![]() ![]() He used such words as ‘doth’ and ‘hath’-antiquated even by the standards of the time-but as time progressed, so too did Woodhull's abilities.īecause Tallmadge lacked a permanent agent in the city, Woodhull performed double duty by acting as Brewster’s liaison in Setauket and then traveling to New York every few weeks to pick up news. Whereas Washington, equipped with a staff of private secretaries, and Tallmadge, nursed on Cicero's cadences and blessed with a Yale education, composed splendidly styled, flowing sentences, Woodhull's provincialism made his punctuation idiosyncratic and spelling atrocious. There was nothing left now to trace it back to Woodhull though the experience of transcribing Woodhull's epistles must have bored the busy Tallmadge, and he soon resorted to just sending on the originals-without telling his trusting correspondent. For safety's sake, Tallmadge did destroy Woodhull's original letter after copying it verbatim in his own handwriting and passing that version to headquarters. Hitherto he had passed on intelligence verbally for fear of incriminating documents falling into the enemy's hands, so Tallmadge had assured him that none but he and Brewster knew his real name, and that, if captured, they would destroy the letters before surrendering. On October 29, 1778, after having sworn his oath of loyalty to His Majesty, Woodhull dispatched his first ‘Samuel Culper’ letter. Its members refused to work with anyone they didn’t know, and insisted on using Tallmadge as their sole channel to Washington. This complex web of personal relationships, continuing down through generations and concentrated in one compact locality, was key to the Culper Ring’s later success. In such an insular and isolated place as eighteenth-century Setauket, everyone knew each other. Setauket, in every other respect, was an entirely unexceptional Long Island settlement.” Tallmadge was from coastal Setauket, in Suffolk County, the small town in which Woodhull still lived and whence Brewster had left in the years before the war. Samuel Culper's reversed initials are those of Charles Scott, while Washington lightheartedly amended the name of Culpeper County, Virginia–where, aged seventeen, he had worked as a surveyor back in 1749–to ‘Culper.’… Brewster himself preferred to forgo an alias: Being a bluff and reckless fellow willing to take his chances, he always insisted on scrawling his real name, in very prominent letters, on all of his correspondence. ![]() Henceforth…Tallmadge adopted a set of aliases: Tallmadge became the anodyne ‘John Bolton,’ and Woodhull, ‘Samuel Culper.’ Washington, Scott, and Tallmadge collaborated to invent the latter code name. ![]() Invigorated by this unexpected support, Tallmadge intended to forge Woodhull and Brewster into the nucleus of a network–what would become known as the Culper Ring…. C–––––,’ because if he ‘could be engaged in a work of this sort, his discernment, and means of information, would enable him to give important advices.’ His choice of chief agent was Tallmadge’s recruit, ‘Mr. now wanted a chain of agents stationed permanently in enemy territory. Tallmadge ambitiously envisioned combining these two approaches to create a network of agents-in-place permanently embedded in occupied New York and running to Long Island, then across the Sound to his headquarters in Connecticut, where the intel would be digested and passed upstairs to the commander-in-chief-with Tallmadge's summary and analysis attached. Tallmadge had learned from Nathaniel Sackett how to disguise agents as enemy sympathizers using realistic cover stories, and from John Parke that a spy could nestle within the beast of an unsuspecting foe for months, perhaps years, at a time–provided he enjoyed a secure chain of communication back to base. The following excerpt from Alexander Rose’s, Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring, describes the establishment of the Culper Ring and the risks involved with eighteenth-century espionage. ![]() Operating in British-occupied New York, this spy ring gathered and shared military intelligence on the British Army’s tactical operations using a coded language and a disappearing ink dubbed the ‘sympathetic stain.’ Those involved in the Culper Ring did so at great personal risk to their lives and honor–covertly traveling through occupied territory and swearing oaths of allegiance to the king–all the while passing information to Washington. In the summer of 1778 George Washington authorized the formation of a secret chain of agents known as the Culper Ring. ![]()
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