29. Townsend Surpassed Washington’s Expectations
George Washington closed his instructions to Robert Townsend by noting: “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“.
Little did Washington know just how well Townsend would perform. Nor could the American commander-in-chief have predicted just how well positioned Townsend was to come across some of the war’s most sensitive information.