About this Episode: The role of espionage was crucial during the War for Independence. Spying was made even more irresistible with both sides speaking the same language. When spy Nathan Hale was captured and hung by the British, George Washington was highly motivated to centralize intelligence operations. An American commander, Benjamin Tallmadge, became Washington’s chief of intelligence. Tallmadge ran a network of spies using cipher codes, invisible ink, double agents, and disinformation. Major Tallmadge’s network included men who operated inside enemy-held New York. Ordinary men, farmers, merchants, a newspaper editor, a tailor, and even women were involved in spying. A Quaker mid-wife and undertaker, Lydia Darragh, was one of the most successful of the women spies. She placed paper scraps of information into large buttons and sewed them onto her son’s clothing. The fourteen-year-old met his brother, a lieutenant in the Continental Army, who snipped off the buttons. Soon the British war plans were in Washington’s hands. Many years later, Benjamin Tallmadge wrote that the war had been won through the intervention of divine providence.

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