George Washington, Revolutionary War Spymaster

Nathan Hale

After Nathan Hale was executed by the British in Revolutionary War times for his amateur spying, George Washington was determined to have an organized intelligence system.

George Washington, 1782 Painting

I have been reading all about it in Nathan Miller’s Spying for America.

Nathan Miller, author of numerous books on defense, explains how throughout the Revolutionary War, Washington organized “spies, double agents, counterintelligence, covert operations, disinformation, propaganda, and codes and ciphers….he personally recruited agents, issued them instructions, and analyzed and acted upon their reports.”

What I am finding most fascinating is seeing how ordinary citizens contributed to our country’s defense. Most of Washington’s spies were ordinary Americans who volunteered their services.

Invisible ink was used to write messages so that incriminating documents would not be found on those carrying the papers. Sometimes, informants ran out of invisible ink, so various codes and ciphers were used.

Revolutionary War Letter Using Invisible Ink, with the message written between the lines of normal text, image from: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/wip/examples/spies/index.htm

The Quaker Darragh family lived upstairs in a home that had been occupied by British officers. Lydia Darraugh used to write secret messages in shorthand, and sew them into the large, cloth-covered buttons

on a jacket, which her teenage son would then wear to go visit his brother Charles, a lieutenant in the American army. Charles knew shorthand, transcribed his father’s notes, and got the information to General Washington.

I loved reading one story about how several points were arranged for the drop-off of messages. One a message was dropped off somewhere, a friend of the messenger, AbrahamA Woodhull, would visit a particular lady, who then hung out her wash. “If it included a black petticoat and several handkerchiefs,

Caleb Brewster, who was usually lying offshore in one of his whaleboats, came in and picked up Woodhull’s message. The number of handkerchiefs indicated in which inlet they were to meet.”

Eileen

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