The Case of Enoch Crosby, Professedly Cooper’s Spy Editorial Note
The Case of Enoch Crosby, Professedly Cooper’s Spy
John Jay’s role directing or supervising intelligence activities as a member and sometime chairman of the Committee for Detecting Conspiracies bore literary fruit when he served as the inspiration and source for James Fenimore Cooper’s first successful novel, The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground, published in 1821.
After that book’s publication, speculation about the model for the Patriot secret agent Harvey Birch focused on Enoch Crosby (1750–1835), the spy whose activities are recorded below. Crosby was a resident of Carmel in Putnam County who posed as a Loyalist during the Revolution in order to collect information about persons suspected of aiding the British in and near Westchester County, the area in which the action of the book takes place. In this capacity he had worked under the Committee and later the Commission for Detecting Conspiracies. Crosby believed that he had been the inspiration for Harvey Birch, and this theory was advanced with great vigor by H. L. Barnum in The Spy Unmasked; or, Memoirs of Enoch Crosby; alias Harvey Birch, the Hero of Mr. Cooper’s Tale of the Neutral Ground (New York, 1828).1 Crosby subsequently presented details of his wartime service in his 1832 application for a federal pension.2 Much of his narrative was later confirmed by entries in the published Minutes of the Committee and of the First Commission for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies in the State of New York, a source not available to Crosby during his lifetime.3
Cooper’s introduction to the 1831 edition of The Spy (pp. vii–x) revealed that the idea for his protagonist had been suggested by an anecdote told to him years previously by “an illustrious man, who had been employed in various situations of high trust during the darkest days of the American revolution.” While acting as chairman of a secret committee to root out pockets of subversion, that gentleman had employed a shrewd, fearless secret agent who gave the impression of being a Loyalist in order to learn as many secrets of the enemy as possible. Although the novelist did not identify the storyteller, the description of the man’s wartime activities made it clear that he was John Jay, one of Cooper’s close friends. This identification was later confirmed by William Jay and by Cooper’s daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper. Jay, however, never revealed the name of his spy.
Correspondence between William Jay and Susan Cooper in 1854 revealed that the conversation between Cooper and Jay suggested not only the character of the spy, but also important themes for the novel, particularly the importance of patriotism and civic virtue. Like Crosby’s narrative, William described John Jay taking an active role in intelligence activities:
The conversation turning on revolutionary incidents, my Father observed that it was remarkable that men without moral principle had nevertheless manifested the most disinterested self-denying zeal in the cause of their country. In illustration of his remark he referred to an individual who went into New York during its occupancy by the British and there professed himself an adherent of the loyal cause. Availing himself of the opportunities he there enjoyed he acquired and transmitted to the Americans much important intelligence. On one occasion he left the city secretly & proceeded to White Plains, where the New York conventions were then in session. My Father, a member of the Convention, met the man at night in a neighboring wood, and received communications from him. Several times, on learning that armed expeditions were to be sent from the city into Westchester, he contrived to apprize the American officers of the intended excursion, & consequently preparations were made to meet & defeat the enemy.4
Although James Fenimore Cooper confessed his debt to Jay for inspiring the character called Birch, he never saw a connection between Birch and Crosby. Writing to an unknown correspondent on 21 August 1850, he stated that “I know nothing of such a man as Enoch Crosby, never having heard his name, until I saw it coupled with the character of the Spy, after my return from Europe.” Writing in later years, Susan Cooper conceded that “the conversation with Governor Jay was the sole foundation of the character of Harvey Birch,” but she maintained that her father had invented “every incident in the book” except for the use he made of Jay’s brief anecdote, and she stated flatly that Mr. Cooper “never for a moment believed that Enoch Crosby was the man.”5
Regardless of his connection, if any, with Cooper’s famous protagonist, Enoch Crosby was unquestionably the most effective of the secret agents employed by the Committee for Detecting Conspiracies. We find him, in the excerpt below from the committee minutes, being ordered to break up a Loyalist recruiting ring. He did this successfully several times, as his 1832 pension application later related.
1. Local historians accepted H. L. Barnum without question and thus uniformly celebrated Crosby as the inspiration for Cooper’s hero. Among these were William S. Pelletreau, whose genealogy of the Crosby family appeared in the 1887 edition of Barnum’s book; Harry Edward Miller, “The Spy of the Neutral Ground,” New England Magazine 18 (1898): 307–19; Frederic Shonnard and W. W. Spooner, History of Westchester County, New York (New York, 1900), 420; Robert Bolton, A History of the County of Westchester (2 vols.; New York, 1905), 1: 75. On the ensuing debate and suggestions for alternative candidates, see : 333–37; Guy Hatfield, “Harvey Birch and the Myth of Enoch Crosby,” Magazine of American History 17 (1887): 431–33, and “Harvey Birch Not Enoch Crosby,” Magazine of American History 18 (1887): 341; James Deane, “Enoch Crosby Not a Myth,” Magazine of American History 18 (1887): 73–75; Tremaine McDowell, “The Identity of Harvey Birch,” American Literature 2 (1930): 111–20; Warren S. Walker, “The Prototype of Harvey Birch,” New York History 104 (1956): 399–413; Walker’s foreword in The Spy (New York, 1960), 10–11; and John Bakeless, Turncoats, Traitors and Heroes (Philadelphia, 1959), 136–40.
2. DNA: Records of the Veterans’ Bureau, Pension File S-10505, printed in part in : 338–44. Crosby’s deposition was published in its entirety in James H. Pickering, “Enoch Crosby, Secret Agent of the Neutral Ground: His Own Story,” New York History 47 (1966): 61–73; it shows that the old man had retained a surprisingly accurate recollection of events and the order in which they occurred, although he was understandably off a bit with respect to dates.
3. , 1: 27, 47, 48, 80, 93–94, 158–59, 160, 165, 265; 2: 420.
4. Quoted in the introduction by James P. Elliot to The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground (New York, 2002), xvii–xviii.
5. Susan Cooper, “Small Family Memories,” in Correspondence of James Fenimore-Cooper, ed. James Fenimore Cooper (2 vols.; New Haven, 1922), 1: 40, 42; Susan Cooper, “A Glance Backward,” Atlantic Monthly 59 (1881): 204.