The Story of Lieutenant James Moody of Barton's Regiment

The Story of Lieutenant James Moody of Barton's

Lieutenant James Moody of Barton's Loyalist Regiment emerges in this account as one of the most daring, yet largely forgotten, Scottish irregulars of the American Revolutionary War, a man whose exploits in espionage and raiding for the British crown rivalled those of the more celebrated Major André and Captain Colquhoun Grant. Serving out of New York, the British headquarters after the Battle of Long Island, Moody made his name by repeatedly intercepting rebel mail and despatches, feats requiring nerve, endurance, and a gift for bluff and disguise. His career of daring began in earnest in May 1780, when, still an ensign, he led four men into New Jersey in a failed attempt to capture Governor Livingston, a persecutor of loyalists, and then attempted unsuccessfully to destroy a rebel magazine at Suckasanna. Undeterred, he turned to Sussex County, where loyalist prisoners, including a soldier of Burgoyne's condemned to death, languished in gaol. Through sheer audacity, Moody and six men bluffed their way past the gaoler by impersonating a delivery party and triggering panic with mock Indian war-whoops, then broke in and freed all the prisoners. Fate proved cruel, however: the rescued soldier was later recaptured and hanged under his original sentence. In March 1781, now still an ensign, Moody undertook a mission for Adjutant-General Oliver de Lancy to intercept despatches belonging to General Washington himself. A first attempt collapsed when his guide lost nerve, but a second expedition through a snowstorm in the Haverstraw Mountains succeeded, at the cost of some of his men freezing or starving en route. The feat won him promotion to lieutenant. Weeks later, sent again after rebel intelligence, Moody's party was ambushed on three sides, forcing a desperate leap down a rugged cliff in darkness to escape. Surviving that fall unhurt, his men crept through swamps and were fired upon at close range by a party of seventy soldiers; Moody himself narrowly escaped death, his hat and clothing struck by bullets, before doubling back and slipping free to reach New York safely. Barely pausing, he set out again on 18 May 1781 toward Pompton, fording a flooded river to avoid an enemy-held bridge, and using a decoy who resembled him in build and voice to mislead pursuers and draw troops away from his true route. Through this ruse he intercepted despatches revealing the crucial planned meeting between Washington and Count Rochambeau, and went on to seize two further mail hauls, on one occasion assisted by his young brother. The narrative's climax comes in October 1781, when Major George Beckwith proposed an extraordinary scheme: recruiting a former Congress clerk named Addison, a prisoner of war, to smuggle out the secret papers of Congress itself from Philadelphia. Moody accepted the perilous assignment, taking only his brother John and a trusted companion named Marr, while deliberately keeping Addison ignorant that Moody personally was involved, sensing the risk of betrayal. His caution proved justified: Addison had already sold the plot to the Americans. While Moody waited apart at a ferry-house, his brother and Marr were seized. Alerted by overheard talk of the betrayal, Moody fled just ahead of the pursuing soldiers, hid in a ditch beneath undergrowth as cavalry searched nearby fields, then spent two agonizing days and nights concealed upright inside an empty straw stack without food or water. Escaping by night in a small boat up the Delaware, bluffing riverside strangers with a boatman's rough manner, he made his way back to New York after five days. His brother John and Marr were tried by court-martial, with the Marquis de Lafayette presiding, convicted as spies attempting to steal Congress's secret journals, and sentenced to death; John Moody, only twenty-three, was hanged, a blow that reportedly drove their elderly father to lose his reason. A contemporary Philadelphia bulletin recorded the execution, bitterly attributing such British "exploits" in mail-robbery and espionage to desperation following Benedict Arnold's treason. The account closes without a resolution to Moody's own story: after this catalogue of narrow escapes, cliffside leaps, disguises, and personal loss, the author admits that nothing further is known of Lieutenant James Moody's subsequent life or fate, leaving him a vivid but ultimately unresolved figure of wartime daring and tragedy.

By James Grant · First published 1890 · Genre: Military History, Historical Narrative, Adventure · 2,602 words

First lines

The exploits of this adventurous but forgotten Scot, who nearly perished miserably on an American scaffold, like Major André of the Cameronians, surpassed in some respects even those of Captain Colquhoun Grant, the famous scouting officer of Wellington, so extolled by Napier in his 'History of the Peninsular War.'

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The Story of Lieutenant James Moody of Barton's Regiment is listed on Textopian as a short story by James Grant, dated 1890 CE.

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historical biography · American Revolutionary War · military history · 18th century · British military · loyalist · historical narrative · colonial period · biographical · war story · historical drama · military service

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