Sunday Bonus Podcast - The Culper Spy Ring Story of America Ep 7

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
We had a lot of very positive feedback on last
week's podcast that Pete Hegseth did. They have a different
guest each week, and he was the guest doing the
podcast last week. And it's from Hillsdale College, and we
think they do fantastic work, and we sometimes amplify the

(00:22):
work that they're doing. They have a series they're doing
called The Story of America. And since so many people
enjoyed last week, We're sharing another episode with you. When
you think about the Revolutionary War, you think about the battles.
Then you think about the effort. These were citizen soldiers.
These were citizens in their own homes. The story of

(00:44):
Paul Revere and his midnight ride or Washington crossing the Delaware.
These were not professional warriors. These were farmers who just
wanted to protect their land, their people, their freedoms. And
one of the interesting aspects that Hillsdale has profiled is espionage.

(01:08):
And I think this is going to be, for some
of you, your favorite of anything we do for a
little while. Brian Kilmeade of Fox News, who loves, loves,
loves history. In fact, when I first met Buck Saxton,
his wife was working for Brian Kilmeade on his production department,
where they go out to different places, and they filmed things,

(01:31):
a lot of historical things. And she said he's just
an absolute nerd for history. And I love that. And
you can see that in the work he's generating. Anyway,
support Hillsdale College. Share their content. If you can financially
support them, we think they do great work. This is
the story of the Culper Spiring.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
We need a people in order to form a more
perfect union.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
When we think of the American Revolution, we often think
of the.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
Famous battlefields of Valley Forge and Saratoga, of muskets and Minutemen,
of the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere's Midnight Ride.
But there was another war, albeit one kept under wraps
and waged in the shadows. But a war that was
no less dangerous than the kind fought on horseback as

(02:59):
cannonballs whistled overhead. By November 1776, mere months after the
signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Army had
endured heavy losses and a punishing string of setbacks in
New York and New Jersey.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
In Long Island, roughly 1,300 Americans were killed, wounded, or captured.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
At Fort Washington, General Washington was forced to surrender roughly
1,000 3,000 men. In the five major battles between August
and November of 1776, the Continental Army was reduced to
fewer than 5,000 men. Inside a candlelit tent along the
New York Harbor, following the catastrophic defeat at the Battle

(03:41):
of Long Island, General Washington confronted a grim reality. Surrounded,
Outnumbered and outmaneuvered, he asked his officers for the unthinkable.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Do we have any other options? Silence followed.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
They all knew the truth. Only a miracle could save them.
In the months that followed, the mightiest military power in
the world drove the beleaguered American forces from the New
York region, pushing them through New Jersey and nearly to
the brink of collapse. Supplies were scarce, spirits were low,

(04:16):
and time was running out. In the winter of 1776,
Washington's crossing at Trenton and Princeton were astonishing victories, but
these achievements alone.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Could not reverse the tide of the war.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
The British Army had captured New York, a critical stronghold
for trade and transportation, and turned Manhattan into a fortress.
New York, without exaggeration, is the pivot on which the
entire Revolution war turns, said John Adams himself. And without
the city and without intelligence from inside its gates, Washington

(04:49):
knew the American cause would not survive.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
He needed eyes. He needed ears. He needed spies.

Speaker 4 (04:56):
From this necessity was born one of the most audacious
and consequential acts of espionage in our nation's history. The
Culper spy ring, headquartered in British-occupied New York City, this
six-person intelligence network changed the course of the Revolutionary War
and the fate of.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Our new nation.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
Washington turned to a young officer named Benjamin Talmadge, codenamed
John Bolton. Talmadge replaced General Charles Scott, whose approach to
espionage had been blunt and rather unimaginative. Scott would dispatch
lone scouts on one-way missions across enemy lines, hoping they'd
return with scraps of intelligence.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
It was a gamble, and one that too often failed.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
The execution of Lieutenant Nathan Hale, who was caught, tried,
and sentenced to death within the span of 12 hours
was a grim case in point. Talmadge suggested a new
approach to Washington. Instead of risking the lives of uniformed
officers by sending them behind enemy lines, why not gather
intelligence through unsuspecting allies who already lived in British-occupied territory,

(06:02):
creating a network of spies living among the British? Washington
agreed with the Talmadge strategy and appointed him Chief of Intelligence.
Talmadge was only 24, but he knew both the people
and the landscape on Long Island well, which would prove
to be invaluable. Major Talmadge immediately began creating a tight-knit

(06:23):
ring of embedded operatives working silently beneath the surface in
the British-occupied Long Island. What became known as the Culper
Spy Ring was the most successful spy network on either
side of the war. Talmadge's recruits were not particularly well-trained. Indeed,
these informants consisted primarily of old friends he had made
while growing up in Setauket, Long Island. They were farmers, merchants,

(06:47):
and laborers. Their intelligence network operated successfully in and around
New York City for five years. No spy's true identity
was revealed, not to General Washington, not even amongst one another.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
There was Abraham Woodhull.

Speaker 4 (07:02):
A young New York farmer, who ferried messages under the
name Samuel Culper Sr. His counterpart, Samuel Culper Jr., was
Robert Townsend, who wrote for a loyalist newspaper while secretly
reporting to Washington. Austin Rowe, a tavern keeper, carried messages
hidden in saddlebags. Caleb Brewster, a defiant seaman, rode across

(07:24):
the Long Island Sound to deliver intelligence to the commander-in-chief himself.
Among the company of double agents, there was also a woman,
her identity still unknown, codenamed Agent 355. a lady shrouded
in mystery. She seduced secrets from the lips of British soldiers.
According to speculations, it was Agent 355 who relayed the

(07:45):
critical information that ultimately exposed the treasonous actions of Benedict Arnold. Lastly,
there was James Rivington. When the early sparks of the
Revolution ignited into open war in 1775, Rivington found himself
squarely in the crosshairs. His New York print shop, once
a hub of loyalist literature, was ransacked, torched by the

(08:08):
Sons of Liberty. Fearing for his safety, Rivington fled to England.
But exile didn't last. By 1777, he was back in
New York, quietly reopening his business, this time just steps
from the dry goods store of a discreet patriot named
Robert Townsend.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Something had changed after Rivington's return.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
Whether it was a genuine conversion, a practical play for profit,
or frustration with the crown censorship, especially its muzzling of
Rivington's attempt to criticize General Howe, remains uncertain. What is clear, however,
is that sometime in late 1778, the once loyal English-born
printer began to operate under the noses of British officers,

(08:54):
feeding sensitive communications.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
To the culprit spy ring.

Speaker 4 (08:58):
Now, to the world, Rivington was a First-rate loyalist, owner
of one of New York's most prominent coffeehouses, editor of
the Royal Gazette, and personal printer to the king's most
excellent majesty. The Gazette famously published fighting satire against the
American cause. His coffeehouse, nestled in the heart of British-occupied
New York, became a veritable nest of loose-lipped British officers.

(09:23):
Rivington's outward loyalty to the British made him the perfect spy.
No one suspected the outspoken Tory to slip coded messages
inside book bindings and pass them along to Robert Townsend.
To protect the ring of spies he commanded, Major Talmadge
crafted a system, a system of extraordinary precision, and given

(09:45):
that names were too traceable, assigned each of his spies
a code number in.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Their encrypted communications.

Speaker 4 (09:51):
In total, 763 numerical identities were created, each site for
protecting a patriot.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Rivington was 727. in the Culper Codebook.

Speaker 4 (10:01):
Only once secrecy was no longer needed did it become
public knowledge that this apparent traitor to America had in
fact been one of its fiercest defenders. Information flowed from
New York City northward to General Washington's camp in New Windsor,
threading its way through miles of British-controlled territories. The operation
began with Austin Rowe, who would make the long ride

(10:23):
from Long Island into Manhattan under the guise of routine business. There,
in the quiet of Townsend's shop, Rowe would place an
innocuous order, one encoded with Washington's prearranged phrases, which Townsend
had received via courier from headquarters. The request, signed by
Talmadge under his alias John Bolton, triggered the next phase.

(10:46):
Rowe concealed the dispatches by folding them Among the merchandise,
Anna Strong, a local, would hang a black petticoat on
her clothesline, visible for the Long Island Sound to alert
Caleb Brewster, the Continental Army's boatman. The series of handkerchiefs
indicated the precise cove where Brewster could land under cover
of night. Brewster would then ferry the intelligence across the

(11:08):
Sound and into the hands of Talmadge. The process spanned
two weeks, from beginning to end. Through painstaking observation, the
Culper spies uncovered a devastating British scheme of economic sabotage.
Thousands of Ford's Continental Dollars were being printed in New
York and smuggled across enemy lines. The British were deliberately

(11:29):
devaluing American currency, aiming to wreck the fragile economy of
the nascent republic. Washington responded swiftly, shutting down the counterfeit
circulation routes and launching efforts to stabilize the currency.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
It was an invisible victory.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
But without it, the revolution may well have buckled under
the weight of economic ruin. But that was only the
start of the Culper spy's successful espionage. In 1778, the
Culper spy ring obtained the British naval codebook and delivered
it to French Admiral d'Estaing. With the vital intelligence, the
French were able to anticipate British.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Naval movements in American waters.

Speaker 4 (12:10):
Enabling D'Eston's fleet to evade traps, strike more effectively, and
secure critical victories at sea, culminating in naval dominance that
helped corner British forces at Yorktown. General Clinton and Admiral
Graves were assembling a force of nine warships and nearly
10,000 troops with plans to strike Rochambeau's soldiers in a

(12:33):
surprise assault. Acting swiftly, Major Talmadge relayed the intelligence through
trusted channels to deliver the intelligence directly to the French
officers in Newport. Simultaneously, Hamilton rushed word to Lafayette and Washington,
and they devised a successful scheme to divert the British
forces back towards New York. What could have been a

(12:55):
crushing British blow was thwarted through daring espionage. Most famously,
the spies uncovered the treachery of Benedict Arnold, exposing his
plan to surrender West Point to the British. Had Arnold's
mission succeeded, West Point would have fallen into British hands.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
The Hudson River would have been severed.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
The colonies divided, and the revolution itself smothered in its cradle.
It's no exaggeration to say that the course of the
American Revolution, indeed the very existence of the United States,
turned on messages no one could see, sent by men
whose names history almost forgot. The British intelligence officer, Major

(13:35):
George Beckwith, put it this way, Washington did not really
outfight the British, he simply outspied us.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
It may be more.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
Accurate to say Washington outfought the British because he outspied them.
The heroes of the Culper spy ring operated undercover, without recognition,
without reward, and at immense personal risk. When the war ended,
they sought no fanfare for their covert acts of courage, indeed,
Several of their identities were not confirmed for nearly two centuries.

(14:06):
It is tempting to read history as the dramatic tale
of generals and statesmen presiding over events of grand significance,
as the forces of destiny itself seem to bend according
to their will.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Victory in the American Revolution.

Speaker 4 (14:21):
Was achieved not only on the battlefield, but in back
rooms and back alleys, from code letters and clever disguises.
The heroes of the Culper Ring did not seek glory,
they sought freedom. Their courage reminds us that the fate
of a nation can hinge on the quiet work of
brave men and brave women who may forever remain.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Unseen, unheralded, and unnamed.

Speaker 4 (14:44):
Today, we remember and honor their quiet courage and their
willingness to risk their lives for this new nation.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Their stories and names will not be forgotten.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
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(15:22):
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(15:43):
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(16:07):
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(16:35):
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