James M'Parlan, a North-of-Ireland man, must be ranked among the most successful spies in modern times and for the good reason that he was mainly instrumental in breaking up one of the most lawless and terrible conspiracies against public order and private liberty which any state has yet been called upon to suppress. Its home was Pennsylvania, its name the "Molly Maguires," and to find a parallel to its iniquitous arts and methods one must go to the Klux Klan, the Corsican Vendetta or the White Veil society of the Middle Ages in Italy. As the discovery of gold in Australia and California in the middle of the nineteenth century led to the commission of a vast amount of crime by reason of the peculiar character of the masses of adventurers who soon overran the gold-bearing regions, so also the discovery of anthracite coal in Pennsylvania led to the assembling of great camps of speculators and prospectors, wealthy capitalists and common labourers for whom the word Law meant next to nothing at all. The comparatively unorganised condition of new towns which had sprung up as if by magic in the anthracite zones made Pennsylvania in those days a likely jumping-off groundfor any man who possessed good physique, a brutal bearing, a disregard of private rights and the ability to impose his ideas upon a band of men of his own kind and kidney. Knowing what we know of the enterprising courage of many types of Irishmen and their talent for the business of pioneering, it is not difficult to imagine that they swarmed to the valuable coal regions of the Quaker State in legions proportionate to the vast immigrant hordes of their countrymen that were then flowing into every port of the United States. Great settlements consisting only of Irishmen sprang up at once in the mining districts of Pennsylvania and this new Irish colony separated automatically into as many divisions as there were counties in Ireland itself, each section carrying with it all the local pride, prejudice and other characteristics which had marked it within its geographical bounds in the old home. In fact a New Ireland sprang up in Quaker State hardly differentiable from the Old.
Most people who have read the story of Ireland divested of that halo of cloistral romance, sentiment and song, which presents Erin in the mellow light of a land of untroubled repose, are well aware that in all its recorded ages, paying due credit to its title to religiosity, it has been a country which for inter-racial animosities and political divisions is comparable only with that aggregation of states which until historical research and record had presented them as they truly were,once bore the half-sacred name of Greece. In Ireland the man of the North differs from the man of the South and rarely likes him, the people of the West do not understand the masses of the East and do not want to; we have the stout Men of Munster who scorn the Scottish Huguenots of the North as alien intruders, while the Gentleman of Leinster affects to despise his hard-working and thrifty countryman from Connaught. In a land like this it is not hard to imagine that those who possess a talent for prospering by the promotion of political intrigue and secret societies find themselves at once in an element which is entirely congenial to themselves and their schemes, as well as fruitful of profit in every sense of the word. Their objects, too, are made all the more easily attainable by reason of that peculiar trait in the Irishman's temper which makes him regard an act of treachery to the covenants of any secret organisation, no matter what its objects, as the most hateful of all traitorous acts. It has been well said, indeed, that in Ireland "to inform of a crime is nearly always considered as bad as the crime itself, and to such an extent has this feeling developed that it has become a part of the Irish character and is universal in its application." In a large measure owing to this contempt of the informer by Irishmen, all manner of crime has at all times and in all places gone undetected in every part of the world where Irishmen have developed large Irish settlements, and it was precisely for the foregoing reasons that the greatMolly Maguire Conspiracy was, in the first place, able to come into existence and, in the second, able by the black secrecy attending upon its criminal operations, to mystify the authorities of a great State of the Union for more than a generation. The long series of murders committed by this infamous body in the Pennsylvania coal regions were revolting and brutal to the most cold-blooded degree, were entirely without the barest elements of justification, and for the most part were perpetrated for grievances of a wholly childish and imaginary kind, based mainly on mere personal dislike or other trivial reasons of the sort.
The iniquitous exploits of "Boycott" propagandism in Land League days, which possessed at least a semblance of political motive underlying them, were respectable when compared with the foul and wanton killings of the Molly Maguires in America—a body, it may here be said, which derived its peculiar name from the fact that to every warning its agents addressed to an intended victim there was invariably attached the generic signature "Molly Maguire." An unfriendly attitude towards the Mollies, the least suspicion of being anxious to uproot them, common race feeling, and, as we have said, simple personal dislike were each and all sufficient to bring upon any man visitation from the band in the form of a card bearing the fateful name. Private and public denunciation and the dispatch of threatening letters invariably preceded the killing whichwas not only not to be denounced, but which was to be treated by all who knew of its commission as if it had never taken place. The mangled Molly Maguire corpse came, accordingly, to rank in a class by itself among all other corpses, enshrouded as it usually was with a general and sacrosanct mystery regarding the manner in which life had come to leave it. Murders were commonly committed during the dinner-hour of the miners who, so frequent was a crime, would go on calmly eating their meal while a fellow-man was being dispatched to a happier world than this not fifty yards away; and if his bloody passing called up a feeling of pity in the breast of one of the diners, it was only to be squelched at once with the chorus "Shure wasn't the man war-rned"—meaning that a man might be warned of possessing too ambitious a wife, or the fact that he was "putting on th'airs iv a jintleman," or that he may have been trying to ingratiate himself into the favour of a capitalist who happened not to be in sympathy with Irishmen, or, indeed, perhaps that he had been seen "iv a Sunda' wearin' peg-top throusers, no less." On receipt of a card bearing the signature of doom, if the recipient did not desist from "anny of the said coorses," he had only himself to blame if a band of Mollies visited him one fine night and bludgeoned his body into releasing the soul.
One of the chief shareholders of a great coal-bearing area, Franklin Goven by name, decided, to his lasting credit and with the support of allright-minded Irishmen in America, to subsidise from his own pocket a movement to destroy this band of chartered assassins. Acting in concert with important public men in Philadelphia, he applied to the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency for the assistance of an expert in tracking the organisation to its original sources and destroying it for good and all. After full preliminary inquiries, the Agency decided that the ramifications of the secret organisation were so complex and so comprehensive that the real truth as to the operation of its methods could only be reached by planting a spy amidst the very band itself. To this end were enlisted the services of M'Parlan, who under the name of M'Kenna set about the destruction of one of the foulest criminal societies yet known to the world. Mack, as he became known ever afterwards, accordingly began, in 1873, his almost hopeless task of tracing the source of the perpetration of some hundred murders which had taken place within a few years preceding, to make no mention of hundreds of maimings, mutilations and other horrors which were to be attributed to the same propagandism. From the outset it was discovered by Mack, in the course of preliminary goings and comings in the coal country, that connected with the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a well-established benefit society chartered by the Legislature of the State, there was an inner movement composed of members of the Hibernians who were subsidising a criminal organisation of wide-reaching powerand influence, not unlike the Italian Black Hand society of our own day. It was clear that at the head of the society was an open and properly constituted body, and connected with it was a secret and criminal movement. Mack began his subsequent sleuth work in approved Irish fashion by becoming a regular customer at one of those low-class Pennsylvania coal-town drinking shops—"speak-easies" they are called by the police, who are well aware that many men who visit them are not the sort loudly to advertise the methods by which they make their living. Here he entered on friendly terms with the landlord, Patrick Dormer by name. Mack, it was certain, was a gifted soul and in every sense what your American so expressively terms "a good mixer"; could sing a rowdy song, foot it to the moving music and "cough up" the ready yarn when it came to his turn. Moreover, he could "keep his end up" when it meant replenishing the convivial glasses, while his passion for what is known as being in the thick of a purely personal mix-up soon made him the most popular Irishman in the coal zones. Most important of all, in view of his especial business, he was what is known among Americans as "a cold soak"—that is to say, he could saturate his system with fire-water and still command his intellect. While his boon companions washed their sodden brains publicly in their beer, Mack, always affecting to be easily susceptible to the effects of Old Crow, was quietly taking mental notes. Accordingly it was notlong before he discovered that his friends, when under the influence of Bacchus, were apt to give up certain secret pass-words. Having listened to one of these several times, he carefully learned the exact phrase, and soon after, finding the landlord alone, he invited him to take a drink. Leaning mysteriously over the counter he repeated the mystic pass-word.
"What," cried the astonished landlord, "areyouone of them things?"—meaning a Molly Maguire.
"Troth, that's what they call me," replied the North-of-Ireland man.
Dormer unsuspectingly began from that day to treat Mack as one of the insiders, taking his word that he had been in the Hibernian Order at Buffalo, but had been obliged to leave on account of a serious crime. He was now, he confessed, in hiding, and consequently became an object of sympathy and solicitude to the Irishmen. When it came, however, to introducing Mack to genuine Hibernians, matters advanced less smoothly, since the self-styled Molly did not understand the "grip" and had only one single pass-word to back his claim. And so it happened that on the occasion of his being presented to one Cooney, a Molly of note and standing, the latter, having made certain signs which remained unanswered, jumped from his toady-chair declaring that Mack was an elemental liar. The spy brazened the matter out, boldly called the bar for drinks and pretending to have drunk too deeply fell in astupor to the floor. His enemy thereupon proposed to disintegrate the spy by jumping on him, but the "bunch" vetoed this proposal, Mack being admittedly a good fellow. Again Cooney took up the frenzied word, crying:
"I wouldn't take his oath to it acrast his mother's corp. No—not till he brung me a card from his body-master."
To Mack, still prone upon his vertebræ, this was good enough information. He was getting into it by degrees. The Mollies, then, had grips, pass-words, toasts, likewise body-masters; and as he snored, he also registered the facts. Cooney then "quit," and strangely enough Mack, so far from being molested by anyone, was actually taken to the hearts of the Mollies as one of themselves. Thereafter there remained but the inner ring to conquer and Mack, plentifully supplied with money—the result, he pretended, of nefarious tradings and misdoings—set about improving his position. By violent and reckless talk he soon won the confidence of his fellows and as he boasted of having borne a hand in crimes which had actually been perpetrated in years gone by, and of which, as a detective, he must have known the details, the local Mollies began to reflect that in Mack they possessed a "hunch"—that is to say, a man over whom they held a sword and who was at the same time in intelligence, intrepidity and means incomparably above his fellows. He was described about this time: five feet eight inches high, broad forehead, chestnut hair and of verygenial aspect. Accordingly Mack was chosen to be an active Molly. Subsequently and in the course of the judicial proceedings which finally broke up the Brotherhood, Mack was able to show that he had never once engaged in the commission of a planned crime and that by cipher and especially prearranged telegrams he was able in many cases to prevent the further commission of murders in the coal regions.
That the double-dealing duties which fell to Mack were of a perilous nature may be realised from the fact that after a few months in residence among the Mollies all his hair had fallen off, he had lost his eyebrows and his sight had become impaired. During this time his duties compelled him to make unwilling love—the lady wasexigeante, worse luck—to the sister of a high-placed Molly in order to extract special information. And as for the quantities of vile whisky he had found himself forced to swallow round the low bars he frequented, Mack, commonly a sober soul, declared afterwards that this was in many ways the hardest part of his business. A period came, however, when suspicion began to throw its red eye upon him and his death, on general principles and as a possible spy, was finally decided upon. Other men might have excusably enough fled the place, but this was too brave a man to fail his employers just as he was on the point of penetrating to the mystic shrine of the organisation and finding out where "killing orders" came from. One Kehoe, it was, whosuspecting Mack for a spy, called a number of Mollies together and advocated the summary murder of the man. Evidently Kehoe knew something, for at this meeting he adjured his brethren to take rapid action. "For God's sake," he cried, "have him killed this very night that ever was, or half the countryside will hang."
Accordingly it was decided to put Mack to death and men were detailed to do the deed. On that evening, it was known, the spy was to arrive at the Shenandoah railway station, whence a long stretch of lonely roadway led to the townlet of that name. Mack arrived, the sole passenger, and, to his surprise, was met by none of the Brotherhood. This was a bad omen; but he decided to go on, and made his way to the hotel of one M'Andrew, whom he still considered to be his friend. Affecting the usual cordiality, he entered the house and parlour; but conversation becoming at once strained, he realised that serious business was in contemplation; two sentinels were placed outside the house, one Sweeny remaining in the room; he too got up dreamily and left, telling the landlord he was going home. Presently, however, he returned with a piece of snow which he carelessly threw at M'Andrew's feet, where it melted. This meant that time was short and nothing was being done—an established sign. M'Andrew looked at the spy, gave a groan and said: "My feet are sore, I must take off my boots," another sign which conveyed that as men were not coming in sufficient numbers, thebusiness of murdering Mack would have to be postponed. Mack, who, like all Mollies, was well armed, accordingly left the place, making for his lodgings by the highway. Once at home he spent the night in self-defensive vigil and on the morrow, early, two Mollies from a local camp called upon him. With true Irish trust to chance and the possible ignorance of the other man, they declared they had come from Scranton by rail and Mack was well aware that no train arrived at such an hour from that town. These were, however, the men who had been chosen overnight, and after the last failure, to remove him. The spy, always on his guard, told the men boldly he was going straight to Kehoe's house to ask why they had placed him under suspicion. Marching from the house, he made for the hotel of M'Andrew, whom he induced to accompany him to Kehoe's by sleigh. The other two men decided also that they would accompany Mack to Kehoe's and hired a second sleigh. On the journey several stops were made at intervening pot-houses, where the victim-to-be treated his would-be murderers to all they desired in the way of drink—and then some. At Kehoe's the master of the house was preparing to celebrate the slaying of Mack with a dinner to a score of Mollies, and when the man who was already supposed to be a "corp" walked up to the house with a front of brass, followed by his appointed murderers, both sorely besotted, Kehoe began to pinch himself to see if he might be dreaming. In the front parlour,where the spy knew they would not dare to murder him, were a dozen Mollies all celebrating his slaughter in Old Crow, most of them already on the blink. Mack entered the room after Kehoe and did a bold thing: "Boys," he said, "you are a band of foul murderers to seek to take the life of the truest Molly in the whole bunch. Give me the whisky." They handed him a glass filled to the brim and the spy drained it. "Kehoe," he demanded, "what is it you have against me and why do you want my life?" "Father O'Connor knows all about you," retorted Kehoe. "He knows you for a spy." Mack looked at his watch and brazened it out. "Well then," says he, "'tis Father O'Connor himself I will have here, and by God I'll go and fetch him." Passing from the house he met Mrs Kehoe, with whom he was a favourite, and telling her how her husband and his friends had put him on the mortuary list, Mack reached his sleigh, M'Andrew following him. At the priest's house, he was informed that Father O'Connor had gone to a neighbouring town. Under pretext of sending him a wire the spy then drove to the station, reflecting wisely at this somewhat overdrawn point that his mission was now really at an end. He had timed his arrival well but still had a few minutes to wait for the noon train. In the short interval Mack feigned to be busy drawing up his telegram to the priest. The train arrived to the minute, and Mack, waiting till the moment of its departure, threw down the prepared message as the cars were drawing clearof the platform, boarded the last carriage and vanished for good from the coal regions. His next appearance was made in the witness-box at Philadelphia, where his evidence incriminated the leading spirits of the Conspiracy, who were sentenced to long imprisonment, the Molly Maguires passing thereafter into the history of evils that had been.
When the psychology of the Spy comes to be expounded by some master thinker, one wonders if he will emphasise the fact that, more often than not, there is that in the pedigree and antecedents of the agent of stealth which clearly suggests a mongrel breed. Was it not Tacitus who wrote of the half-caste races who swarmed the Roman Suburra, describing them in the memorable words: "Despectissima pars servientium"—the most despicable of the slave tribe? It was among this class that Marcus Crassus was wont to go in quest of recruits for that grand army of touts, quidnuncs and informers who, by bringing him first-hand intelligence of fires, burglaries, murders and kindred daily occurrences in Rome, most of which were pregnant with the possibilities of profit of some sort, helped to build up the monster fortune that made him one of the most important men of antiquity. Your Stiebers and Schulmeisters, too, all in some vague way convey an impression that they are beings who are not quite human, although not wholly brute; living things which seem to come from an unracial stock without stamp or tradition. To a man who has been accorded the honour of a monument inWestminster Abbey these reflections do not, of course, apply. Nevertheless they suggest themselves, and when one reads in the life of John André that "it was not known whether the place of his birth was London or elsewhere in England," one feels disposed not to care particularly whether or not he ever had a father, or if his mother ever changed her name. André, too, was by origin a Swiss, and there is invariably lacking in the inhabitants of Switzerland a specific national cachet or clear racial type. His sire had been born in Geneva, while his mother was a Frenchwoman called Girardot, who in 1751 gave birth to the unfortunate British spy.
To add to the complexities of André's particular case, no one seems to be very certain where he passed the early years of his education, though it seems correct that the best part of his academic training was obtained in that always very cosmopolitan University of Geneva. We are assured that there he mastered several European tongues, that he became an adept in the social arts and possessed an acquaintance with the best classical literatures. It is only, however, in 1769, the year of his father's death, that we really begin to locate him, and then we find him living at Clapton, where his father, a merchant, resided in the local manor-house. At the time of this gentleman's death, André was eighteen years of age and his precociousness seems to be established by the fact that in those days he was paying his addresses to the daughter of a clergyman named Seward,the lady being several years older than himself. Not only that, but Anna Seward was, it appears, a poet and the leader of asalonof sorts at Lichfield, where many well-known literary lights of the day were wont to assemble and discuss the trends of literary and artistic thought and action. Evidently Miss Seward did not take her gallant too seriously, for we hear of him shortly afterwards as a worshipper at the shrine of Honoria Sneyd, who was afterwards to become the mother of Maria Edgeworth. Romance, it is certain, entered generously into the youth of André.
It is clear also that the counting-house of a London merchant's establishment was not at all to the taste of the young man. He had always thirsted for military adventure, and it is not surprising to hear that in his twentieth year, he purchased a commission as under-lieutenant in the Royal English Fusiliers. It may be noted in passing that this was a period in which commissions in the Army—since become an easy enough achievement—were practically the monopoly of men who were far superior by birth and social position to the sons of even the most princely merchants, and there is nothing to indicate that André's father was at all a man of more than moderate means. The point is interesting, however, inasmuch as it points to the psychological tendencies of the young man's mind. His commission duly obtained, André repaired at once to Berlin, where he received considerable insight into the military arts. Berlin,it may be parenthetically observed, was in those days probably the best-organised centre of a vast system of spies, for had not the collector of the famous giant-regiment of Potsdam Guards passed that way a generation before, and was not Frederick the Great still boasting that he had only one cook and a hundred spies? Some authorities incline to the belief that young André, while in Berlin, was already an active spy of the British Government. It is clear at any rate that when after a few years' residence in Germany he returned to England, he became known to prominent officers as a man not only more than usually well informed on all matters of a military kind, but also as a soldier who had fitted himself by very special study for the business of probing the military secrets and plans of other countries.
To the man's personality justice must, however, be done, for it is agreed on all hands that a more captivating or picturesque officer had never worn King George's uniform. Unlike Wolfe, also a man of literary parts, though a somewhat dark and silent person, André was a conversationalist of such fascination and sparkle that his presence in a drawing-room proved sufficient to attract the larger portion of both sexes to its immediate vicinity. Even his male contemporaries all declare that a more lovable being had rarely crossed the social stage, while the number of women of note and fashion with whom the young officer was said to be on that footing which theFrench so expressively describe by the termau mieux, can hardly have been inferior to that which favoured handsome John Churchill in a former age. Great facial beauty, a splendid presence, romantic courage, a reputation for brilliancy in an age which was far from being a superficial one—all these were qualities which we expect in the pages of fiction, but which are only occasionally to be met with in actual experience. They are qualities, nevertheless, which have been the possession of most of the distinguished adventurers of history and it is obviously the consciousness of possessing such gifts that turns your born adventurer towards a life to which he has no definite social or traditional right.
It is often pointed out in the way of evidence of André's particular mission as a spy having been officially forecast for him, that on leaving England for Quebec, where his regiment was stationed, the young officer travelled thither by the very roundabout route via Philadelphia. Here he arrived in September 1774. His experience as a man who had seen much of the military spy system of Frederick and who was in any case an acute observer of all things were facts of which General Carleton, the Governor-General of Canada, was well aware. That officer, coincidently enough, left England about the same time as André, the twain travelling however by different ways. It is assumed, by Americans generally, that Carleton, who foresaw the imminence of the Revolutionary conflict, had directed hissubordinate to visit Philadelphia in the capacity of a commissioned spy, in order to learn all he might regarding the condition of public affairs, the temper of the people and, above all, to obtain some clear idea as to the intentions of the leaders of the American forces. Halting a short while and for the accomplishment of his purpose in the old Quaker City, André subsequently passed to New York and Boston, ever observant, everywhere transcribing, always on the alert. At Quebec he arrived early in November 1774. On the outbreak of the war André was one of the first British officers to be captured by the enemy and for over a year remained a prisoner in several Pennsylvania cities, where his charming personality and accomplishments gave him among the enemy the footing of a privileged guest rather than a captive. He was exchanged at the close of 1776 and rejoined the Army at New York, then commanded by Howe. To that officer André came like some visitor from Fortune herself, for during his late captivity, in the course of which he held practicallycarte blancheto move about the outlying country, the young soldier had always done so with his professional instincts set and with the result that he was able immediately to present Howe with more accurate information as to the military effective, disposition and plans of Washington than the regular Intelligence service could have procured him in three years. A vacancy falling due on the staff of General Grey, Howe procured its reversion to André, giving him the rank ofCaptain. At this time the British Army was moving on Philadelphia.
Literature dealing with the story of Philadelphia in that age presents us with the picture of a city of perennial pageant. The British Army was in occupation in the winter and spring of 1778 and revelry ran long and high in every phase of the social life of Quaker City. Our André was here in his very element and among the acquaintances he formed was that of Margaret Shippen, who afterwards became the wife of Benedict Arnold. "No one," wrote Mr Winthropp Sergeant in 1861, "seems to have created such a pleasing impression or to have been so long admiringly remembered as André. His name in our own days lingers on the lips of every aged woman whose youth had seen her a belle in the royal lines.... He is described as of five feet nine inches in height and of singularly handsome person—well made, slender, graceful and very active, a dark complexion with a serious and somewhat tender expression; his manners easy and insinuating.... If the serious business of life was a part of his lot, there was yet ample scope for the exercise of those elegant arts in which he excelled. His infirmities, if any there were, sprang like Charles Townshend's from a noble cause—that lust of fame which is the instinct of all great souls; and his comely person, his winning speech, his graceful manners procured him universal acceptance, while his freedom from the grosser passions of his fellows was especially observed." Theuniversal gaiety which prevailed throughout Philadelphia was not without its effect on the Army as a whole and the inevitable demoralisation of all classes of society followed. It remains a lasting tribute to the attractions of the fair maids of Philadelphia that the number of irregular marriages which took place among the lower ranks of the Army alone was so large as to necessitate the organisation of special pickets with the object of preventing the wholesale depletion of regiments through long absence or desertion. As Benjamin Franklin declared at the time: "Howe has not taken Philadelphia, Philadelphia has taken Howe," and it is written that on the evacuation of the city by the British forces, 18,000 strong, at least 1000 privates deserted, returning to their sweethearts and lately married wives in Quaker Town. General Howe himself proved far from a shining example to his subordinates or soldiery, indolence and sensuality being his chief characteristics, while there were not wanting those who accused him of malversation of military funds. "He returned to England richer in money than laurels," while Americans are wont to thank him for having given them America, as they put it. His relations with André hardly seem consistent with what we know of that officer's usual discernment. In his honour, André, now a major, had composed and stage-managed a kind of allegorical tourney entitled theMischianza, which was enacted to honour a general who was already under sentence of recall to England. Howe wasin due course succeeded by Sir Henry Clinton, to whom André, on the departure of General Grey in 1778, became chief aide and secretary, a position in which he so clearly proved his ability that in 1779 he was appointed deputy adjutant-general to the British forces in America with headquarters in New York.
We have seen that during his earlier stay in Philadelphia the young officer had formed a close friendship with Margaret Shippen, daughter of a wealthy resident. By 1779 this lady had become the wife of Benedict Arnold, one of the leading Revolutionary generals who was appointed military governor of Philadelphia on its evacuation by the British. Arnold, it was well known, maintained a sumptuous style of living which was wholly out of keeping with his means or position. A princely retinue, a lavish table, extravagance in all things were sufficient, once the British ascendancy had given way to the staid Quaker rule and custom of Philadelphia, to make him an object of distrust among a naturally suspicious community. Nor was Arnold at all a man of high character, whether domestic or public. Already in 1780 he was formally accused of peculation and, though exonerated on inquiry, was reprimanded by Washington for "imprudent and improper conduct." Arnold, who fully expected a complete vindication by his superiors, never forgave them the last implied stigma on his character. He was suspected even then of disloyal conversation with the enemy under adopted names,and his present wrath was not calculated to weaken any predisposition he may have felt towards the commission of an act of supreme treachery. It seems clear that André, an unusually astute judge of character, had fully taken the measure of Arnold and perhaps had already learned something when, on 16th August 1779, he wrote to the General's wife at Philadelphia a rather whimsical letter offering to do some "shopping" for her in New York—a somewhat inconsequent kind of offer if its object was not to discover the condition of the lady's purse. Shortly afterwards a communication was addressed from the Tory side—the Whigs were the Revolutionaries—sounding Arnold and his general disposition, and it is now well established that the correspondence, which ensued thereafter between Clinton and himself, partook of a treasonable character on the part of the American General, who wrote in a disguised hand and assumed the name of "Gustavus" for the purpose of his communications, Clinton not then being aware of the identity or the importance of his correspondent. It seems clear, however, that André, as Clinton's secretary, was well aware of that identity and we may suppose the Major to have suggested the transference to himself of the duty of keeping up communication with the traitor, a transference which accordingly took place. Major André continued therefore to keep in touch with Arnold, himself writing under the name "John Anderson" in a slightly disguised hand. It is not implausibly maintained by somethat in the "shopping" letter which André had addressed to Mrs Arnold in August 1779 he had used a disguised handwriting with the object of making clear to her husband—reasonably certain to see the letter—the identity of John Anderson. Shortly after André had taken a hand in the intrigue, Arnold began to importune his superiors to give him the command of West Point near New York, urging the costliness of keeping up his position in Philadelphia. The request seemed reasonable and was granted by Washington, Arnold assuming the command at West Point, already, it is certain, resolved to surrender that strong fort to the British who were lying some fifty miles below in New York, and for whom the possession of the Point meant a free communication with Canada.
Up till the contemplated treachery of Arnold, the ascendancy of the British had been well maintained on the American Continent. Charleston had fallen and here André had twice risked his life disguised as a spy; the South was in British possession; Gates had been beaten at Camden and Manhattan was in their army's occupation. Arnold astutely chose the proper moment for his act of treachery, certain in that dark hour to produce a strong moral reaction upon the Revolutionaries. In September 1780 the American General forwarded to André a letter asking for a personal interview within the American lines, the Major to disguise himself as John Anderson. André refused to enter the danger zone and themeeting was arranged to take place at Haverstraw—neutral ground—on 21st September. Thereafter it became a matter of somewhat dangerous rumour that André, whose daring men well knew, was about to undertake a perilous enterprise, a successful execution of which must swiftly end the war. A baronetcy, a brigadiership, a large sum of money—these were the rewards Clinton is said to have promised his young Adjutant. It is generally agreed that André faced his present mission with anything but that imperturbability which had marked his departure on similar expeditions. He was saddened, it was said, by an indefinable presentiment of death and impending disaster, and left New York to keep his appointment with Arnold, sailing up the Hudson in the British sloopVulture. Arnold had agreed to send a boat to the sloop at midnight, 21st September, in order to take off the Major, who, on his landing, was led by a friend of the former to the secret tryst on neutral ground. The interview was long, Arnold haggling desperately over the terms of settlement; dawn had already begun to shadow the eastern hill-tops and still the bargain was not square. By five o'clock, however, the men had come to terms, and Arnold, who had horses in waiting, suggested the completion of the details in documentary form at the house of a local farmer, Smith his name. André consented reluctantly, well knowing the house in question to be within the American lines. By ten o'clock the deeds were drawn up and signed; André was inpossession of all necessary information concerning the post to be surrendered. Arnold was to make a show of resistance on the arrival of the British on 25th September, while Washington himself was to be delivered into the hands of the enemy on his return that way on September 27th. Benedict Arnold was to receive some £6500 as a reward for his treachery, a sum which was eventually paid though the surrender of West Point never took place.
On leaving Smith's residence and bidding adieu to Arnold, the Major discovered to his surprise that theVulturehad disappeared. The sloop had been cannonaded during the night and compelled to drop down the river. As the Major considered his difficult position, the vessel returned to its previous moorings and André requested Smith to convey him aboard. Smith refused, pleading reasonably enough that he was afraid of the consequences to himself of rendering such a service. No bribe being sufficient apparently to move the farmer, André found himself forced to remain where he was and to his undoubted peril, until nightfall. Smith offered to provide the Major with an American uniform, but finding it impossible to procure one, gave him instead an old-fashioned coat of the cavalier style, purple in colour, with faded gold lace. A melancholy beaver hat completed the strange attire of the British officer who covered the whole with an ordinary surtout. Contrary to express instructions from Clinton, André took away the paperswhich Arnold had given him at the farmhouse, concealing them in his top-boots—an entirely senseless as well as purposeless proceeding, which eventually led to his undoing. Accompanied by Smith and a negro, André crossed the Hudson at King's Ferry on 22nd September, rode boldly into the American lines, spending, indeed, a night at another farmhouse in the midst of the enemy. On the 23rd, bidding his companions adieu, the Major, following directions given him by Smith, made for so-called neutral ground which swarmed with Tories and where he might feel reasonably safe. Mistaking a turn, however, in the old Tarrytown Road, along which he rode his horse slowly and with some hesitation, he came suddenly upon a group of farmers who were ranging the countryside in quest of suspicious persons. One of them, Paulding by name, wore a Hessian surtout given him by a friend. When André came in sight the company was playing cards, and on the Major's approach, Paulding, the master spirit of the gang, stepped to the front, musket in hand, commanding the traveller to halt and account for himself. Seeing the Hessian coat—a garment peculiar to King George's troops—André stopped his horse.
"My lads," he said, "you belong to our side, I see."
"What side?" asked Paulding.
"The British side," André replied.
"We do," answered Paulding.
André was momentarily taken off his guard."Thank God!" he exclaimed. "I am a British officer out on particular business. I am glad to be among friends once more and I hope you will not detain me."
"We are Americans," cried Paulding, "and you are our prisoner."
Assuming as much composure as he could, André drew Arnold's passports from his pocket permitting "Mr John Anderson to pass the guards to the White Plains," only, of course, to confirm the suspicions of the farmers, who thereupon dragged him from his horse, searching him from head to foot, duly to find the incriminating documents which clearly proved their captive a first-class spy. The Major began by offering them in turn, cash, his gold watch, one hundred guineas, and finally made a promise of one thousand guineas, saying he would remain a hostage in their hands till one of the party should return with the money. "We would not let you go for ten thousand guineas," shouted Paulding, and André's doom was spoken. He was taken to the nearest American post and delivered to the commandant, Colonel Jameson, under his name John Anderson. André at once requested that General Arnold should be notified that his friend "Anderson" was in custody, and the Colonel, an unsuspicious soul, concluded that he could best serve his superior officer by returning the captive to Arnold, under a guard of four troopers in charge of Lieutenant Allen, who was also entrusted with a letter in which the Colonel mentioned that he was "forwardingcertain documents found on Anderson forthwith to Washington," and this was accordingly done. André, to his joy, set out with his escort on the return journey to Arnold's lines. Before the party had progressed many miles towards West Point, a messenger arrived with orders for their return, and André found himself a captive once more in Jameson's lines, the Colonel, on a subordinate's advice, having decided to refer the whole matter to General Washington. In the meanwhile Allen, of his own initiative, had proceeded to Arnold's headquarters with the private letter and report from Jameson to the commander at West Point. For this blunder your true American has never forgiven the simple-minded Colonel.
On 24th September, the day following his capture, Major André, of whose real name and rank the American officers were still ignorant, indited his famous letter to Washington, full of rhetoric and self-justification, in which he advanced several considerations for his release from captivity. Mentioning his name and military rank, he only wrote, he said, to vindicate his good fame, not to solicit security. He was not, he vowed with a strange distortion of actuality, accustomed to duplicity. He justified his negotiations with "a person" (Arnold, unnamed) who was to give him intelligence which should prove serviceable to British arms, a fair ruse of war, he thought. Having concluded these negotiations, he proceeded, he was conducted without his knowledge into the American lines. He had thus become aprisoner and was justified in his endeavour to escape by all means available, and having reached neutral ground, through a disguise, he had been arrested by irregulars. There were gentlemen at Charleston, he concluded, in a half-menacing and highly impolitic phrase, whose rank might be set in exchange for his; in any case they were persons whom the treatment he received could not fail to affect. Washington received this communication after the flight of Arnold who, learning from Jameson's letter, duly delivered by Allen, how perilously matters stood for him, had taken refuge on board the British vesselVulture. The American commander-in-chief gave immediate orders for the transfer of André to West Point, where he arrived on 26th September, under the care of a strong escort commanded by Major Tallmadge, the officer who had advised Jameson to countermand the first order sending the prisoner to Arnold. It was to Tallmadge that André made the memorable confession that he had engaged in the adventure "for military glory, the applause of his King and country and perhaps a brigadiership." The Major asked the American in what light General Washington was likely to regard him.
"He will regard you," replied Tallmadge simply, "just as the British regarded my old comrade and schoolfellow, Nathan Hale. Your fate will be the same as Hale's."
It is not difficult to understand the fierce indignation of the Americans at this critical time,when the black treachery of a commander on their own side is considered, and it was, from the very first, written in the stars that André should receive no mercy, although, indeed, a strong effort was made to exchange him for Arnold whom, in all probability, the Americans would have preferred. In General Washington, above all, there was an elemental severity of the early Roman type which would leave nothing to chance, although the plot had, happily for his own arms, totally miscarried. Nevertheless, with that ideal sense of justice which was found later in his illustrious successor, Lincoln, he convened a military board with the object of making careful inquiries and reporting their "opinion of the light in which the prisoner ought to be considered and what punishment ought to be inflicted." The court consisted of six major-generals and eight brigadier-generals. It was held at Tappan, where Washington had his headquarters. Inevitably André was held to be "a spy from the enemy and only death could satisfy his crime." Washington stood by the verdict and sentenced Major André to be hanged as a spy on the second day of October at four in the afternoon.
At four accordingly on the second day of October 1780, Major André was executed upon an eminence near Tappan village, in the presence of a vast concourse of people. He was dressed in full military costume and white top-boots. A large procession of officers preceded him to the gallows—a cross-piece between two trees. The prisoner'sstep was firm nor did he falter until he saw the gallows, realising then that, despite his appeal to Washington, he was to die as a felon and not as a soldier. His hesitation was only momentary, however. A baggage-wagon, in which was laid a plain pine coffin, had been driven under the gallows, a grave being dug near by. Into this wagon the prisoner stepped, and taking the rope from the hangman adjusted it to his neck, tying also a white silk handkerchief over his eyes. The Major was then told that he might speak if he wished. Lifting the fold lightly from his eyes and bowing courteously, André replied in a firm voice: "All I request of you, gentlemen, is that while I acknowledge the propriety of my sentence, you will bear me witness that I die like a brave man." And taking his last look at the sky, he replaced the bandage on his eyes. The wagon was driven swiftly from under him, and in a few minutes he was no more.
Under the euphemism Secret Service, we describe in England our system of espionage. In common with other countries, espionage has always prevailed in England as essential in some degree to most conditions of our political, social, diplomatic and commercial life, all of which are conducted on the most comprehensive and complex lines. The story of England has, however, revealed but little of the spy in any class and, indeed, next to nothing at all when considered in proportion to the vastness of its national and international relations and commitments, a happy state of affairs which is attributable to the fact that our constitutional liberties represent the nearest approach to the ideal in respect of the completeness of their guarantees. Going back to early periods, it is only in the case of prominent figures like Alfred—who did his own spying, it will be remembered—or the seventh Henry, or Wolsey, that we find there was anything like the beginnings of an organised secret service system. The father of King Harry, through the agency of his lawyers Empson and Dudley, undoubtedly spied out the financial conditions of the territorial nobles as well as the monastic properties, and by doing so,certainly facilitated the seizure of the Abbey possessions when the Reformation took place in the next reign. The agents employed in the case of the wealthy landowners were usually chaplains who also exercised secretarial functions for their patrons, while in the monasteries renegade monks were always to be found willing at a price to put Henry's financial sleuths in the way of obtaining correct information. The Lord Cardinal, there is no doubt, spied on the goings and comings of Campeggio when that legate was in England, and neither is there any doubt of his having spied successfully, and much to the irritation of the monarch, on King Henry himself who retaliated, however, more than once by informing the Chancellor as to certain romantic but very unpriestly trysts of the Cardinal which had come within the royal cognisance. In royal circles, of course, we may be sure that spying has always been the custom, all the more so since household officers justify their persistent attentions on the ground that the safety of the royal person requires that it should be perennially shadowed. Did not Fouché once surprise Napoleon, who was boasting of the superiority of service rendered by his owncorps d'espions, when he informed the Emperor regarding every detail of a nocturnal outing which Majesty had made through Paris in company with Murat, and in the course of which visits were paid, in turn, to a low music-hall, a lower night-house and a cheap restaurant?
To find the first definite shapings of organisedsecret service we must come to the time of Elizabeth when the Intelligencer and the Spy were well-known characters in the society of the period. The Intelligencer proves highly interesting as a study of the purely parasitical life. In general, he started in life as a man who made it his business to learn what was going on at all the main centres of public and private life, trading off the items to men of business, politicians and diplomatists for the best price he could obtain. He corresponded very closely to the Roman quidnunc with whom the Satires of Horace made us all familiar in our schooldays. Who can forget the picture of that oily Nasidienus—what a nose for news the name holds!—whose chief title to dine with Mæcenas depended on the fact that he constituted in his own person a kind of central news agency upon which all the gossip and intelligence of Rome was sure to converge. For indeed, the famous quidnunc had his own corps of reporters whom he employed to scour the City in quest of tittle-tattle for his patron. The Intelligencer or private newsmonger of Elizabeth's age was, it is recorded, looked upon as a highly respectable member of the workaday classes until, to use a journalistic Americanism, he began to "put it over" on his patrons—meaning to say, when he began to supply them with the news that was not, drawing good money in exchange for false intelligence. Like the free-lance of our own day, the Intelligencer had first of all to build up a connection, as the phrase goes, the samebeing remunerative, or the reverse, in proportion to the man's energy and reliability. Since in those days he invariably dealt with principals, it happened not so seldom that he effected a permanent way into the good graces of a wealthy patron, rising afterwards to positions of honourable importance. It is, nevertheless, a fact that the majority of these men deteriorated, and for the simple reason that, deeply versed as they became in the sordid architectonics of life of all kinds, social, political and commercial, they quickly shed their ideals. Their previous experience and knowledge of ways and means had, however, fitted them in a peculiar manner for the business of watching other men and they were invariably sought out by personages of wealth and position to exercise the trade of spy, or common informer. And, accordingly, when Burleigh and his congeners were looking around for plausible excuses for killing off Mary of Scotland, they fell back on the services of an informer who had originally made his bow before the public as an Intelligencer. It is not necessary to go into the story of the mysterious "J. B.," whom one Delbena, an Italian adventurer, had introduced to the English Ambassador in Paris, Poulet, as a man of good birth, but desperate in all enterprises and a traitor to the last fibre of his spinal column. The records of Elizabethan days would seem to indicate either that Burleigh and Walsingham were not very astute judges of the common spy, or else that "J. B." was devilishlyapt in extracting large sums out of credulous statesmen and diplomats, for it is written that having raised many thousands from Poulet on his simple promise to capture an agent of Mary Stuart, whose papers were certain to incriminate that Queen—why, the rascal failed to deliver goods, to use another expressive newspaper Americanism. Then there was the informer Gifford whose early training as a priest enabled him, in his clerical capacity and with forged credentials, to spy on the great Catholic families of his time, in all cases transmitting false yet incriminating information to Burleigh. His nefarious activities brought at least a dozen men to the execution block in those days. In two years another of the species, one Thomas Phillips, also an ex-Intelligencer, had contracted to the Crown a debt equal to the large sum of £60,000 of our own money on account of infamous work done for its ministers, mostly political, be it said. Indeed, the record of the Elizabethan spy constitutes one long chronicle of the bloodiest treachery in the whole history of secret service, since the Tower, if not Tyburn, invariably figured as the last scene in the life of the unfortunate who fell into the hands of the Queen's sleuths. Treachery seems, for all the halo which surrounds our notion of the "good old days," to have played a part in the whole social fabric as universal as it was sinister, nor can the fact be wondered at, seeing that the promiscuous distribution of the confiscated estates of murdered men, whichoften in a day rewarded poor men with vast lands, was an ever-present incentive to the cupidity of the adventurer.
Cromwell, if we may judge by diaries and records of his day, was the best-informed man in England. He had an undoubted faith in the value of secret service and was ably served by the many agents he employed, not only at home, but also abroad, where their activities helped to lay the broad foundations of that foreign policy which is based upon the principle known as the Balance of Power. It was the Protector's custom to invite to his table men whom he well knew to be what the current vernacular of the time termed "trimmers" and what the American calls a "mugwump"; these men he invariably surprised with the correctness of his information regarding the variety of their political friends and relations, as well as of the dangerous company which they frequented, advising them always in a friendly way to beware. The Protector was one of the few statesmen in Europe who remained a perennial puzzle to Mazarin, during whose large ascendancy on the Continent, Cromwell strengthened the foundations of that naval power which has given England for so long a paramount voice in Europe's councils. His successor CharlesII.distinguished himself above all other English monarchs by receiving into his intimate court circle a paid spy of LouisXIV.in the person of Louise de Kérouaille, on whom he conferred the title of Duchess of Portsmouth. This lady, as Duchesse d'Aubigny inFrance, was at the same time drawing a ducal revenue from the coffers of LouisXIV., while it remains a matter of statistical record that in the year 1681 she took in perquisite from the English Exchequer the sum of £136,000—equal to more than half-a-million sterling of our time. There can be little doubt that the capacity for political intrigue of the Duchess, as well as her complete ascendancy over Charles and her own greed of money, contributed at a later stage to swell the indictment which ultimately led to the banishment of the Stuarts. In her Life of the Duchess, Mrs Colquhoun Grant takes a view generally accepted by historical writers, to wit, that the favourite's character was neither vicious nor depraved, that her conduct was not immoral according to the notions of the age, that she was a woman of immense political capacity, while of a tender and affectionate heart. Her political correspondence, in which she exercised her specific rôle as informer to the French court, was carried on with Madame de Montespan, who is memorable as one of the splendid favourites of Louis.