Essay On Revolutionary War Spies

Revolutionary War Spies
By Kayne Buckley

Imagine you are in the trail of a revolutionary mail route. You hear people and you know it’s your job to get whatever they’re doing. Back in the revolutionary war times there were spies of all sorts. They used all sorts of methods. Some methods were ciphers, codes, and probably the most interesting, invisible ink. Anybody could spy, but there are some people that you didn’t know spied like Benjamin Franklin. There were others too, and some of them were even traitors.

Secret letters consisted of spy codes, invisible ink, ciphers, hidden and masked letters. All of these methods were used so people couldn’t understand if a message was stolen, or confiscated. According to the article “Spy Letters of the American Revolution” and “Spy Techniques of the Revolutionary War” invisible ink contained ferrous sulfate and water. The code would be in the lines of a normal letter and the code was revealed by adding heat to the paper. Ciphers are another way of communicating in the spy world, both the British and Americans used these techniques. Ciphers were coded letters that

Benjamin Franklin worked for the French at this time, not as a soldier though. Benjamin Franklin was the 10th out of 17 children born. He grew up to be a writer and a printer. That didn’t work so after marrying and his wife dying he was sent to England many times. It was so easy for him to spy in the Parliament because of the family he had. Another famous but despised spy is Benedict Arnold. He was born and raised in Connecticut where he grew up to be a successful trader and leader. He led in a war and was promoted to brigadier general so he had power. In 1780 according to the article “Benedict Arnold, American traitor, born” he met with British Major John Andre and was offered lots of money and a high spot in their army for information, he