The dispute between England and the United States of America, though not
strictly a family quarrel, had many of the features of a civil war. The
people of the latter were never properly and constitutionally subject to
the people of the former, but the inhabitants of both countries owed
allegiance to a common king. The Americans, as a nation, disavowed this
allegiance, and the English choosing to support their sovereign in the
attempt to regain his power, most of the feelings of an internal
struggle were involved in the conflict. A large proportion of the
emigrants from Europe, then established in the colonies, took part with
the crown; and there were many districts in which their influence,
united to that of the Americans who refused to lay aside their
allegiance, gave a decided preponderance to the royal cause. America was
then too young, and too much in need of every heart and hand, to regard
these partial divisions, small as they were in actual amount, with
indifference. The evil was greatly increased by the activity of the
English in profiting by these internal dissensions; and it became doubly
serious when it was found that attempts were made to raise various corps
of provincial troops, who were to be banded with those from Europe, to
reduce the young republic to subjection. Congress named an especial and
a secret committee, therefore, for the express purpose of defeating this
object. 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 from
those of a common spy. This man, as will easily be understood, belonged
to a condition in life which rendered him the least reluctant to appear
in so equivocal a character. He was poor, ignorant, so far as the usual
instruction was concerned; but cool, shrewd, and fearless by nature. It