25. George Washington Sets Up the Culper Ring
George Washington was disappointed with other espionage operations established in 1777. 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. By the end of the month, Brewster had sent in accurate reports about British troop movements, as well as the condition of Royal Navy ships after a storm and battles with the French. Encouraged by Brewster’s success, Washington ordered General Charles Scott to handle 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 espionage activities.
Tallmadge’s remit expanded when Washington ordered him to recruit more spies to gather intelligence from New York and its environs. He 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 to the oversight of 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.