by Jeff Steinberg-<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 formally securing the independence of the United States, the Continental Army, along with the espionage networks that played such a vital role in winning the war, was dismantled.<\/p>\n
With the Treaty signing and the withdrawal of the last British troops from New York City in November 1783, George Washington formally stepped down as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army and returned to his beloved Mount Vernon.\u00a0 What was left of the Continental Army were two garrisons at Fort Pitt and West Point comprising a total of 80 officers and soldiers.<\/p>\n
Little was it known as the military was being decommissioned that the new nation would, within a generation, be engaged in another war\u2014the war of 1812\u2014with the British Empire, its former ruler. Nor was it generally thought that within a few years, it would be necessary to forge a new Constitution that would define a unified republic, as opposed to a confederation of former colonies who sometimes bitterly opposed each other over local interests.<\/p>\n
Without a formal Army or intelligence agencies, the task would fall to private individuals \u2013 visionaries \u2013 who continued the revolution as loyal Americans and filled the gaps to defend the new nation.<\/p>\n
Many of these visionaries are best remembered, not for the crucial contributions they made to the defense of the Republic, but as inventors, writers, artists, farmers, and political philosophers.<\/p>\n
The fight for liberty by citizen patriots before the Revolutionary War showed what could be accomplished through private networks such as the Committees of Correspondence.\u00a0 Here, we will see that this tradition continued in some of the most unexpected ways.<\/p>\n
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A Vacuum Filled<\/strong><\/p>\n Even after the War of 1812, which was largely fought by state militias (the peak wartime size of the US Army was 36,000), Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison remained skeptical about maintaining a standing army, viewing it as an instrument of monarchic tyranny.\u00a0 This rejection of standing armies and secret police was at the heart of the American commitment to popular sovereignty, the repudiation of European colonialism and tyranny, and the belief that the \u201ccommon defense\u201d was the mission of the entire people.<\/p>\n At the same time, the War of 1812 was a clear reminder that the British and other European powers continued to plot against the new United States.<\/p>\n As a result of the ongoing climate of threat to the Republic during the extended period between the War of 1812 and the start of the Civil War, the defense of the Republic was taken up largely by a network of private citizen patriots, who conducted intelligence and counterintelligence against the European powers seeking to break up the United States, while building an independent, unique American culture.\u00a0 During this period, two private networks emerged, conducting proactive intelligence.\u00a0 Their efforts overlapped.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Society of the Cincinnati<\/strong><\/p>\n Just prior to Washington\u2019s retirement as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, a group of officers gathered at the Verplanck House in Fishkill, New York in the Hudson River Valley. \u00a0The meeting was chaired by Baron von Steuben, and the major speech was delivered by Alexander Hamilton.\u00a0 The group endorsed a proposal drafted by Henry Knox, Edward Hand, Jedediah Huntington, and Samuel Shaw to found the Society of the Cincinnati. The Society was to be a hereditary association comprised of officers who had served in the Continental Army throughout the War for Independence and their successive generations.\u00a0 Living relatives of those officers who died in combat fighting for independence were included among those qualified for membership.<\/p>\n The Society was named after the Roman General Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519-430 BC), who saved the Roman Republic, rejected the offer to be dictator, and instead returned to his farm.\u00a0 He epitomized the citizen soldier.\u00a0 The motto of the Society was: \u201cHe relinquished everything to serve the Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n The Society\u2019s Mission Statement was simple:<\/p>\n On July 4, 1784, French King Louis XVI formally ordained a French branch of the Society of the Cincinnati, with the Marquis de Lafayette as its first President General.<\/p>\n Within a year, the American branch had established chapters in every state.\u00a0 Of the 5.500 men eligible to join, 2,150 became members in the first year.\u00a0 George Washington was elected as the first President General, serving in that role until his death in 1799, when he was replaced by Alexander Hamilton.<\/p>\n Their common bond of wartime service in the Continental Army had produced not only a sense of comradery; they knew the dangers inherent in the weak Articles of Confederation, the lack of a central Federal government, and the lack of resources that had plagued the war effort.<\/p>\n The Society constituted a core of the Federalist faction that fought to replace the Articles of Confederation with a stronger Federal system with a powerful central government under a system of checks and balances that would be a barrier against degeneration into monarchy.\u00a0 Society founder Alexander Hamilton collaborated with James Madison to draft the Annapolis Convention plan of 1786, which formed the basis of the Virginia Plan that was taken up a year later in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n The Society of the Cincinnati convened its second national meeting in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787.\u00a0 Twenty-three Society members were among the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, which also convened in Philadelphia in May 1787.\u00a0 Among the Cincinnati convention delegates were George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Rufus King, Gouverneur Morris, and John Dickinson (Dickinson had served with Benjamin Franklin and John Jay on the Committee of Secret Correspondence, which conducted espionage and counterespionage during the Revolution).<\/p>\n Morris would serve on the Committee of Style that drafted the Constitution and was its primary author, and Washington would serve as the President of the Constitutional Convention.<\/p>\n While it would be incorrect to characterize the Society members attending the Constitutional Convention as a voting bloc, the members were engaged in constant interaction and collectively played a significant role in securing a strong Federal Constitution.\u00a0 The larger Society membership played an equally important, albeit informal role in the ratification debates that took place in all 13 states.<\/p>\n Three Society members served in the first Administration: President George Washington, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, and Secretary of War Henry Knox.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of ratification, the Society performed a critical role as a source of revolutionary pride and preservation of the core Republican values.\u00a0 While individual members played significant roles in the early decades of the Constitutional Republic, the organization shunned any overt political role, particularly during the Jeffersonian period.\u00a0 George Washington\u2019s role as the personification of the citizen-soldier during his two presidential terms did much to silence Society critics who objected to any hereditary organization as a form of aristocracy.<\/p>\n The War of 1812 was a reminder of the sacrifices of the Revolutionary generation and the patriotic battle against the British Empire; and the Society went through a postwar popular rebirth.<\/p>\n That rebirth peaked during the 1824-1825 tour of the United States by Lafayette.\u00a0 Lafayette was the last living General of the Continental Army and was the President General of the French Society of the Cincinnati.\u00a0 Every state chapter held parades, banquets and other celebrations during Lafayette\u2019s tour.\u00a0 It was a period of reflection and celebration of the nation\u2019s birth and the values embedded in the Constitution.<\/p>\n Lafayette also came to the United States with a mission.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Bread and Cheese Club<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1821, James Fenimore Cooper published his first popular novel, The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground. <\/em>It was the first published account of the actual espionage networks in Connecticut, Westchester County, and New York City that played a pivotal role in the victory in the American Revolution, albeit in the form of historical fiction.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Cooper got much of the material for The Spy<\/em> from John Jay, a family friend and close Federalist collaborator of Cooper\u2019s father William Cooper.\u00a0 Fenimore Cooper\u2019s father was a frontier land developer, founder of Cooperstown, New York, and a two-term US Congressman from the area. Jay had been director of counterintelligence in New York during the Revolution and headed the Committee for the Detection and Defeat of Conspiracies, which ran some of the spy networks for Washington.\u00a0 James Fenimore Cooper visited Jay at his Bedford, New York retirement home and drew out detailed accounts of the wartime spy operations in the \u201cneutral ground,\u201d a part of New York which was held by neither the patriots nor the British.<\/p>\n Cooper\u2019s novels were more than popular fiction.\u00a0 He and a group of other republican intellectuals consciously aimed to create a unique American literary culture, promoting principles that stood in stark contrast with the European empires and their literary glorification of a caste aristocracy and feudalism.\u00a0 Sir Walter Scott was the epitome of that English style of contemporary literature.<\/p>\n American writers and painters were intimately connected with the Society of the Cincinnati and viewed the organization as a model for the values they sought to promote through their literary and artistic output: revolutionary nationalism, elite civic duty, and the unique circumstances of American life.\u00a0 Cooper\u2019s most famous historical novels, including The Last of the Mohicans<\/em>, The Pioneers<\/em>, and The Spy<\/em> were built around characters modeled on Cincinnati members.<\/p>\n In 1823, Cooper founded the Bread and Cheese Club, a regular gathering of 35 leading American writers, painters, editors, scientists, and public scholars.\u00a0 Among the members of the Club were several individuals who were also members or close associates of the Society of the Cincinnati.\u00a0 These included:<\/p>\n America\u2019s most prominent artists and publicists formed the core membership of Cooper\u2019s Bread and Cheese Club.\u00a0 William Cullen Bryant was one of the country\u2019s most popular poets, editor of the New York Evening Post, and the founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the sponsor of Central Park. He was one of Cooper\u2019s closest friends and Club associates.<\/p>\n Samuel F.B. Morse, later known for his invention of the telegraph and Morse Code, was one of the most prominent portrait painters in the United States, and a student of Benjamin West.\u00a0 Morse and Cooper were the closest of friends.\u00a0 Along with Asher Durand and Thomas Cole, Morse was a leader of the Hudson River School that created a uniquely American school of landscape and portrait painting.<\/p>\n Washington Irving was the honorary chairman of the Bread and Cheese Club, although he spent much of the period of the Club\u2019s activities living abroad as a US diplomat.\u00a0 Irving\u2019s stories and biographies were crucial to the emergence of a unique American literature.\u00a0 He wrote a multi-volume biography of George Washington and a history of New York City (The Knickerbocker Tales<\/em>), as well as an account of Moorish Spain (Tales of the Alhambra<\/em>). Cooper considered Irving the \u201cintellectual godfather\u201d of American literature and saw the Bread and Cheese Club as an extension of Irving\u2019s work in establishing a unique American culture.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Lafayette Tour and Its Aftermath<\/strong><\/p>\n The Marquis de Lafayette arrived in the United States in 1824, convinced that France and other European countries were ripe for republican revolution.\u00a0 After his own failure to preempt the Jacobin Terror soon after his first return from America as an acknowledged hero of the American Revolution, he was committed to not repeating those mistakes.\u00a0 He sought to recruit some prominent American republicans to return with him to France to aid in the efforts.<\/p>\n Lafayette\u2019s tour under the Cincinnati sponsorship facilitated that agenda.<\/p>\n The New York Committee hosting Lafayette included Bread and Cheese Club members and Cincinnatus affiliates Philip Hone, Gulian Verplanck, Samuel Morse, and William Cullen Bryan.<\/p>\n Cooper was introduced to Lafayette by these close colleagues and attended the New York Cincinnati Society banquets for the French visitor.\u00a0 Lafayette visited the Bread and Cheese Club. Lafayette had read The Spy<\/em> and considered it the finest account of the spirit of the American Revolution.\u00a0 He asked Cooper to write an account of his American tour for a European audience.\u00a0 Cooper agreed and ultimately published Notions of the Americans<\/em> (1828) as a fictional account of the tour incorporating many of Lafayette\u2019s observations about American life.\u00a0 The book strongly promoted America\u2019s republican virtues and the difference between meritocracy and aristocracy.<\/p>\n Lafayette also established ties with the painter Samuel Morse. To commemorate the Frenchman\u2019s visit to New York City, a contest was held with the winner commissioned to paint the official City Hall portrait of Lafayette.\u00a0 Morse won the competition against other major American painters including Charles Wilson Peale, Thomas Sully, and John Wesley Jarvis. \u00a0Morse did the sketches of Lafayette for the official portrait while Lafayette was staying at the White House with the newly elected President John Quincy Adams.\u00a0 Lafayette had been a personal friend of Morse\u2019s father Jedidiah during the Revolution.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n When Lafayette returned to France in late 1825, James Fenimore Cooper and family followed in early 1826, taking up residence in Paris.\u00a0 Soon afterwards, Samuel Morse joined his close friend in France, where he extended his studies of painting and explored Europe\u2019s Renaissance galleries and museums.\u00a0 For two years, Morse was a daily fixture at the Louvre.\u00a0 One of his most famous paintings, Gallery of the Louvre<\/em>, which took him 14 months to complete, was a composite of his favorite works of art from the museum.\u00a0 The large canvas also featured Cooper and American sculptor Horatio Greenough observing Morse painting.\u00a0 Greenough was a member of the National Academy of Design, which was founded by Morse before his departure for France, and aligned with the Bread and Cheese Club\u2019s commitment to create a sovereign American culture.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n As two of America\u2019s most popular artists, Cooper and Morse had an open door to Europe\u2019s aristocratic circles.\u00a0 Morse was in constant demand to do portraits of prominent Europeans, and he used the sittings as opportunities to gather intelligence on the many European machinations and plots against the United States.\u00a0 He kept a running diary of this intelligence, which he shared with Cooper.<\/p>\n Cooper was a frequent visitor to Lafayette\u2019s estate La Grange on the outskirts of Paris.\u00a0 He became a leading figure within the liberal salon circles of Paris.\u00a0 Those circles included revolutionaries from every part of Europe, as well as others in the growing American community.<\/p>\n One of those traveling Americans and close colleagues of Cooper, Morse, and Lafayette was a recent graduate of Goettingen University named George Bancroft, who become America\u2019s most prominent 19th<\/sup> century historian and a future US Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Prussia\/German Empire.\u00a0 Along with another American scholar, John Lothrop Motley, Bancroft would become close friends and informal advisor to Otto von Bismark during the founding of modern Germany in 1871.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Revolutionary Europe<\/strong><\/p>\n Lafayette was correct that Europe was ripe for revolution in 1830.\u00a0 The Second French Revolution (1830-1831) overthrew the post-Napoleon Bourbon restoration under Charles X, replacing him with a constitutional monarchy under Louis-Philippe of the House of Orleans.\u00a0 Lafayette was named head of the National Guard and was the public face of the reform movement.<\/p>\n Cooper chronicled the Revolution, writing detailed accounts of the July events to his political circles back in the United States.<\/p>\n In 1829, during a visit to Rome, Cooper met the Polish revolutionary Adam Mickiewicz.\u00a0 A poet, dramatist and founding leader of the Polish independence group The Philomath Society, Mickiewicz had been arrested by the Russians in 1823, jailed and later exiled to St. Petersburg and Moscow, where he became a close intellectual collaborator of Alexander Pushkin, despite the competing national patriotic outlooks they expressed in their writings.<\/p>\n Mickiewicz was part of the Decembrist circles that launched a failed uprising in Poland in December 1825.<\/p>\n In November 1830, Polish military cadets launched a second revolt to overthrow the Russian occupation.\u00a0 They seized the palace and arsenal in Warsaw.\u00a0 Mickiewicz was the intellectual leader of the revolt.\u00a0 Following two years of war, the Russians recaptured Warsaw and Mickiewicz, along with many other Polish revolutionaries went into exile in Paris.<\/p>\n Cooper had been a financier of the Polish uprising.\u00a0 He and Morse formed the American Committee for Polish Independence in Paris, at the same time Lafayette was heading the French Committee for Polish Independence.<\/p>\n Both Cooper and Morse would describe these experiences as profoundly important in advancing their own republican outlooks.\u00a0 They were eyewitnesses and participants in the revolutions in France and Poland.<\/p>\n Throughout his nearly decade of travel around Europe, Cooper was constantly conducting political intelligence, focused on European elite attitudes toward the United States, developing detailed evidence of the corruption and cruelty concealed beneath Europe\u2019s physical beauty.\u00a0 He wrote a series of novels which were in-depth profiles of leading European oligarchical factions. Cooper was aware that there was a romanticism among many Americans, who believed that republicanism was flourishing across Europe. His writings aimed to disabuse that naivety.<\/p>\n Between 1831 and 1833, Cooper produced a trilogy of novels exposing European despotism.<\/p>\n In addition to the trilogy, Cooper wrote a running series of political dispatches throughout his travels, describing the worsening social conditions and political repression, the hatred for American democracy among the elites, and the dangers embedded in all systems of monarchy and oligarchy.<\/p>\n While these reports were full of detailed profiles of the leading European schemers against America, Cooper couched his political intelligence and counterintelligence in travelogues.<\/p>\n Upon his return to the United States, Cooper\u2019s dispatches were published as a series of five books, collectively called Gleanings from Europe<\/em>.\u00a0 They were published by Carey and Lea, America\u2019s leading publishing house based in Philadelphia, co-founded by Henry Carey.\u00a0 Carey and Lea also published his trilogy.\u00a0 The Gleanings covered England, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany in separate volumes; and were released between 1837-1838.<\/p>\n It is impossible today to adequately assess the impact the intelligence and counterintelligence work of Cooper and Morse had during the 1820s and 30s.\u00a0 What is clear is that they were operating as a patriotic network of activists dedicated to securing the Republic during a period when no other formal security institutions were on guard.\u00a0 Even today, the insights provided by Cooper\u2019s novels and travelogues and the intrigues that were ferreted out by Morse\u2019s penetration of leading European oligarchical circles, enshrined in his diaries and his reports to Cooper that were incorporated in his writings, stand out as examples of high-quality strategic intelligence work.<\/p>\n In the next part of this series, another of the Society of Cincinnati\/Bread and Cheese Club \u201cunofficial\u201d intelligence officers will be revealed.<\/p>\n (Note: this is part four of an ongoing series on the history of American intelligence services, by Jeff Steinberg.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Tags:<\/strong> american intelligence<\/a>, Jeff Steinberg<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Jeff Steinberg- \u00a0 With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 formally securing the independence of the United States, the Continental Army, along with the espionage networks that played such a vital role in winning the war, was dismantled. With the Treaty signing and the withdrawal of the last British troops from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7078536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[213286,239224,38865,4921,11399,6076],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7078535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-history","tag-american-intelligence","tag-jeff-steinberg","tag-patriotic","tag-republic","tag-secured","tag-spies"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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