killed André.41 (Clinton later assured Washington that they “need be under no fears for their safety,” despite Arnold’s threats.)42

  Even had Washington been willing to spare the spy’s life, he had his army to think about. As it was, thanks to Arnold the men were becoming reluctant to trust their officers, and the officers were losing faith in their commanders. Public opinion also had to be appeased. Somebody had to be punished, and punishment had to be seen to be done to restore order. With Arnold safe behind enemy lines, André was the only possible victim apart from Joshua Smith, the intermediary, who had been arrested soon after Arnold’s flight.

  Smith, however, was a member of a prominent Whig family in New York, and requested an audience with Washington to prove he was innocent of knowingly abetting Arnold’s defection. As Smith stood shackled in irons, Washington walked over to the terrified man, looked him sternly in the eye, and said that if he were guilty, he would hang him from the same tree he was about to use for André. Smith’s defense was that Arnold had told him to expect an officer carrying a message from Clinton; that message Arnold said he would pass to Washington. Arnold made Smith promise to keep silent, telling him that the message might bring the war to an end. Smith claimed at his trial that his actions were motivated by the highest thoughts of patriotism—and he had presumed the same of Arnold. There were quite a few inconsistencies in Smith’s story, but, though not numerous or gaping enough to hang him, they were sufficient to convict him. The court sentenced him to prison, and he spent much of the next two years being shuffled from guardhouse to guardhouse until he escaped on May 22, 1782, and made his way to the New York house of his brother—who happened to be Clinton’s neighbor. It helped Smith nought. The British and their allies accused him of abandoning André on the road fifteen miles before White Plains and safety; had Smith accompanied André the whole way, as they believed he had promised Arnold, the solitary spy would never have been stopped, West Point would have fallen, and Washington would be a prisoner. (There is a postscript to this unfortunate tale. When the British evacuated New York in late 1783, Smith left for London, where some time later he was unexpectedly visited by Arnold. “The reception he received from me shortened the interview,” is all Smith would say about the matter.)43

  Unlike Smith, André had no chance of creating doubt in the minds of his judges. At his trial a Board of General Officers quickly found him guilty of espionage and recommended that he “suffer death.”44

  The method of André’s death was a slightly tricky subject. André, having resigned himself to his doom, requested an honorable soldier’s execution: by firing squad. Washington was initially inclined to grant this favor but, pressured to make an example of André, soon changed his mind and ordered the punishment traditionally meted out to common spies: hanging.45 André, however, was deliberately left ignorant of the alteration.

  When he was told of the verdict, wrote Tallmadge, “he showed no signs of perturbed emotion,” but when he saw a gallows rather than a firing squad awaiting him, he was “startled, and enquired with some emotion whether he was not to be shot.” Told no by Tallmadge, he said, “How hard is my fate!” adding, “It will soon be over.”46

  On October 2, at 12 p.m., said Tallmadge, “he met death with a smile, cheerfully marching to the place of execution, & bidding his friends, those who had been with him, farewell. He called me to him a few minutes before he swung off, and expressed his gratitude to me for civilities in such a way, and so cheerfully bid me adieu, that I was obliged to leave the parade in a flood of tears. I cannot say enough of his fortitude—unfortunate youth; I wish Arnold had been in his place.”47 André’s last words? “Only this, gentlemen, that you all bear me witness that I meet my fate like a brave man.”48

  It had to be done. Washington, writing to Rochambeau on October 10, declared that “the circumstances [André] was taken in justified it and policy required a sacrifice; but as he was more unfortunate than criminal in the affair, and as there was much in his character to interest, while we yielded to the necessity of rigor, we could not but lament it.”49 Tallmadge concurred: “Enough of poor André, who tho’ he dies lamented, falls justly.”50

  Benedict Arnold may not have brought an army with him, as he had so rashly promised Sir Henry Clinton, but he did carry in his head a list of American spies operating within British lines, as well as the knowledge that Tallmadge was running at least one agent in New York itself. Since the summer of 1780, Arnold had been assiduously collecting their names from his unsuspecting colleagues, who often organized local spies to pass on information to them about nearby enemy movements. On at least one occasion, he was unsuccessful, such as the time Arnold—who had heard that Washington, thanks to his spies (the Culpers, as it turned out), had warned Rochambeau of British preparations to pounce at Rhode Island—“innocently” asked the Marquis de Lafayette about these informants. Arnold’s ostensible reason was that now that he was in charge of West Point, he, too, needed a few good men to serve as his eyes and ears. Lafayette refused to give their names, saying he had pledged secrecy, but also because Tallmadge had been careful not to divulge them even to him—precisely to prevent such accidental leakages.1

  Arnold enjoyed a little more luck with his predecessor as West Point commander, General Robert Howe, to whom he wrote on August 5 explaining that “as the safety of this post and garrison … depends on having good intelligence of the movements and designs of the enemy … I must request (with their permission) to be informed who they are, as I wish to employ them for the same purpose. I will engage upon honour to make no discovery of them to any person breathing.”2

  Howe, a North Carolinian, kindly replied that he had two agents in South Carolina, but they would not permit him to reveal their names. Having said that, “I have a tolerable agent who acts by way of Long Island, and has been very faithful, intelligent and useful to me.… He says that he will give you information of every circumstance which relates to your post or to any part under your command, that he will task himself to give every information of the enemy’s intentions, and will faithfully report to you every movement which relates to you; he will correspond with you under the name of John Williams, and has made me pledge my honor that you will not endeavour by any means to learn his real name and if by accident you find it out that you never disclose it.”3

  “John Williams” was Captain Elijah Hunter, who had worked with Howe since December 1776, when he officially “retired” from the army. These days he posed as a Tory and served in the Second New York Militia while working as an assistant commissary of forage who occasionally came into the city to pick up information. He seems to have been acquainted with Clinton and Governor Tryon, but he reported rarely and did not supply the quality and quantity of material that the Culpers did. The only thing that saved his life after Arnold’s defection was his insistence on his Williams alias, but even he went underground for a long while.4

  Arnold’s arrival in New York threw the Culper Ring into near panic when he appointed himself spyhunter-general and, with Clinton’s authorization, rounded up a score of New York and Long Island residents who he strongly suspected had carried on “a treasonable correspondence with the rebels for many years [and] had acted as spies within the British lines.” All of them had previously sworn oaths of loyalty to the king.5 To General Heath, Tallmadge observed that “he has flung into the provost many of our friends whom he will have punished if possible. I fear it will injure the chains of our intelligence, at least for a little time [un]til the present tumult is over. I am happy that he does not know even a single link in my chain.”6

  Even so, Tallmadge was worried that his September 21 letter to Arnold about his receiving “private accounts from New York” had given away too much. “When he turned traitor and went off,” he remembered, discreet as always, “I fe
lt for a time extremely anxious for some trusty friends in New York.” Tallmadge, however, consoled himself with the thought that “as I never gave their names to him, he was not able to discover them, although I believe he tried hard to find them out.”7

  His fears were not finally put to rest until early October when he heard from Woodhull saying he was still alive and well, and who mentioned that Townsend, too, remained free. “The present commotion that has arisen on account of the infamous Arnold together with little or no intelligence at this time was the reason he did not write,” his cell leader reported. Woodhull had also arranged to meet Townsend in the coming weeks to discuss their future plans given the heightened state of alert in the city.8

  The meeting did not go well. Townsend was antsy. Woodhull, too. Thanks to Arnold, reported Tallmadge to Washington, his agents were “at present too apprehensive of danger to give their immediate usual intelligence. I hope as the tumult subsides matters will go on in their old channels.” Though Woodhull agreed to keep on working if anything pertinent arose, Townsend—despite Tallmadge’s assurance that “his name or character are not even known by any officer but myself in the army”—decided to lie low until the heat dissipated.9 “Happy to think that Arnold does not know my name,” Townsend did not, however, go so far as to resign from the Ring, but he did call a halt for the time being to Tallmadge’s plan to shorten the route by using Townsend’s relatives in Cow Neck. Townsend opted, for safety’s sake, to go solely through Woodhull, and thence Brewster to Tallmadge.10

  During their meeting, Townsend and Woodhull had discussed André. Being in the same business themselves, they were less ready to damn him than their neighbors and fellow Patriots, but they were equally unwilling to view André, as Loyalists did, as an innocent martyr murdered by Washington. “I am sorry for the death of Major André but better so than to lose the post,” observed Woodhull to Tallmadge. “He was seeking your ruin.”11 Townsend, it turns out, had been acquainted with André, a frequent visitor to his father’s Oyster Bay house, Raynham Hall, whenever his pal Colonel Simcoe billeted himself there. “I never felt more sensibly for the death of a person whom I knew only by sight, and had heard converse, than I did for Major André,” Townsend told Tallmadge. “He was a most amiable character. General Clinton was inconsolable for some days; and the army in general and inhabitants were much exasperated, and think that General Washington must have been destitute of feeling, or he would have saved him. I believe that General Washington felt sincerely for him, and would have saved him if it could have been done with propriety.”12