George Washington Was Very Hands-On When it Came to Spy Work
George Washington’s instructions to Robert Townsend ended with: “There can be scarcely any need of recommending the greatest caution and secrecy in a business so critical and dangerous. The following seem to be the best general rules: To entrust none but the persons fixed upon to transmit the business. To deliver the dispatches to none upon our side but those who shall be pitched upon for the purpose of receiving them and to transmit them and any intelligence that may be obtained to no one but the Commander-in-Chief“. Washington could not have known just how well Townsend would perform. Nor could he have predicted just how well positioned Townsend was to come across some of the war’s most sensitive information. Townsend used invisible ink to write his reports on seemingly blank reams of paper that were delivered to Culper Ring spy Abraham Woodhull in Setauket, NY.
Woodhull delivered the intelligence to Caleb Brewster, who delivered it to their handler Benjamin Tallmadge, who in turn delivered it to Washington. The general read the reports after he developed the invisible ink with a chemical agent, and often responded to Townsend with invisible ink messages of his own. To help fulfill his tasks, Townsend got a gig as a columnist for a Loyalist newspaper, and visited coffeehouses to hobnob with British officers. Many of them opened up to the spy, in the hope that they would thus see their name in print. That was how Townsend learned of a British plot to flood America with counterfeit dollars to wreck the economy. His warnings enabled the Continental Congress to avert disaster in the nick of time with a recall and replacement of all bills in circulation.
