AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
The author has often been asked if there were any foundation in reallife for the delineation of the principal character in this book. He cangive no clearer answer to the question than by laying before his readersa simple statement of the facts connected with its original publication.
Many years since, the writer of this volume was at the residence of anillustrious man, who had been employed in various situations of hightrust during the darkest days of the American Revolution. The discourseturned upon the effects which great political excitement produces oncharacter, and the purifying consequences of a love of country, whenthat sentiment is powerfully and generally awakened in a people. He who,from his years, his services, and his knowledge of men, was bestqualified to take the lead in such a conversation, was the principalspeaker. After dwelling on the marked manner in which the great struggleof the nation, during the war of 1775, had given a new and honorabledirection to the thoughts and practices of multitudes whose time hadformerly been engrossed by the most vulgar concerns of life, heillustrated his opinions by relating an anecdote, the truth of which hecould attest as a personal witness.
The dispute between England and the United States of America, though notstrictly a family quarrel, had many of the features of a civil war. Thepeople of the latter were never properly and constitutionally subject tothe people of the former, but the inhabitants of both countries owedallegiance to a common king. The Americans, as a nation, disavowed thisallegiance, and the English choosing to support their sovereign in theattempt to regain his power, most of the feelings of an internalstruggle were involved in the conflict. A large proportion of theemigrants from Europe, then established in the colonies, took part withthe crown; and there were many districts in which their influence,united to that of the Americans who refused to lay aside theirallegiance, gave a decided preponderance to the royal cause. America wasthen too young, and too much in need of every heart and hand, to regardthese partial divisions, small as they were in actual amount, withindifference. The evil was greatly increased by the activity of theEnglish in profiting by these internal dissensions; and it became doublyserious when it was found that attempts were made to raise various corpsof provincial troops, who were to be banded with those from Europe, toreduce the young republic to subjection. Congress named an especial anda secret committee, therefore, for the express purpose of defeating thisobject. Of this committee Mr.----, the narrator of the anecdote,was chairman.
In the discharge of the novel duties which now devolved on him, Mr.----had occasion to employ an agent whose services differed but little fromthose of a common spy. This man, as will easily be understood, belongedto a condition in life which rendered him the least reluctant to appearin so equivocal a character. He was poor, ignorant, so far as the usualinstruction was concerned; but cool, shrewd, and fearless by nature. Itwas his office to learn in what part of the country the agents of thecrown were making their efforts to embody men, to repair to the place,enlist, appear zealous in the cause he affected to serve, and otherwiseto get possession of as many of the secrets of the enemy as possible.The last he of course communicated to his employers, who took all themeans in their power to counteract the plans of the English, andfrequently with success.
It will readily be conceived that a service like this was attended withgreat personal hazard. In addition to the danger of discovery, there wasthe daily risk of falling into the hands of the Americans themselves,who invariably visited sins of this nature more severely on the nativesof the country than on the Europeans who fell into their hands. In fact,the agent of Mr. ---- was several times arrested by the localauthorities; and, in one instance, he was actually condemned by hisexasperated countrymen to the gallows. Speedy and private orders to thejailer alone saved him from an ignominious death. He was permitted toescape; and this seeming and indeed actual peril was of great aid insupporting his assumed character among the English. By the Americans, inhis little sphere, he was denounced as a bold and inveterate Tory. Inthis manner he continued to serve his country in secret during the earlyyears of the struggle, hourly environed by danger, and the constantsubject of unmerited opprobrium.
In the year ---, Mr. ---- was named to a high and honorable employmentat a European court. Before vacating his seat in Congress, he reportedto that body an outline of the circumstances related, necessarilysuppressing the name of his agent, and demanding an appropriation inbehalf of a man who had been of so much use, at so great risk. Asuitable sum was voted; and its delivery was confided to the chairman ofthe secret committee.
Mr. ---- took the necessary means to summon his agent to a personalinterview. They met in a wood at midnight. Here Mr. ---- complimentedhis companion on his fidelity and adroitness; explained the necessity oftheir communications being closed; and finally tendered the money. Theother drew back, and declined receiving it. "The country has need of allits means," he said; "as for myself, I can work, or gain a livelihood invarious ways." Persuasion was useless, for patriotism was uppermost inthe heart of this remarkable individual; and Mr. ---- departed, bearingwith him the gold he had brought, and a deep respect for the man who hadso long hazarded his life, unrequited, for the cause they servedin common.
The writer is under an impression that, at a later day, the agent ofMr. ---- consented to receive a remuneration for what he had done; but itwas not until his country was entirely in a condition to bestow it.
It is scarcely necessary to add, that an anecdote like this, simply butforcibly told by one of its principal actors, made a deep impression onall who heard it. Many years later, circumstances, which it isunnecessary to relate, and of an entirely adventitious nature, inducedthe writer to publish a novel, which proved to be, what he littleforesaw at the time, the first of a tolerably long series. The sameadventitious causes which gave birth to the book determined its sceneand its general character. The former was laid in a foreign country; andthe latter embraced a crude effort to describe foreign manners. Whenthis tale was published, it became matter of reproach among the author'sfriends, that he, an American in heart as in birth, should give to theworld a work which aided perhaps, in some slight degree, to feed theimaginations of the young and unpracticed among his own countrymen, bypictures drawn from a state of society so different from that to whichhe belonged. The writer, while he knew how much of what he had done waspurely accidental, felt the reproach to be one that, in a measure, wasjust. As the only atonement in his power, he determined to inflict asecond book, whose subject should admit of no cavil, not only on theworld, but on himself. He chose patriotism for his theme; and to thosewho read this introduction and the book itself, it is scarcely necessaryto add, that he took the hero of the anecdote just related as the bestillustration of his subject.
Since the original publication of _The Spy_, there have appeared severalaccounts of different persons who are supposed to have been in theauthor's mind while writing the book. As Mr. ---- did not mention thename of his agent, the writer never knew any more of his identity withthis or that individual, than has been here explained. Both Washingtonand Sir Henry Clinton had an unusual number of secret emissaries; in awar that partook so much of a domestic character, and in which thecontending parties were people of the same blood and language, it couldscarcely be otherwise.
The style of the book has been revised by the author in this edition. Inthis respect, he has endeavored to make it more worthy of the favor withwhich it has been received; though he is compelled to admit there arefaults so interwoven with the structure of the tale that, as in the caseof a decayed edifice, it would cost perhaps less to reconstruct than torepair. Five-and-twenty years have been as ages with most thingsconnected with America. Among other advantages, that of her literaturehas not been the least. So little was expected from the publication ofan original work of this description, at the time it was written, thatthe first volume of _The Spy_ was actually printed several months,before the author felt a sufficient inducement to write a line of thesecond. The efforts expended on
a hopeless task are rarely worthy of himwho makes them, however low it may be necessary to rate the standard ofhis general merit.
One other anecdote connected with the history of this book may give thereader some idea of the hopes of an American author, in the firstquarter of the present century. As the second volume was slowlyprinting, from manuscript that was barely dry when it went into thecompositor's hands, the publisher intimated that the work might grow toa length that would consume the profits. To set his mind at rest, thelast chapter was actually written, printed, and paged, several weeksbefore the chapters which precede it were even thought of. Thiscircumstance, while it cannot excuse, may serve to explain the manner inwhich the actors are hurried off the scene.
A great change has come over the country since this book was originallywritten. The nation is passing from the gristle into the bone, and thecommon mind is beginning to keep even pace with the growth of the bodypolitic. The march from Vera Cruz to Mexico was made under the orders ofthat gallant soldier who, a quarter of a century before, was mentionedwith honor, in the last chapter of this very book. Glorious as was thatmarch, and brilliant as were its results in a military point of view, astride was then made by the nation, in a moral sense, that has hastenedit by an age, in its progress toward real independence and highpolitical influence. The guns that filled the valley of the Aztecs withtheir thunder, have been heard in echoes on the other side of theAtlantic, producing equally hope or apprehension.
There is now no enemy to fear, but the one that resides within. Byaccustoming ourselves to regard even the people as erring beings, and byusing the restraints that wisdom has adduced from experience, there ismuch reason to hope that the same Providence which has so well aided usin our infancy, may continue to smile on our manhood.
COOPERSTOWN, March 29, 1849.
MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE STORY OF THE SPY]
[The footnotes throughout are Cooper's own.]