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his wife almost died too. Gates had promised to send a physician to Bryan’s family, but he had never got around to it. Seventy-five years later his son put the story on record, for reasons which are still not clear, as there is no record that any claim of recompense was filed. 1
    1 The original of this deposition is in the Walter Pforzheimer Collection on Intelligence Service through whose courtesy the above passages have been cited.
    Until accident or further research turns up additional information, we shall not know to what extent Gates’ victorious strategy, which helped greatly to turn the tide of the war and was so instrumental in persuading the French to assist us, was based on the information which Bryan delivered. Sporadic finds of this kind can only make us wonder who all the other unsung heroes may have been who risked their lives to collect information for the American cause.
    The one spy hero of the Revolution about whom every American schoolboy does know is, of course, Nathan Hale. Even Hale, however, despite his sacrifice, suffered comparative oblivion for decades after his death and did not become a popular figure in American history until the mid-nineteenth century. In 1799, twenty-two years after his death, an early American historian, Hannah Adams, wrote, “It is scarcely known such a character existed.” In his own time, Hale’s misfortune had quite a special significance for the conduct of Colonial operations. Since Hale had been a volunteer, an amateur, mightily spurred on by patriotism but sadly equipped to carry out the dangerous work of spying, his death and the circumstances of it apparently brought home sharply to General Washington the need for more professional, more carefully prepared intelligence missions. After Hale’s loss, Washington decided to organize a secret intelligence bureau and chose as one of its chiefs Major Benjamin Tallmadge, who had been a classmate and friend of Nathan Hale at Yale and therefore had an additional motive in promoting the success of his new enterprise. His close collaborator was a certain Robert Townsend.
    Townsend directed one of the most fruitful and complex espionage chains that existed on the Colonial side during the Revolution. At least we know of no other quite like it. Its target was the New York area, which was, of course, British headquarters. Its complexity lay not so much in its collection effort as in its communications. (I recall that General Donovan always impressed on me the vital significance of communications. It is useless to collect information unless you can quickly and accurately get it to the user.)
    Since the British held New York, the Hudson and the harbor area firmly under their control, it was impossible or at least highly risky to slip through their defenses to Washington in Westchester. Information from Townsend’s agents in New York was therefore passed to Washington by a highly roundabout way, which for the times, however, was swift, efficient and secure. It was carried from New York to the North Shore of Long Island, thence across Long Island Sound by boat to the Connecticut shore, where Tallmadge picked it up and relayed it to General Washington.
    The best-known spy story of the Revolution other than that of Hale is the story of Major John André and Benedict Arnold. These two gentlemen might never have been discovered, in which case the damage to the patriot cause would have been incalculable, had it not been for Townsend and Tallmadge, who were apparently as sharp in the business of counterintelligence as they were in the collection of military information.
    One account claims that during a visit André paid to a British major quartered in Townsend’s house he aroused the suspicions of Townsend’s sister, who overheard his conversation and reported it to her brother. Later, when André was caught making his way through the American line on a pass Arnold had issued him, a series of blunders which Tallmadge was powerless to