Revolutionary Heroes, and Other Historical Papers | Page 6

of the young hero was unveiled in the State House at Hartford. Mr. Charles Dudley Warner delivered a beautiful address suitable to the occasion, and Governor Lounsberry worthily accepted the statue on behalf of the State. It is greatly to be regretted that our knowledge of this noble martyr is so slight; but we know enough to be sure that he merits the veneration of his countrymen.

GENERAL WASHINGTON'S OTHER SPIES.
The reader would scarcely expect at this late day to get new light upon the military character of General Washington. But, in truth, scarcely a month passes in which some of our busy historical students do not add to our knowledge of him. Recently Mr. H.P. Johnston published in the Magazine of American History some curious documents, hitherto unknown, exhibiting Washington's methods of procuring intelligence of the movements of the British army.
Like a true general, he knew from the first all the importance of correct and prompt information. How necessary this is, is known to every one who remembers vividly the late war, particularly the first few months of it, before there was any good system of employing spies. Some terrible disasters could have been avoided if our generals had obtained better information of the opposing army's position, temper, and resources.
An attentive study of the dispatches of Napoleon Bonaparte will show the importance which he attached to intelligence of this kind. He kept near him at headquarters an officer of rank who had nothing to do but to procure, record, and arrange all the military news which could be gleaned from newspapers, correspondents, and spies. The name of every regiment, detachment, and corps in the enemy's service was written upon a card. For the reception of these cards he had a case made with compartments and pigeon-holes. Every time a movement was reported the cards were shifted to correspond, so that he could know at a glance, when the cards were spread out upon a table, just how the troops of the enemy were distributed or massed. Every few days, the officer in charge had to send the emperor a list of the changes which had taken place. This important matter was intrusted to a person who knew the languages of the different nations engaged in the war.
It was Bonaparte's perfect organization of his spy system which enabled him to carry out his plan of always having a superior force at the point of attack. These two were the great secrets of his tactical system, namely, to have the best information and the most men at the decisive moment.
Bonaparte was a trained soldier; but when Washington took command of the army in July, 1775, he had had very little experience of actual warfare. That little, however, was precisely of the kind to prove the value of correct information. For the want of it, he had seen General Braddock lead an army into the jaws of destruction, and he may have still possessed in some closet of Mount Vernon the coat with four bullet-holes in it which he had himself worn on that occasion. There are no warriors so skillful either at getting or concealing information as Indians, and all his experience hitherto had been in the Indian country and with warlike methods of an Indian character.
Hence it is not surprising to discover that the first important act which he performed at Cambridge was to engage a person to go into the city of Boston for the purpose of procuring "intelligence of the enemy's movements and designs." An entry in his private note-book shows that he paid this unknown individual $333.33 in advance.
A person who serves as a spy takes his life in his hand. It is a curious fact of human nature that nothing so surely reconciles a man to risking his life as a handsome sum in cash. General Washington, being perfectly aware of this fact, generally contrived to have a sum of what he called "hard money" at headquarters all through the war. Spies do not readily take to paper money. There are no Greenbackers among them. In the letters of General Washington we find a great many requests to Congress for a kind of money that would pass current anywhere, and suffer no deterioration at the bottom of a river in a freshet. He preferred gold as being the "most portable." He wrote in 1778 from White Plains:
"I have always found a difficulty in procuring intelligence by the means of paper money, and I perceive that it increases."
It continued to increase, until, I suppose, an offer of a million dollars in paper would not have induced a spy to enter the enemy's lines. In fact, the general himself says as much. In acknowledging the receipt of five hundred guineas for the secret service, he says that for want