Photo By Erin Thompson | A hand-colored lithograph depicting the capture of Maj. John André, Currier and Ives,...... read more read more
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by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
BRITISH MAJOR APPREHENDED AS A SPY
On Sep. 23, 1780, Maj. John André, a British intelligence officer, was arrested by three American militiamen. His arrest thwarted the plans of American turncoat Gen. Benedict Arnold to betray the defenses of West Point to the British.
In April 1779, while serving as military governor of Philadelphia, a disaffected Arnold offered information on American forces to 28-year-old André, head of the British Secret Service in New York City. The following year, when Arnold took command of West Point, he offered to surrender the fort to André for ₤20,000. André could hardly refuse.
On Sep. 21, 1780, wearing a British uniform but going by the name “John Anderson,” André arrived on a British sloop to meet with Arnold and accept plans and artillery maps for West Point. Making his way back to British lines, he found his waiting boat had been forced downriver by an American patrol, and he would have to make the 18-mile trip on horseback. Arnold gave the British officer a pass to facilitate his return trip, while André covered his military uniform with a civilian coat and stashed the incriminating papers into his boot.
Mid-morning on Sep. 23, André was stopped by the three New York militiamen: John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Vert. When the men located the papers hidden in André’s boot, they turned the suspected British spy over to Lt. Col. John Jameson, commander of the 2d Light Dragoons outpost near Northcastle. Jameson, under orders from Arnold, sent André under guard back to West Point with a letter explaining the circumstances of his capture. Jameson also sent the papers found on André to General George Washington, who was enroute to West Point himself.
That night, Maj. Benjamin Tallmadge, Washington’s intelligence chief in the New York area, returned from a reconnaissance mission to learn that a John Anderson had been apprehended with suspicious papers. He recalled that Arnold had asked him a couple of weeks earlier to provide protection to the “merchant” Anderson if he required it. Astonished that this prisoner had been sent back to West Point, Tallmadge “did not fail to state the glaring inconsistency” of Colonel Jameson’s conduct “in a private and most friendly manner.” Tallmadge had André returned immediately for further interrogation. At Jameson’s insistence, however, the letter continued on its journey to General Arnold.
The next day, as Tallmadge escorted his prisoner to Washington’s headquarters at Tappan, New York, he took note of André’s soldierly carriage. When Andre penned a letter to Washington, Tallmadge was shocked to learn André’s true identity as well as evidence of Arnold’s treason. Had André made it back to West Point, he and Arnold would have made good their intentions to place the American fort in British hands. Arnold, meanwhile, had received Colonel Jameson’s dispatch, knew he had been discovered, and fled the fort for British lines before Washington arrived.
Upon arriving at Tappan, on Sep. 29, André was tried by a military court and found guilty of spying. Ironically, had he been captured in full British uniform, he may have been spared a captured spy’s universal fate. He asked Washington to shoot him as a gentleman instead of hanging him as a spy. Washington, possibly considering the fate the British handed to Capt. Nathan Hale four years earlier, denied André’s request. On Oct. 2, 1780, wearing his full British uniform, André was hanged.
Having personally escorted and guarded the “most accomplished young man” for so many days, Tallmadge was deeply affected by these events. In his memoirs, he wrote he “became so deeply attached to Major André, that I can remember no instance where my affections were so fully absorbed in any man.” He also acknowledged that British “rage” stemming from André’s hanging led to an increase in isolated violent encounters in the area for several weeks.
Initially buried under the tree where he had been hanged, André’s body was recovered forty years later and reinterred at Westminster Abbey.
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| Date Taken: | 09.19.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 09.19.2025 16:30 |
| Story ID: | 548800 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 21 |
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