During the later years of the war, the city of New York was the chief
source of information concerning the designs and movements of the enemy.
General Washington, as early as 1778, had always two or three
correspondents there upon whose information he could rely if only they
could send it out to him. Sometimes, when his ordinary correspondents
failed him, he would send in a spy disguised as a farmer driving a small
load of provisions, and who would bring out some family supplies, as
tea, sugar, and calico, the better to conceal his real object. Often the
spy _was_ a farmer, and sometimes quite illiterate. As it was
unsafe for him to have any written paper upon his person, he was
required to learn by heart the precise message which he was to deliver
in the city, as also the information which he received from the resident
correspondent.
The messenger frequently entered the city in the disguise of a peddler,
a fact which suggested to Horace Greeley, when he was a printer's
apprentice in Vermont, the idea of a story which he called "The Peddler-
Spy of the Revolution." I once had in my hand a considerable package of
his manuscript of this tale; but even as a boy he wrote so bad a hand
that I could not read much of it.
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