Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20131202

Washington need the rain and where did he get it . Guest thank you first off. He has a numbers problem and experience problem and i believe that cops he had 9,000 the british entered the 40,000. Over the whole course guest over the whole course and they get up to 80,000. Washington sees that happened in new york and he was almost annihilated and assault a revolution right before his eyes after all the success in massachusetts what year are we . Guest 1776 is when he really comes over after the success at bunker hill. The british say you want boston i will give you boston and they go to canada to regroup. Washington said i know when they are coming back to new york. So they come back to new york city and he says you cant face them. You can can to be cant beat td so he has to use espionage and the guerrilla warfare. He has to be smarter bandanna. So its only logical that we bring it to he needs a spy force, he needs his own cia and then you find out that he has a huge espionage background. He is noted from the french and indian war. To brush up on those skills so he tells the others this is what we are going to need to do. We need to find these people to help me out. Host to fill in the background tell us briefly what he did in the french and indian war. Guest i know that he was an officer where he had a chance to work with the french and find out what were they thinking here and there. He was able to pick up working with the british and they also made mistakes. He was a aggressive as a colonel at that point and he learned from that. That is another thing which i found fantastic about George Washington who was on the side of a mountain. You would think no mistakes, he owned up to it and he learned for it right before our eyes. He, called everything. So that was my goal. Bring washington to life and what the average ordinary people know in this generation what they are capable of doing by looking at that generation. Host so the british have taken new york in the summer of 1776. What is the importance of new york city in the strategic shape of the war . Why is that so important . Guest this is what i find when people say should i give this to my 15yearold, should i give it to my 14yearold . Guest i grew up on long island, and i love history and social studies and i was just thinking to myself okay is this going to be on the test. Guest it is the center of what would be the new country and its where much of the traffic and the commerce was and the big ships could pull in and out. People knew in new york and they had this other area called long island where you could grow food and you could have cattle and you could actually feed an army like the british army. So if the colonists plan on becoming a country they cant do that as long as britain is there as long as they dont have control over the ports into the area. Host washingtons first idea is nathan hale, right . Tell us that story. Guest keenest bunker hill and wanted to see the action. And i know you notic know this e and out. He missed by a little while. He comes back with washington and theres a familiarity there and a yale graduate. His roommate is Benjamin Talmage and he volunteers to be a spy. Washington knew that he was not prepared to do it and he had no experience, hes extremely bright, robust, ambitious and seemed to be fearless. Against what i understand and concluded as his better instincts as far as we can tell and as far as my research would reveal a couple of days. I sa sold a point at which he crossed and theres a few stories going around about one of them said that he was overheard asking some questions where someone pretended to be sympathetic to what he was doing. Its a trap and he was caught and captured and a few days later he is hanged unceremoniously. There is a debased about the location that i understand was 56 and third. I bb there is a plaque. Some say thats fine. But most important, i want people to say he didnt get hanged on mars. In new york city they are sending a message you are going to go for the other side. You arent going to be a loyalist we are greatly brutally and directed we want this to be over quick. Host he failed because of his inexperience and because hes also a stranger to the area, right . Guest hes from connecticut, the northern northeast, doesnt even know long island as far as we can tell. The witnesses only regret they have one life to lose. The important thing is people chronicled the bravery in which he showed and people also noted and wanted him to see the brutal way in which he died quickly. So he didnt have the technique. Washington didnt seem to have related much. So i they took washington a yea. He knows it took him a year to regroup and figure out where to go from here. Host what conclusion does he draw from this mission . Guest we have to be clear about our objectives and have a way to communicate and it has to be more than one person. There has to be a way to communicate that washington can communicate with somebody familiar with the area. They have to be later than it should be 100 trustworthy and understand espionage and they have to also have a will of steel. The way that i understand it as you move through the book, they had all of the symptoms of ptsd and they were being run down. Everyday was borrowed. They didnt know if today was the last day you were going to be a live. Guest i dont want to drop too far ahead about one of the key spies in this location never get his life together after. When they handed the buck people start asking questions that happened to hit next. So i started looking into see his letters and i see he told brother solomon who by all accounts he is a real strong guy writing letters get it together. Othe war is over. Get out of the house. And it reminds me of what we have learned with ptsd when our soldiers come home they have trouble getting on track because the mission isnt clear and from what theyve experienced. Host who is the officer that washington turns to to help him set up . Guest it would be Benjamin Talmage. Hes a roommate and a fellow graduate at yale. He has shown himself as a natural leader from all indications working under washington and a side note his 55 page biography of 1835 was one of the most fascinating 50 pages i have ever had to read because he was as close to anyone that i know that could say this is what washington was like and this is what he did and i know because i was next to him. So he ended up getting the commission to go over and he comes over and the way that i understand is the first stop was abraham and that was thought to many people host where was he from . Guest he was from and i was just there and at his house from the area. Host and that is where, long island . Guest picture the landfill of codes and they have generations on long island. Back then, i found out that a lot of these families just knew each other because they were very few and they would stay and grow and purchase additional land. So he knew the area and have left to go to school and goes back so the first stop he makes is to the Grammar School Abraham Woodhall who was convinced it would be somebody that he could trust. As far as we could tell he was the last remaining son. His older brother had died and abraham was working and depended on his sisters and parents to really be the man of the house because he was really buff and his dad was kind of sick o that also he was sickly. He reminds me of a steve the kind of person but his heart was in the right place. Host c. Hes a farmer. Guest right and like so many to pick it as somebody as this whole thing you guys fight the war. I have a farmer. Im not ready to fight for it. Just leave me out of this. What happened is the british became so oppressed in many ways and acted like thugs and crooks but it basically militarized the whole area and made militants of people that were in different. Host what did they do to people he knew . Guest he was somebody the british were keeping a close eye on. They said we ought to keep an eye on him once he mobilized him and of course they mobilized him that hes doing some suspicious things and one day he is supposed to get beat up or arrested he cant find his way home. He gets hung up in different activities but they do go to his house and they do find his dad and they pound on his dad and beat up his dad pretty good and host who is an old man. Guest they did it in front of the wife and the daughters of its humiliating and that also sent a message. How much that it seems so remote as much as i despise the british should i really be putting my family through this command im glad you asked thes ask these qs because there are times when the individuals fight to go underneath. I have to lay low for a while. I went out for a while. That is one of the times he said i need to lay low. They are looking at me and number two i need to rethink this. So they kind of picked up the slack. Host did they suggest the next people ask. Guest the next thing and washington is critical if you read the letters. He said i got the movement. I understand. I need a better stuff than this and he went right back into the tone of his letters were listening not much of a writer and i never planned to be. I am doing the best i can but one thing led to another and they realized they had to get somebody that had a reason from a story to be in new york city. Not someone to go a out and leave for a while. It looks to suspicious and that led him to another Famous Family and that was the town townsend y of oyster bay long island. Host and what is their connection with new york city . Guest they had an interesting business and was basically a drive through business. I go back to the house and they described the house back then as a huge mansion. I look at it now and it looks like a five room house. Theres normal houses and after roberts was found to be the spy of 1930 they said lets stop building around here. Lets preserve it. But Robert Townsend had the british on his house and hes the Middle Brother of six. He said we are going to be staying here. So his dad who took these risks in the community along with his sisters they were jammed basically into one room so robert townsen thompson of townd was susceptible to doing this. Number one way the british were treating him and it will living at home. Seeing his dad like this and who was respected by many they basically said they were thought to have signing a note saying they would be loyal to the crowd. The way that they were in that area they would walk around drinking and pounding on people. So he picks up the stakes and she goes into new york city and you read one thing to another and the reason he was such a good spy, he comes off as extremely intelligent and number two, he was motivated. Number three come he understood the shifts because his dad was in the shipping business and how much material was coming in and how much was going out and his information immediately upgraded the quality of the havent identified yet but it would be the ring. Washington said thats the code name under the spy ring and it was the region right next to where washington was born. Samuel culpepper and senior woodhall. The two key members of the ring. Guest how do they get the information to him once they get it in new york and get it out of new york how do they come they got back to the americas . Guest heres the dramatic part. They are able to listen. People talk loud. You might say hello whats going on upstairs . We saw you leaving heading north. Where are you going . Great. And they would go upstairs and have a letter and go to his other location and he would do it after the beginning and end visible ink and it was very precious stuff that he invented or brought to the states. Host lets talk about that. How did it work . Guest i write imagine writing and not speaking about to see the letters that you wrote. Its confusing. Host so it vanishes. You are writing all this stuff down and you put it inside a book. That means you go up to 76 in the book and the page might be blank. That is a message to washington or woodhall if he wanted to bring it to life, that would be good to page 76 and that is where you will find the invisible ink. I dont know if you want me to jump ahead but they got even more sophisticated after. They said what if someone that e figures out that no one goes from webpage to buy page. So they would take the books and we found out from a lot of them they would take them and write in a certain page whether it was a prominent writer at the time and they would send the message that they and the guy that would pick it up for the most part was just again that message if i was to motivate anyone with this book he was a tavern owners Printing Press and i. People watching right now say you cant beat washington. Thats right but can you go in a tavern and be leaving the country and sacrifice for the cause . Thats what we see with the 1. 3 billion fighting force in my humble opinion but they were able to get the message to him. He has a reason to go to the city with his cover story. I have a bar, have a tavern i need to pick up supplies. Every time was careless and every time hes going through and a lot of times they were drunk and hanging out at 55 miles back and he would go through it and package it up and give it to caleb brewster, the captain. I know there werent many hawaii and at that time that he was the one who was a big strong determined and confident so caleb was the only one without a suit. Then he got six guys together and a whaleboat with a cannon on the front and he decides im going to go across the Long Island Sound idio great if your viewers are not family or just picture a body of water causing about 26 miles so can you imagine i was down there doing standup to explain this story in october. It was 65 degrees combine by the water and can you imagine into january and february that is exactly what they did. He would have to go through the british navy and sometimes be the aggressor and to scare them to stay away from them, pick up messages, dropoff messages to the courier. Host sai so hes taking them across to connecticut. And then once it gets to tell mitch how do you get to the end visible ink . Guest not only do you have to use it to write but to bring it to life and there are some passages where hes working on this and his two sisters jump and yell very that goes all over the place. Meanwhile in some level it is at stake and they say we dont have much of it. Host theres also a woman in the spring. Guest there are people that will fight me on this and it is our conclusion that she was absolutely a woman and it seemed when they refer to it in the buck as someone that is good to be an extreme help to us robert seems to be working with a regular and when she joined him after that letter the intelligence picks up and it seems as though she penetrated the social circles and one conclusion leads to another and major andre who is the key figure for the british, very well respected who to a degree is a spy for the british who eventually will be working with Benedict Arnold in the effort to change the world forever. So this woman seems to have infiltrated the social circles and cynically, got that information to roberts and there was extreme danger all around. The other thing that we concluded without a shadow of a doubt is James Worthington not only did he employ John Townsend host what else if anything do we know about . And you are not giving us her name. Guest we dont have her name and i dont think that she would be described as a lady that toomey seems to be somebody that would be perfectly comfortable in the higher and upperclass area where new york city was. Host how was she identified . Guest she is in the letters and for example general washington, got good news. General washington would be number 711 and abraham would be number 712 and new york. 711 might hesitate 86 and you cannot even if you had to be the invisible ink figure this stuff out she was referred to as 355. There are females on the ledger and she is known as the lady. Would you conclude that she would have had to have died after Benedict Arnold came into new york city determined to find out who the spy was that helped to unmask his plot and he went on a rampage to the point where junior quit and said im out, not giving it. He would say forget it. Im not going to come back. They would ultimately get convinced to come back to finish off the war. I believe by the paperback which could be six months i would be closer to naming someone but i thought why reach if i go out of my way to convey convene a separate who live and breathe this every day why am i going to reach the significance of who that woman is . Guest . Host so she is 355 and that is all history knows of her name. Guest i believe somebody will figure out who it is. Host youve already mentioned James Rivington. Guest when i first thought of this project and being passionate about it and not knowing i wanted to give i do ii wanted to learn more, i thought that james was clearly the editor of a loyalist newspaper because he was loyal to the cloud. He had his place burned to the ground prior to the war because they were convinced for the british and perhaps he was. He kept writing and opening up the newspaper. Host said he was getting probritish stuff. Guest yes, good point. And we also want to be in it but only in new york city but also back to britain. Look what the lieutenant accomplished into the plans that the general has for the end of the war. Look how long he thinks the war is going to last and the maneuvers. Is that he would write that indicate the issue from the adjacent coffee shop and jot it down and put it in the newspapers and books, work with him and i believe 355 to get washington and credible intelligence. Host so like most journalists, he knows more than he prints. Itit absolutely and he gives io washington, not his newspaper. Host okay, so we have the whole secret fix and weve got them in place in new york city and also in long island. Key us up with one of the things they accomplished. Give us one story or revelation that they get to washington. Guest one of the big breaks is that the british were bragging about a it to baseball the paper so why is that a big deal at a trillion dollars a month if you go and flood the market that says the patriots market, the new colonies, this new country with courtesy, if you flood if it makes to pay worthless. So they were losing money and losing their homes and leaving their families behind fighting this war. What would be harder than that . Fighting for no money. They wouldve disputed the troops and get them to break up. So washington doesnt just say act like they would act. Its everything from this day on, brandnew courtesy. So we made the adjustment. We won the rain and Robert Thompson is directly involved. Host and that is because the new about the paper . Guest the word got to roberts that in philadelphia, this paper where they are printing it just like ours with the special paper where we get our dollars, the paper was stolen and that was for the british intent. He goes through the cycle back and get it over to washington and washington makes an adjustment and has to act quickly and he does. Host one part about this wearing and we are coming to a break but it seems like a Crucial Point in espionage. How many of the secret six though all of the other six . Host i will tell you what i know. Ipv that Robert Townsend knew all of them. I havent seen interaction with him but clearly because he was very judgmental of the careers, because he would break his book that to get information when he heard that one of them with panic and dump it which happened a few times he refused to work with them after a while. So he was pleased and nathaniel was his brother and evidently he would work with him once in a while so they knew each other. I think that would halt you everybody, no doubt about it. Except for 355, which i have to say i dont know that they interacted. And he probably logically digital know brewster but would have to know what whole because he would do the runs and that was his gig before he stepped in. So they did interact and go. But i find interesting is that they didnt really afterwards they didnt interact much and when there was a barbecue at the end when they all got together, townsend ever showed and when washington said, on i want to go, meet by wing the rest of them went by themselves. Host so it was a safety precaution. So if somebody is called into question severely, he cant spill all the beans because he doesnt know them all. Guest the cia told me to read into this and i didnt really know what it meant. They said you know they did ed drops. If im looking to get information to you, i might say we put you at these coordinates at this block host we were talking about dead drops. Finish that off. Guest they went to langley virginia and i did that because i wanted to make sure that i wasnt so caught up in the story that i was being blurred. I wanted to make sure am i going up the right path and a say in that this is a special group and they told me that especially the dead drops for example how would you define that and they said you have a safe location and i would tell you that going to 66 and third i want to give you coordinates and i believe that. So you are caught, im not. That information is going to be put in a way whether it is encrypted with invisible ink its not going to get you caught were in trouble. A lot of it was on his property, which i went back to last week and ive been to a couple times. We put it in different areas and different offenses. Being able to go through it in his house and then get it to caleb rooster who would lower his way to washington. Host do you see a personality type at all on most of the secret six, any common traits that they have . Guest yes. Humility, patriotism, human because you see it. He took a bullhorn and what they call in the neck and he was like i thought i had a pension. I took a bullet for you. But i see all of that. I see people that are not trained for the war and that is where theyve reacted. The term citizen spy accents. But im not perfect. Im not really built for this but i will tell you why. I believe in the cause and i won the british out of here. I belief they got better as the war went on and you really get the sense that they got their gratification from within because they never got any money. They certainly didnt get anything. I went out of my way to put them in the gravestone there and he is in the back of the barn with hoses sticking out of the barn and leading to the headstone that isnt paul revere host this isnt a plot guest it looks like a junkyard behind him, so thats the way they do it in boston for the people they know it from samuel adams to john adams i know that he wasnt president but would take a war hero served there and would be treated better. Host so there is something quiet about these people and willing to be guest i would call them at a rubble and unanimous. They knew that they were doing something pretty special. In the calls were certainly worth their while. Host you told us how they frustrated a british plot to counterfeit our money and drive inflation even higher than it was already going. They also felt frustrated and an attack on the french fleet. Tell us about that. Guest he quickly activates the rain again after they were down for a while. After the death of the 355. The british are going to go through the flight to rhode island and take out the french before they can get to the land of links. Host said they ar severe com rhode island to newport. There is a chance that they would take some losses and say i wasnt new to this anyway. Im out of here. We probably cant suffer like this. So, washington again may not be in the military mind. You would think that he gets this move its time for the block. You know what he does . He sends somebody into an area where they know that they are going to find some resistance. In the satchel is information that washington is going to attack. So they think that they got the battle plan and washingtons intentions are to attack. They bring it back and look at what they just found in the satchel from a guy that looked unseemly and got away. He said pull the troops back. They pulled a british troops back. They dont want the general to lose new york city had been laying low for a while and he was capable of doing this and they had to worry. So they pulled the van back into the french land. There is no problem. Washington is brilliant, absolutely. They have to find out if the british will know because they will stop them before they come to shore clicks yes to me at all washington that he used their information to debate. Host so they told them he had to do something as then what he does is the saint. Guest but he just shot cannons the way that i understand, it wouldnt have worked. He had t have to let them thinkt they got the secret plans in order to stop it. That is pretty ingenious. Host the british were no slashes of espionage and you already mentioned Benedict Arnold which is the great plot on the other side. So tell us how that developed. Guest he reached out and got to andre. Benedict arnold is the general in the american army. He has had quite a bit of success. But when you really study it, there seems to be a bit of an arrogant guy that feels he has a persecution complex and he always feels hes getting the short end of a stick. He fought brilliantly, uses his own money come has to get reimbursed, goes to philadelphia, has a command, relatively cocky about it and only in aiding alienating a lot of officers. He says if you arent going to get the washingtons deal if the west point in washington knows what its like, so he went to west point and hes still there, and he was supposed to make a former attack force but he made it clear to the british i am looking to come to your site. They dont have a shot. He knows about it and he wants to hes a charismatic officer in the british military. Even with a lot of the americans like, he was very gregarious and a goodlooking guy and he was also in charge of their espionage. His codename was john bolton. So they gave up west point and dont pretend to put up a fight but in the end we overrun and it looks like taken captive, the hudson belongs to the british and it is over. There is also a school of thought and it seems logical but only do they want to give away west point and pretend like they didnt want to but they wanted to hand over washington as well. From the guy that got the commission that he always wanted and the respect. Host so they could get the commanderinchief and hand over the key to the hudson river. Guest and the number one most fortified base in the country. So they get supported. But they knew that it was a general in the midst looking to switch sides and we believed that 355 at the most able to play in that and infiltrated the social service during andrzej talking had a big mouth and like to drink. They do something was going on. Talmage was patrolling that area and they ended up intercepting pager on major andre to turn over west point. Then he gets stopped and as soon as we hear about this arrest hes brought to a local camp hes stopped behind american life. He stopped on american territory. And he is he is in disguise. Host absolute we. Guest he looked like he got out of the shower like an upperclass officer. He didnt look like the guy that he was dressed up to be. He had no money on him. These cowboy forest ranger americans who were just not in the military. They stopped him. They were guerrillas, they were loyal to us that we get money from him. We will shake him down. He had no money with him. There was something about his explanation. He is on the hunt for this officer thing because he has been tipped off. As i write in the book that he seems to walk with perfect style and grace he is not who he thinks he is. So they were ready to give the major to Benedict Arnold. I got this guy. You probably want him. Host a Commanding Officer and back. Guest he arrives just in time it says youre not getting him to anybody. Keep him here. I want to talk to him. It doesnt take long to find that hes a british officer and he had a mission in the letter that he was handing to arnold. They hear about the oppressed and that is by the time they get to west point Benedict Arnold does i have to get out of here. How to approach who he was. They bring up the chambers that still exist today and he has an idea. We kind of agreed after beating each other up after a few years. Hes writing letters and telling washington okay i have an officer here and we can exchange for each other. So there he is. He just walked up and goes. Host he asks for not one point what is going to become of me. He started a fight during squad. He thought a firing squad was becoming an officer if he was to lose his life. So they hang him and evidently according to talmage in his biography and what we found and put in our book there wasnt a dry eye in the place. He hanged because he was in the wrong side of the war. Host what do the british think of their new acquisition . Guest if youre going to ask me what happened to the spies after they kept quiet comeback then even if you are on thwereon the right side if you a spy you would relatively look down on and the judge even if your information was vital. Washington only judged you highly but the average person with duplicity on any level wasnt something to be lauded. On one mission they would provide a momentum that would eventually shift and he first thing when he got to new york city was to work for the spies. If someone found out about this, who were they . That is what we grounded out 355 among the others in a rapid way in the region and host what would have become of her . Guest essentially it was a wrath host describe those. Guest they are brutal. You die of dysentery or whatever disease is running through greed picture a floating prison. They want them off land and not to be a burden and fear they are getting out so people are basically going to these prison chips and we did find a manifest, but again i dont want to hurt the credibility making a leap im not comfortable with and we just said that to the original question, to show you with integrity wit but washingtn had, theres interactions with Benedict Arnold asking talmage to switch sides and join him to bviashe said are you kidding me . Switch sides. Trying to convince washington, can you let me know who they are . You know what he really wanted, you could tell the british host this is before he got caught. Guest so he knew how good of the spies were and he kept his promise i will never read the old who you are or where you are. That is my promise. Host and that is when he still thinks the world of Benedict Arnold. Host excellent officer. Guest both how much were approached and washington. He would indicate up the names. Again, integrity matters. This is George Washington living up to the hype. Why he is in a mountain. He was like thats time and time again he needs to show integrity. Guest i think that he loved that. Host what does that tell you about him . Guest he is resource for and smart. Host theres something about him that likes to secrecy. Guest i cant give you a psychological profile of washington. I would say that he appreciates the effort that it takes to get it and he needed it because it is straight up against the british and doesnt work. But i also think that he loved the process of acquiring it and the process of acquiring it because it took almost all of the attributes that he had as a resource for ms. Aalpha thinking the other guy. Also, as i learned in the leaders they love when the people they teach have the success. Almost as much as if they had themselves. So, as he sees i could imagine him seeing this come together and see the information that acted like islam party at times and give them better stuff and more specific timely fashion as he sees it starts to function so proficiently i would imagine he has a tremendous feeling of pride. Host he was doing this when he was a young man in doing this in a second war of the American Revolution he was the most honest upright figure in the revolution but there is also a part of him that likes the shadows or at least likes running people who were in the shadows. Host how about this kind of anything to win. He is a resource for i. It seems to have been impossible by the way. You have to kill me because i will keep on coming up with my plan in order to outthink you and outmaneuver you. Host how does the secret six react when there are suddenly five under 355 . Guest it went down for a while and in on ended one of ths it talks about washington saying if he wont do this i need you to go to the city and do it. He seems to be destroyed. Robert townsend seems to be taking at the hardest of all of them and considering that we didnt even know for sure that he was a spy i dont get his emotional untold recently. I dont know what his emotional state was, but they were devastated and they went under and at the same time seems to have left. They knew that they could show their faces and they could be suspected. They were scooped up as there was no court of justice. But that is another reason why i concluded that she absolutely was there and took part and she absolutely was killed. Host and thompson never married. Guest many people thought that it was his kid and possibly some of the young adult books written say that she had his baby and died on the prison ship but there is no evidence of that and it seems as though roberts older brother died at a young age and that could have been his kid that he raised because he stayed in the house. And he really didnt amount to much. He seemed to be significantly damaged by the war. He was en route to be a successful businessman. After the war you would find a letter from solomon as i mentioned that said pickett had come you can do it. You have so much going for you. You get and gauge to again and no sign that he did. Host when the rain goes down how long does it stay down . Guest ibb beasties down for less than a year because when it is reengaged it is reengaged when washington has to know and the british know that the french are coming in. So they called out to reactivate and find this information out and in the letter where washington says if junior cannot be poked and prodded we are going to have to find a way. And we needed this information quickly. So sometimes it took a week and i have to get these letters into sometimes two weeks. Host that is a week and a half from getting the information in new york to getting it back to George Washington. Guest to look through it and say this is what we should use independent gives it to caleb rooster. Host the peace treaty isnt assigned until after the war ends, but when the british finally leave new york guest 1783. And it was over since 81. This is where the talmage book and i think that i want to make this clear i know we did in the pre interview. I want to build on what other people have done when you talk about alexander and pennypackers and the ones who found out who Robert Townsend was by matching the signatures and when i see that Benjamin Tallmadge ordered his biography and George Washington wrote his journal, i loved it. Lets make the book better and the story more accurate dont they know that they lost the war . Dot washington monday told him we are going to new york. We are going in. No youre not. We need time to secure some operatives that have been of extreme help to us. Permission granted. So under the American Flag he takes his hat and he secures them showing how good they were. He believed they would be looked at as loyalists and they may be killed or maimed or certainly hurt or wants washington road in and officially became an American City in american country. But they left without a fight. They just need to be pushed out. We need to go to new york now and after we have technically ended the war in yorktown he pulls back and says they will leave soon and when he made it clear that they were coming in, they had a dinner and two or three days later they started pulling out and they went to canada i understand coming up in washington as we put it in the book was saying goodbye to his officers that he thought was for good in 1783 and an emotional speech. He talks about being so with emotion how he couldnt speak at having to come up and touch his hand and he would leave for instance the tavern that still stands today and walked to the barge. I dont go downtown a lot, so i expected this to be perhaps a mile to the walk her or 2 miles. Its right there in the tavern looks the same way looking at the sketches into the photographs and you can actually feel George Washington leave the front of the building and walk out emotionally and get on the barge into go home. Host that is the famous scene that is in all of the history books. But he mean met rivington, doest he . Guest one of the things that we are proud of that came into the book is that torture washington blank greatgrandson wrote that when he got into new york city he saw James Rivington and he heard the change changing hands in the back. Why wouldnt general washington go visit the editor writer of the loyalist newspaper unless of course as his greatgrandson writes he was able to get the naval post, the British Naval post before the battle of yorktown and then rocketed them to the french navy in order to nature provides them in a way that the british still havent figured out why they lost in the battle why they were not successful. If you are the copy that is exactly what they did they went behind closed doors and he reemerged out. That is part of the mystery of this. When i started researching, did not know they hired Robert Townsend but the more that i researched it they hired him to do some reporting to become more successful as a spy because hes more intelligent than that makes more sense because he saw how brutal the british were in new york city and how the thugs and everything going on there. They saw the goodness of america i would like to think instead you know im on the wrong side but im not way to be stupid enough to say it. Host into the british occupied new york. Does he need any of the other secrets to when he comes into the city . Guest the thing that came to mind is definitely often. He stayed at the tavern. More than likely, yes. If theyve met before, so the answer is yes, we know for sure, yes. What i wanted to find out is Robert Townsend, did he meet with his tortured soul that did so much and was forced his hand in many respects and we cannot find evidence that he did. However, his dad was a wellknown patriot that went to jail because of that and it would make sense to me, logically it would make sense. You might walk o knock on the dr because his house is here and he went to visit the prominent family in that area. The Townsend House was here, three blocks away. It might be logical where he might say im going to go say hi to Samuel Townsend at which point he might have said junior. I dont know that moment and i have yet to have somebody remind me that there was that moment. Teddy roosevelt is a cross and he loved this stuff. But he didnt know that there was a patriot in his next. There is an area called the landing where there is nothing but wate waters water i waters d it still exists today and the local legend is that that is where he had met them. It could have easily have been done. Hes a master of keeping things secret. He would never tell but it seems to be there is a strong rumor but if we couldnt prove it, we didnt write it. Host today wouldnt we say that he was depressed . Guest i think so. Host even the loss and the stress of the war thats just the kind of personality. Guest at that time it wasnt looked over as we have been over a few times. I think that logically he had a hard time living up to his older brothers have younger brothers. Host what is the lesson that he would like the readers to learn from this book . Guest how Strong America was at the time not just paul revere, sam adams, john adams and benjamin franklin, but it was every day americans fighting for this cause that they be beefed in that with no credit just wanted to be respected and thats what they be beefed. Just because it doesnt mean that they were not important. Host okay. Terrific book. Guest blank. Appreciate it. Host take care. That was after words, booktv Signature Program which offers at the latest nonfiction books were interviewed by journalists, Public Policy makers, legislators and others familiar with the material. After words airs every weekend at 10 p. M. On saturday, 12 and 9 p. M. On sunday and at 12 a. M. On monday. You can also watch after words online. Go to booktv. Org and click on after words in the book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. Host joining us on booktv is joshua. Before we get into your book what is your day job . I led the white house faithbased initiative and president obamas first term and now i am a columnist for the daily beast and i run a social Consulting Company called value partnership. Host do you have a church . I attended congregation in washington dc. I was an associate professor in cambridge massachusetts. How did you get associated with the president and the faithbased initiative . Guest i started within early in 2,005 and started defending devotionals. I was a staffer doing outreach like a lot of other folks and i decided one day that in addition to policy advice he needs somebody thinking about his soul so i decided to send him an email one day and i have no idea if he would respond if were we like it but he wrote me back and said this devotionals is exactly what i needed today. Would you do it every day . That was six years ago and i have been sending them every day since. Host and what will we find . Find . Guest. 365 devotionals that help him start his day. In addition to that youll find storieyou willfind stories of fe white house. President obama like we havent seen him before at his vulnerable points, how he helped me go on the path to marriage and how he was there for the country and have times like after the newtown tragedy in addition to daily devotional. Did you need his permission . I asked him if he thought it would be a good thing to inspire other people in the same way that these devotionals have inspired him and he said absolutely so i started putting them together a little less than a year ago. What has been the response . Phenomenal. No matter if they are republicans or democrats they say we need to start our day disconnected from politics and the busyness of any given day and really focus on the purpose in life and that is what this is all about. Why did you leave the white house . I wanted to put this book together and share it with people and i had other writing i wanted to do and spend some more time on my personal life. I got married a couple months ago. I was excited about that, too. Here is the book. The president s devotional. And the fact the president on the front. Thanks for having me