17. Saving the American Revolution from Financial Collapse
Once he had gathered information, the clandestine hero wrote his reports using invisible ink on seemingly blank reams of paper. Townsend then handed them to a courier who delivered them to one of his ring’s agents, Abraham Woodhull in Setauket. From there, they made their way to George Washington’s head of intelligence, Major Benjamin Tallmadge, who passed them on to the general. Washington read the reports after developing the invisible ink with a chemical agent, and often responded to Townsend with invisible ink messages of his own.
Townsend did much valuable legwork gathering intelligence and fulfilling the tasks assigned him by Washington. He got a gig as a columnist for a Loyalist newspaper and visited coffeehouses to hobnob with British officers, many of whom opened to him in the hopes of seeing their name in print. That was how Townsend got wind of a British plot to wreck the American economy by flooding the country with counterfeit dollars. His warning enabled the Continental Congress to avert disaster in the nick of time by recalling all bills then in circulation and issuing new ones.