5 Things You Didn't Know about Revolutionary War Spies

Spies had to be clever outwit their counterparts in war. Secret messages could be small enough to fit into a button, or rolled up inside the shaft of a quill. These could be written by spies or people hoping to transmit secure messages.

Benjamin Franklin's secretary was in fact a double agent. Edward Bancroft wrote messages to his British agents, who reported to the gifted spy Paul Wentworth, who was actually a New Hampshire native but who spoke excellent French. Bancroft wrote in invisible ink, which could only be read when a chemical was applied to the paper.

Drop boxes, where a spy placed a note to be found by the intended person, could be a hollow in a tree, a cavity in a flower pot, or under a flagstone in a church.

Some messages could only be read when a "frame," covering the unimportant part of the message, was placed over the whole, exposing the actual words which then made sense. Read about Sir Henry Clinton's use of a mask to conceal the purpose of his letter.

Entick's Spelling Dictionary was often used to create a coded message. Two people must have the same edition of the book (for example, the 1777 edition). To write a message, the user found the words in the Dictionary and wrote them in a code, as in this manner: 325/24/8, where the first number was the page, the second the line, and the third the word. John Jay and Richard Henry Lee were two people who used this method.

In Congress's Cryptographer, you will discover how a message from the British commander Lord Cornwallis to his superior General Clinton in New York was discovered under a rock by a river, and decoded by James Lovell, providing important information to General Washington at a crucial time for the Americans. Cornwallis, boxed in at Yorktown by the American and French armies, had to surrender. The contents of the deciphered etter proved invaluable. James Lovell created keyword ciphers for diplomats, including Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Henry Laurens.