George Washington, Spymaster: Chapters 3–4

by Thomas B. Allen
In this engrossing nonfiction account, Thomas Allen explains how the colonists used spies, codes, and covert operations in order to win the American Revolution.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Chapters 1–2, Chapters 3–4, Chapters 5–6, Chapters 7–9
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. espionage
    the systematic use of spies to obtain secrets
    Espionage tricks were also going on elsewhere.
  2. apprehend
    understand or perceive the meaning of something
    One day Gage received a letter from James Wright, the royal governor of Georgia. “No danger is to be apprehended,” Wright wrote, saying that revolution had not flared up in Georgia or “in the proceedings or designs of our neighbors of South Carolina.”
  3. forgery
    criminal falsification by making or altering an instrument
    Eventually, Wright discovered the forgeries, but the Patriots’ trickery kept British gunboats away long enough for the revolution to take hold in Georgia.
  4. court-martial
    a military tribunal that tries members of the armed services
    Washington decided that he, as commander-in-chief, had the power to have a kind of military court called a court-martial.
  5. liberate
    grant freedom to; free from confinement
    Washington marched into Boston, liberating the city, and then led most of his army to New York City.
  6. counterfeit
    not genuine; imitating something superior
    Hickey was in jail for trying to spend counterfeit money.
  7. sedition
    an illegal action inciting resistance to lawful authority
    Ketcham secretly let the jailers know that he had important information to trade for his freedom. That information led to Hickey’s court martial for “mutiny, sedition, and treachery.”
  8. treachery
    an act of deliberate betrayal
    Ketcham secretly let the jailers know that he had important information to trade for his freedom. That information led to Hickey’s court martial for “mutiny, sedition, and treachery.”
  9. sentry
    a person employed to keep watch for some anticipated event
    While Honeyman was selling meat to the British and Hessians, he was gathering information—the location of camps, the number of troops, the roads without sentries.
  10. notorious
    known widely and usually unfavorably
    It said that Honeyman’s wife and children were to be “protected from all harm” even though they were kin of “the notorious Tory, now within the British lines and probably acting the part of a spy.”
  11. surreptitious
    conducted with or marked by hidden aims or methods
    After Woodhull found the report, he would take out his telescope and check the clothesline of his neighbor, Anna Smith Strong. The British had jailed her husband for “surreptitious correspondence with the enemy.”
  12. courier
    a person who carries a message
    From Fairfield, a courier on a fast horse would take the report to Tallmadge, who would then hand it to the first of a series of riders stationed 15 miles apart on the route to wherever Washington’s headquarters happened to be.
  13. dispatch
    an official report, usually sent in haste
    A British agent in Redding, Connecticut, sent in another report: “Private dispatches are frequently sent” from New York “by way of Setauket, where a certain Brewster receives them, at, or near a certain woman’s.”
  14. elusive
    skillful at evading capture
    Mulligan is believed to have been in contact with an elusive agent named Haym Salomon, a Polish immigrant who spoke German.
  15. circumspect
    careful to consider potential consequences and avoid risk
    When Hunter showed up at army headquarters, Washington felt that Hunter seemed to be “a sensible man capable of rendering important services,” but he knew that it was “necessary to be very circumspect with double spies.”
Created on Tue Dec 10 20:23:41 EST 2019 (updated Fri Jul 11 15:09:55 EDT 2025)

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