Spying Methods in the American Revolution

Spying Methods in the American Revolution

The American Revolution was one of the most significant wars in modern history. The Revolutionary War wasn't simply significant for establishing the United States or for helping bankrupt and inspire the French Revolution. It was also pivotal in ushering in new technologies, innovations, and strategies in warfare. One of the most important innovations in warfare that the Revolution helped bring about was spying.

And...the man perhaps most responsible for this innovation was none other than General George Washington.





General Washington's espionage strategy is one of the factors that contributed to American victory over the British in the Revolutionary War. And it is an aspect of the war thoroughly examined by author Alexander Rose in George Washington's Spies.





In an article for American Heritage magazine, Thomas Fleming elaborates:

It is commonly understood that without the Commander in Chief’s quick mind and cool judgment the American Revolution would have almost certainly expired in 1776. It is less well known that his brilliance extended to overseeing, directly and indirectly, extensive and very sophisticated intelligence activities against the British.

Ruluff McIntyre puts it even more plainly in an article for Early America: "The misinformation machine created by George Washington was critical to the winning of the Revolutionary War."

At the beginning of the war, America's spying methods were rather "amateurish," writes John Reed for the Valley Forge Historical Society. By 1777, says Reed, spying gained greater finesse.

Are there lessons for America today? In my opinion....yes. One of the reasons the United States has struggled in its Middle Eastern policy generally and in Iraq specifically as been faulty or limited intelligence. The US has simply not done an adequate job in penetrating some of the world's cultures, and, in some cases, has badly mismanaged its intelligence gathering strategies.

General Washington understood how critical accurate intelligence was for his army and how important it was to provide faulty intelligence to the enemy. Yet another example of how learning lessons from the past can help us in the present and the future.

Getting Shot by a Musket

What was it like to be shot by a musket? I'm going to assume that none of my readers have had that experience. If so, do tell. Should be an interesting story. But, assuming no one has been shot with a musket, I ask the question again -- What must it have been like to be shot by one?

The most common weapon of the American Revolution was the smoothbore flintlock musket. The advantage to the target is that a smoothbore musket isn't very accurate. If you're the target, your chances of being missed are much greater than if you were in, say, World War II and coming under fire from a machine gun. But...

The advantages pretty much end there. To give you an idea...the Brown Bess British musket was 75 caliber and the Brits used a 69 caliber ball. If hit by one of these 69 caliber balls, it would hurt. A lot.

A musket ball didn't cut its way into you. It smashed through skin, bone, and muscle - and sometimes would then bounce around even more inside your body (doing even greater damage). If you were fortunate, the musket ball would pass clean through you - a simple in-and-out flesh wound, perhaps damaging some nerves and muscle tissue. But if it impacted bone, you were in trouble.

Of course, once wounded, your problems were only beginning. You would need medical care. And medical care in the Revolutionary War wasn't exactly...well...good. This wasn't the fault of the practitioners (not in most cases anyway). Medicine simpy hadn't developed to a point that it could adequately keep up with the diseases, hardships, and injuries of the Revolutionary War period. For a good overview of the medical problem, go here.

Getting back to that accuracy issue...the tactics of the day took the musket's limited range and accuracy into account. This is where volley lines and bayonets come in. A mass of soldiers standing shoulder-to-shoulder firing their muskets in a unified direction helped compensate as did the bayonet. If you feared getting hit by a musket ball, getting impaled by a bayonet was even less appealing.

Of course, if you were fortunate enough to escape battlefield injury during the Revolutionary War, you weren't "out of the woods" yet. Far more soldiers died of hardship and disease than on the battlefield. That's right. If musket balls and bayonets didn't get you, there was still something like smallpox to take care of business.

It's hard to find an upside to life in the Revolutionary War period. As historian David McCullough has repeatedly reminded us, life was hard in that time period. Today, we tend to see this era through romanticized paintings. But we need to guard against the assumption that things were easier or better.

I thought this Memorial Day weekend would be a good time to remind us all of that fact.