It is customary for Americans to declare that they possess no system of espionage in their country, and as a rule this is true of American life under normal conditions. Putting aside the questions of purely detective work and criminal investigation, and in these spheres of police activity America is probably served as well as any other country in the world, we may safely say that there is too much individual or social freedom in the United States to warrant the permanent existence of anything like organised espionage. Nevertheless, politics plays a rÔle in every state of the Union, the complexity and strenuousness of which are not known in any other country in the world, and wherever the political game is pursued with resoluteness and vigour, we may depend upon it that all factions possess what Americans themselves very aptly describe as "inside information" regarding what is taking place in other opposing camps; all the more so, indeed, as success in political campaigns in America means possession and employment of a kind of patronage which is invariably expressed in terms of dollars and cents. Such information can only come by way of emissaries planted in the midst of political enemies, and there is attached to every political organisation a selected body of men who make it their business, for due consideration, to work in other camps on behalf of particular factions. This kind of political espionage is, it may be said, quite as common in England, or Canada, or Australia, or France, or Germany as in the United States, for as it has been said: "So long as there are governments so long will there be political spies, and so long as there are attempts being made to overturn governments by force, so long will political espionage remain a necessity." As in England, or Scotland and Ireland, so in America there is little in the way of systematised espionage, even among the vast community of German-Americans who might be supposed to revert to type, as the Darwinians put it. Over there, as in these Islands, espionage is only organised for expediency's sake and according to the exigencies of any particular scandal, social or commercial, which may require the intervention of the agent of stealth and observation.

Yet, how many Americans are themselves aware that Charles the First sent his agent Randolph to America in order to report on the condition of the Colonies which were even then discussing the question of severing themselves from the British bond? Louis the Sixteenth also sent Baron de Kalb to inquire into the revolutionary spirit which, as a result of the importation of French encyclopÆdism, preceded the Declaration of Independence, and upon the Baron's favourable report, gave the Revolutionaries that aid which led in the end to their triumph. Of Hale we have spoken at fuller length, but have yet to tell how General Washington had his own secret agents within the British lines, from whom he received constant intelligence as to what was taking place in Howe's and Clinton's camp. Major Tallmadge, whom we have mentioned in the story of AndrÉ, was the agent through whom the information was transmitted. At first it was written in sympathetic ink, then a new invention and imported by General Lafayette, which only disclosed its message when the paper on which it was written had been dipped in another fluid. Once the invisible ink was made visible by the application of the chemical reagent which developed it, the manuscript appeared as if it had been written in the ordinary way. Washington was, however, a particularly cautious man. He suspected that the British might very well possess this same sympathetic ink, and conveyed a message to Tallmadge that the latter's spy "should avoid making use of the stain (ink) upon a blank sheet of paper which is the usual way of its coming to me. This circumstance alone is sufficient to excite suspicion. A much better way is to write a letter in the Tory-style with some mixture of family matters, and between the lines in the remaining part of the sheet communicate with the stain the intended intelligence. Such a letter would pass through the hands of the enemy unsuspected, and even if the agents should be unfaithful or negligent, no discovery would be made to his prejudice, as these people are not to know what is concealed writing in the letter and the intelligent part of it would be an evidence in his favour."

James Rivington, editor and printer of The New York Gazette, was another agent in the secret service of Washington. By 1781 this man, realising that the British were unlikely to succeed in quelling the rebellion, undertook, in the interests of his own person and property—for earlier he had sided with the British—to furnish the American commander-in-chief with important information. This he conveyed to the general, written on tissue-paper and bound in the cover of school books. Although Rivington was thus aiding the revolutionary Whigs, he kept up his daily abuse of them in his newspaper, retaining the confidence and good will of the Tory leaders and residents. When in the autumn of 1783, the British evacuated New York, Rivington was, of course, suffered to remain, while other Tories were driven away and their estates confiscated. Major Tallmadge mentions Rivington as "a gentleman of business, of education and of honour," a somewhat stilted way of describing the journalist who, owing to his position, was able to mix with the loyalist families on a friendly and familiar footing, the revolutionary authorities paying him at the rate of £100 a month for services rendered. Soon after the Declaration of the War of Independence the new government of the United States made the then considerable appropriation of £6000 annually for the purposes of secret service. This money continues to this day to be appropriated. It is drawn by the direction of the President in such sums as he may require for specific services, without any voucher being given beyond the certificate of the Secretary of the Treasury registering the fact.

In 1812, it is recorded, President Madison communicated to Congress the commission and correspondence of John Henry, a British agent, proving that while the two countries were still at peace "a secret agent of the British Government was being employed in certain States in fomenting disaffection to the constituted authorities of the nation, and in intrigues with the disaffected for the purpose of bringing about resistance to the laws, and eventually, in concert with a British force, of destroying the Union and forming the eastern part thereof into a political connexion with Great Britain." This work of an agent provocateur naturally aroused great excitement throughout the whole of American Society. No one had really believed that there were persons in New England capable of any idea of secession, although British gold, it was well known, had been heavily subsidising the eastern Press in order to rouse up civil discord. To no avail, however; Henry passed, and the disquiet of the period gave way to a long period of rest and prosperity.

In the Mexican War large sums of money were spent on secret service, and in 1849 Congress made an appropriation of £10,000 for the purposes of enabling a body of spies to be formed who were under the personal direction of the President. After this war the "hire of interpreters, spies and guides for the army" was included among the incidental expenses of the Quartermaster's department, for which an appropriation has since annually been made by Congress. When the war for the suppression of the Southern Rebellion broke out in 1861, large sums were necessarily expended by the officers of the regular army and of the volunteers, on account of secret service. We note one account sent in by General Butler for the payment of fifty dollars for a hand-organ and a monkey. This item was disallowed by the Treasury officers, until it was explained that both organ and monkey had been bought at Annapolis to enable a young officer familiar with Italian to go through the enemy's country to Washington, disguised as an organ-grinder and notify the President of the great Northern uprising as well as of the approach of the Union troops for the rescue of the capital. There was undoubtedly a large number of what Frederick of Prussia termed "double-spies" in the Civil War, and many secret-service men who carried intelligence to Washington also carried Union information back to Richmond.

At this momentous period many of those in the secret service were convicts who had broken out of jail, and neither side derived much benefit from their employment. Blackmail, false charges and forgery were used by them solely with the purpose of obtaining money from their victims. Prominent merchants in New York and Boston were accused on false documentary evidence of defrauding their country. Their books and papers were accordingly seized and their owners paid exorbitant sums in order to avoid arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. One victim remonstrated with the President in the following words:—"It is hard that citizens enjoying a good name who had the misfortune to come into business relations with the Government, should be exposed to such a spirit [espionage]; that they should be dragged from their homes and hurried to a military prison; that they should be obliged to undergo a protracted trial by court-martial, damaging their good name, destroying their peace, breaking up their business and subjecting them to untold expense, when at the slightest touch, the whole case vanishes into thin air, leaving behind nothing but the incomprehensible spirit in which it had its origin." The informers continued, despite all remonstrance, to enrich themselves at the expense of wealthy business men in the North, and many spies then laid the foundations of fortunes which to-day may be counted in the tens of millions. The military spies were doing good work, at the same time, in the South, though it was afterwards admitted that the secret service of the Confederates was far more efficient than that of the Union, the reason being, it was said, that in the service of the South were scores of intelligent women of position who were successful in obtaining at Washington, New York and elsewhere in the North, correct information of the plans and intentions of the Union generals. This was the case in regard to the battle of Bull Run, when a Mrs Greenhow obtained from a Northern politician information as to the advance of the Federal troops. Indeed, the operations of wealthy women-spies in the secret service of the South, during the Civil War, is one of the most curious features of that event. Nor were they all Southern women; many of them were Northerners, and at all events every one of them owed her fortune and position to the principles for which the Union stood. These women watched and waited at official doors until chance or the unguardedness of an employee allowed them to learn the particular secret intelligence they were looking for; they stole maps and plans and most of them had taken lodgings close by the War Office, to which they were wont to invite young departmental secretaries to whom they offered the pleasures of the tea-table and an enlightened discussion of Federal iniquities. Mr Perley Poore, writing in the well-known magazine, The Chautauquan, in January 1887, says: "They smuggled the information which they obtained, in the linings of honest-looking coats and hid the army secrets in the mysteries of innocent-looking bustles; they burned signal lights from garret-windows and crossed the Potomac below Alexandria at dead of night and with muffled oars. At one time the Government had caught and hived over a dozen of these busy Confederate bees in a house at Washington where, in a few days, they beguiled the young officers charged with guarding them and carried on their vocations as before." One of the best known of these creatures was Belle Boyd, the daughter of a Federal official; according to report she was sharp-featured, black-eyed, quick-tongued, of wonderful energy and spirits, twenty-five and—very free. She wore a revolver in her belt, rode a mettlesome horse and easily attracted the attentions and interest of the younger officers from whom she extracted valuable information, though what the officers extracted in return, we are not told. Boyd organised her own corps of women spies who were very much of the same type and character, and if not worse than herself, were apparently no better than they ought to have been.

Many stories are told of the ease with which Confederate secret-service men obtained first-class information from the departments. A young Englishman, member of a Washington firm of stationers who executed contract work for the Government, was once inveigled into giving away an important piece of military intelligence to a secret-service sleuth who had shadowed him from the capital to New York. Both took up lodgings at the Brevoort House, became acquainted and spent several evenings together. The Englishman casually allowed it to be known that he was on terms of particular intimacy with departmental officials and his friend suggested on leaving New York that they should correspond. A few weeks later, the Briton received a letter, addressed to him at Washington, asking if it were true that the blockaded port of Galveston was to be opened—could he find out the facts for a certainty from his official friends. Suspecting nothing, the stationer inquired at Washington and was duly informed as to governmental intentions by a secretary who really knew. He conveyed the news to his friend and was only reminded of the occurrence a few days afterwards when he was arrested and sent under guard to New York. Here he found that a noted blockade-runner had been arrested with the Washington letter in his pocket. The prisoner proved to be his friend of the Brevoort House who eventually received a long sentence, the Englishman escaping only through the intervention of the British Consul. The stationer received, however, no more favours from his official friends and lost a certain fortune through his lack of caution.

At the close of the war many spies who had worked for both the North and the South made their appearance at Washington, where most of them were taken into the services of the war department, at that time under the direction of Lafayette Baker in respect of its corps d'espionnage. When, in the course of time, President Johnson was impeached by the Republican party, Baker, a man of great cunning and resource, set about impressing the public with the value of his services to the country. He sought to prove that a Mrs Cobb had given bribes to members of the Cabinet in order to procure the pardon of ex-Confederates. The funds employed in the impeachment of Johnson were contributed by the distillers, and the secret service of the Treasury Department conceived and organised the "whisky ring," formed of Government officials and distillery magnates. The whisky taxes were divided and about one-half was paid into the Treasury, while the "ring" divided what remained. When the distillers slackened in their production the officials urged them to greater activity, the result being that although the ring included almost every revenue official in the West, many politicians of note and well-known personages in Washington, the fraudulent gains amounted to millions of dollars and for years even minor participants in the combine were pocketing some $500 (£100) a week as their share in the transaction. General Babcock, one of General Grant's personal staff, who was considered to be a member of the ring, was subsequently tried at St Louis, but acquitted, although public opinion always regarded him as guilty and made no concealment of its view that it was only Grant's influence which had procured him his acquittal. During the presidency of the victorious Federal commander, the Secret Service flourished at Washington and was mainly connected with the wire-pulling activities of politicians who saw large profits in contracts for municipal improvements, a form of "political" enterprise which has also become common in Europe since Baron Haussmann, of Paris, showed how much money there is be made in the exploitation of "civic patriotism," as it is called. Mr Perley Poore must be quoted in full in order to demonstrate the method of the Washington ring and its agents. He writes:

"Among its other operations was the execution of a plot concocted by General Babcock and District-Attorney Harrington to blacken the reputation of Mr Columbus Alexander who had made himself obnoxious to the ring. A certain detective one day informed Mr Alexander that he could obtain and deliver to him the private account-book of a contractor which would show the entire rascality going on. These books had already been delivered by the contractor to District Attorney Harrington who locked them up in his safe. The next night two professional burglars were hired to enter the office, blow open the safe and carry the books to Mr Alexander's house. That day Harrington had informed the police that he feared a burglary was about to be attempted and the superintendent, with the whole detective force, was on hand at the appointed hour. When the burglars had performed their work, they walked boldly out at the front door of the District Attorney's office, where they were kindly received by Harrington and his friend A. B. Williams. The principal burglar, having pocketed his fee, bade his confederates good-night and walked home. His assistant, in pursuance of the agreement, started for Mr Alexander's house, followed by the detectives and representatives of the ring. He lost his way unfortunately and Williams was obliged to direct him. He rang the bell for fifteen or twenty minutes, but failed to arouse anybody. He was then arrested by the detectives and locked up. Subsequently he signed an affidavit, at the instigation of Harrington, setting forth that he had been hired by Mr Alexander to blow open the safe in the District Attorney's office and bring the contractor's books to his house.

"The affair was immediately investigated. Harrington and the secret-service officials involved themselves in an inextricable mass of perjury, and then the detective first employed by Harrington came forward and revealed the whole conspiracy. The feeling against the scoundrels who had thus plotted to ruin the character of an upright and honourable man was very bitter. The masks were torn from their faces and they stood revealed in their true colours. The few honest men who had been deceived by their pretences into defending their acts repudiated them utterly. This exposure of the wrong-doings of the Secret Service led to the refusal of Congress to make any appropriations for its pay, with the exception of a small force attached to the Treasury Department. The old Capitol prison was converted into dwelling-houses and nearly all the agents were scattered over the country, many of them becoming connected with private secret-service organisations. As a general rule, these fellows are inferior in intellect and ability, if not in honesty, to the professional rascals whom they occasionally arrest. They often lay traps for weak men in crimes designed for them, and find vulgar employment by those seeking divorce from matrimonial bonds. Secret Service is certainly not a necessity in a Republic in times of peace, and when their virtues and their weaknesses during the War for the suppression of the Rebellion are impartially summed up, it will be difficult to decide whether those who professedly served the Union were a blessing or a curse to it."