Espionage

As a part of his role as the Commander in chief of the Continental Army, Washington was largely responsible for forming and organizing a patriot spy ring, known as the Culper Ring. Every member of the ring had a code name, and members of this spy ring included troops, double agents (masquerading as deserters to the British), commoners of all sorts of professions in the colonies, and George Washington himself (who took on the spy name Agent 711). General Washington understood the need for such a group. The colonial army was smaller than the British royal army, with far less training and fewer supplies. Therefore, Washington strove to include citizens in the war effort. The director of the Culper Ring was a man named Benjamin Tallmadge (spy name of "John Bolton"). Many of the primary leaders in the spy ring were close friends of Tallmadge himself. The Culper Ring devised ingenious methods of communicating messages to each other: ciphers and coded letters, invisible inks, and hidden letters. In fact, George Washington himself was responsible for researching novel methods of creating invisible inks for secretive correspondence. He personally worked with a man named James Jay to create an invisible ink that could be exposed only through a secret chemical reaction. At the time of the American War for Independence, the spy tactics used by the Culper Ring were considered groundbreaking and definitely played a key role in the defeat of the British. One British officer was recorded as saying that "Washington did not really outfight the British. He simply out-spied us." In addition to creating clandestine methods to relay information among the members of the Continental Army, George Washington was also a huge fan of spreading false information to deceive the British. He regularly exaggerated the size of his army and would send falsified, detailed descriptions of the extent of his military supplies along formal lines of communication to ensure that these letters would be intercepted by the British. Again, these tactics worked on more than one occasion. Also, he developed a system for intercepting British military correspondence, a move which often alerted him to the movements of the British army and allowed him to take the necessary movements to avoid several crushing defeats. All in all, Washington's use of espionage in the American War for Independence was essential in ensuring a victory by the colonies.