George Washington Ordered the Creation of the Culper Ring in 1778 to Gather Intelligence on British Activities in New York
When the British occupied New York in 1776, general Washington realized the importance of gathering information about his enemies’ troop movements and intentions. After he was defeated and forced to evacuate the city in the summer of 1776, Washington directed that a “channel of information” be established on Long Island. It was an ad hoc and poorly run affair, without permanent agents on the ground. It came to grief with the capture of Nathan Hale, a young captain who volunteered for an intelligence gathering mission behind British lines, only to get caught and hanged as a spy.
The Hale fiasco convinced Washington that civilians would make less conspicuous spies than military officers. So in February of 1777, he requested the aid of a Nathaniel Sackett to spy on the British, and appointed a major Benjamin Tallmadge (1754 – 1835), a New York native and Yale graduate, as military liaison and point of contact. Sackett’s information was hit and miss, accurate at times, and inaccurate at others. But even the accurate intelligence was lacking in both quantity and timeliness to satisfy Washington, so he sacked Sackett.
The general was disappointed with other intelligence operations that were established in 1777, and his frustration with the inability to set up a reliable intelligence pipeline continued into 1778. Then in August of 1778, a Connecticut lieutenant named Caleb Brewster offered to furnish intelligence from behind enemy lines, and Washington accepted the offer. By the end of the month, Brewster had sent in accurate reports about British troops movements, as well as the condition of Royal Navy ships after a storm and battles with the French.
Encouraged by Brewster’s success, Washington tasked a general Charles Scott with handling the new intelligence pipeline, and assigned him major Tallmadge as an assistant. General Scott had a full plate, however, and was uninterested in intelligence gathering anyhow, so Tallmadge ended up as the de facto spy master in charge of Brewster’s intelligence gathering. Tallmadge’s remit expanded when Washington tasked him with recruiting spies to gather intelligence from New York and the surrounding areas.
Tallmadge recruited Abraham Woodhull, a friend and neighbor with whom he had grown up in Setauket, a small community in Long Island. Woodhull would gather the intelligence and deliver it to Brewster, who would then deliver it to Tallmadge and thus to George Washington. Washington, who was exceptionally hands on for a general when it came overseeing espionage activities, gave Woodhull the codename “Samuel Culper” – a play on Culpeper County, Virginia. With its key players in place and its tasks defined, the Culper Ring was now operational and ready to shape events and make history.