Nathan Hale is probably the best known but least successful American agent in the War of Independence. He embarked on his espionage mission into British-held New York as a volunteer, impelled by a strong sense of patriotism and duty. Before leaving on the mission he reportedly told a fellow officer: "I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary award; I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claims to perform that service are imperious."

But dedication was not enough. Captain Hale had no training experience, no contacts in New York, no channels of communication, and no cover story to explain his absence from camp-only his Yale diploma supported his contention that he was a "Dutch schoolmaster." He was captured while trying to slip out of New York, was convicted as a spy and went to the gallows on September 22, 1776. Witnesses to the execution reported the dying words that gained him immortality (a paraphrase of a line from Joseph Addison's play Cato: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

The same day Nathan Hale was executed in New York, British authorities there arrested another Patriot and charged him with being a spy. Haym Salomon was a recent Jewish immigrant who worked as a stay-behind agent after Washington evacuated New York City in September 1776. Solomon was arrested in a round-up of suspected Patriot sympathizers and was confined to Sugar House Prison. He spoke several European languages and was soon released to the custody of General von Heister, commander of Hessian mercenaries, who needed someone who could serve as a German-language interpreter in the Hessian commissary department. While in German custody, Salomon induced a number of the German troops to resign or desert.

Eventually paroled, Salomon did not flee to Philadelphia as had many of his New York business associates. He continued to serve as an undercover agent, and used his personal finances to assist American patriots held prisoner in New York. He was arrested again in August of 1778, accused this time of being an accomplice in a plot to burn the British fleet and to destroy His Majesty's, warehouses in the city. Salomon was condemned to death for sabotage, but bribed his guard while awaiting execution and escaped to Philadelphia. There he came into the open in the role for which he is best known, as an important financier of the Revolution. It is said that when Salomon died in bankruptcy in 1785, at forty-five years of age, the government owed him more than $700,000 in unpaid loans.

Less than a year after Nathan Hale was executed, another American agent went to the gallows in New York. On June 13, 1777, General Washington wrote the President of Congress: "You will observe by the New York paper, the execution of Abm. [Abraham] Patten. His family deserves the generous Notice of Congress. He conducted himself with great fidelity to our Cause rendering Services and has fallen a Sacrifice in promoting her interest. Perhaps a public act of generosity, considering the character he was in, might not be so eligible as a private donation."

"Most accurate and explicit intelligence" resulted from the work of Abraham Woodhull on Long Island and Robert Townsend in British-occupied New York City. Their operation, known as the Culper Ring from the operational names used by Woodhull (Culper, Sr.) and Townsend (Culper, Jr.), effectively used such intelligence tradecraft as codes, ciphers and secret ink for communications; a series of couriers and whaleboats to transmit reporting; at least one secret safe house, and numerous sources. The network was particularly effective in picking up valuable information from careless conversation wherever the British and their sympathizers gathered.

One female member of the Culper Ring, known only by her codename "355," was arrested shortly after Benedict Arnold's defection in 1780 and evidently died in captivity. Details of her background are unknown, but 355 (the number meant "lady" in the Culper code) may have come from a prominent Tory family with access to British commanders and probably reported on their activities and personalities. She was one of several females around the debonaire Major Andre, who enjoyed the company of young, attractive, and intelligent women. Abraham Woodhull, 355's recruiter, praised her espionage work, saying that she was "one who hath been ever serviceable to this correspondence." Arnold questioned all of Andre's associates after his execution in October 1780 and grew suspicious when the pregnant 355 refused to identify her paramour. She was incarcerated on the squalid prison ship Jersey, moored in the East River. There she gave birth to a son and then died without disclosing that she had a common-law husband-Robert Townsend, after whom the child was named.

One controversial American agent in New York was the King's Printer, James Rivington. His coffee house, a favorite gathering place for the British, was a principal source of information for Culper, Jr. (Townsend), who was a silent partner in the endeavor. George Washington Parke Custis suggests that Rivington's motive for aiding the patriot cause was purely monetary. Custis notes that Rivington, nevertheless, "proved faithful to his bargain, and often would provide intelligence of great importance gleaned in convivial moments at Sir William's or Sir Henry's table, be in the American camp before the convivialists had slept off the effects of their wine. The King's printer would probably have been the last man suspected, for during the whole of his connection with the secret service his Royal Gazette piled abuse of every sort upon the cause of the American general and the cause of America." Rivington's greatest espionage achievement was acquiring the Royal Navy's signal book in 1781. That intelligence helped the French fleet repel a British flotilla trying to relieve General Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Hercules Mulligan ran a clothing shop that was also frequented by British officers in occupied New York. The Irish immigrant was a genial host, and animated conversation typified a visit to his emporium. Since Mulligan was also a Patriot agent, General Washington had full use of the intelligence he gathered. Mulligan was the first to alert Washington to two British plans to capture the American Commander-in-Chief and to a planned incursion into Pennsylvania. Besides being an American agent, Mulligan also was a British counterintelligence failure. Before he went underground as an agent, he had been an active member of the Sons of Liberty and the New York Committees of Correspondence and Observation, local Patriot intelligence groups. Mulligan had participated in acts of rebellion and his name had appeared on Patriot broadsides distributed in New York as late as 1776. But every time he fell under suspicion, the popular Irishman used his gift of "blarney" to talk his way out of it. The British evidently never learned that Alexander Hamilton, Washington's aide-de-camp, had lived in the Mulligan home while attending King's College, and had recruited Mulligan and possibly Mulligan's brother, a banker and merchant who handled British accounts, for espionage.

Another American agent in New York was Lieutenant Lewis J. Costigin, who walked the streets freely in his Continental Army uniform as he collected intelligence. Costigin had originally been sent to New York as a prisoner, and was eventually paroled under oath not to attempt escape or communicate intelligence. In September 1778 he was designated for prisoner exchange and freed of his parole oath. But he did not leave New York, and until January 1779 he roamed the city in his American uniform, gathering intelligence on British commanders, troop deployments, shipping, and logistics while giving the impression of still being a paroled prisoner.

On May 15,1780, General Washington instructed General Heath to send intelligence agents into Canada. He asked that they be those "upon whose firmness and fidelity we may safely rely," and that they collect "exact" information about Halifax in support of a French requirement for information on the British defense works there. Washington suggested that qualified draftsmen be sent. James Bowdoin, who was later to become the first president of the American Academy of Arts and Science, fulfilled the intelligence mission, providing detailed plans of Halifax harbor, including specific military works and even water depths.

In August 1782, General Washington created the Military Badge of Merit, to be issued "whenever any singularly meritorious action is performed... not only instances of unusual gallantry, but also of extraordinary fidelity and essential service in any way." Through the award, said Washington, "the road to glory in a Patriot army and a free country is thus open to all." The following June, the honor was bestowed on Sergeant Daniel Bissell, who had "deserted" from the Continental Army, infiltrated New York, posed as a Tory, and joined Benedict Arnold's "American Legion." For over a year, Bissell gathered information on British fortifications, making a detailed study of British methods of operation, before escaping to American lines.

Dominique L'Eclise, a Canadian who served as an intelligence agent for General Schuyler, had been detected and imprisoned and had all his property confiscated. After being informed by General Washington of the agent's plight, the Continental Congress on October 23, 1778, granted $600 to pay L'Eclise's debts and $60, plus one ration a day "during the pleasure of Congress," as compensation for his contribution to the American cause.

Family legend contributes the colorful but uncorroborated story of Lydia Darragh and her listening post for eavesdropping on the British. Officers of the British force occupying Philadelphia chose to use a large upstairs room in the Darragh house for conferences. When they did, Mrs. Darragh would slip into an adjoining closet and take notes on the enemy's military plans. Her husband, William, would transcribe the intelligence in a form of shorthand on tiny slips of paper that Lydia would then position on a button mold before covering it with fabric. The message-bearing buttons were then sewn onto the coat of her fourteen-year-old son, John, who would then be sent to visit his elder brother, Lieutenant Charles Darragh, of the American forces outside the city. Charles would snip off the buttons and transcribe the shorthand notes into readable form for presentation to his officers. Lydia Darragh is said to have concealed other intelligence in a sewing-needle packet which she carried in her purse when she passed through British lines. Some espionage historians have questioned the credibility of the best-known story of Darragh's espionage-that she supposedly overheard British commanders planning a surprise night attack against Washington's army at Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania, on the 4th and 5th of December 1777. The cover story she purportedly used to leave Philadelphia-she was filling a flour sack at a nearby mill outside the British lines because there was a flour shortage in the city-is implausible because there was no shortage, and a lone woman would not have been allowed to roam around at night, least of all in the area between the armies.

Many other heroic Patriots gathered the intelligence that helped win the War of Independence. Their intelligence duties required many of them to pose as one of the enemy, incurring the hatred of family members and friends-some even having their property seized or burned, and their families driven from their homes. Some were captured by American forces and narrowly escaped execution on charges of high treason or being British spies. Many of them gave their lives in helping establish America's freedom.