53
charge of Captain Sheppard,"1 of the New Jersey Continentals. Tallmadge
refused to allow any communication between the prisoners. Though all Wednesday was spent at West Point, no authority has heretofore decided the place of Andre's confinement. I am now able to state
positively that it was Fort Putnam.2 The officer in charge of him was the same
whom we shall meet later at Tappan—Captain Ebenezer Smith, Thirteenth Massachusetts—and the statement was made by him to his son, David—himself a patriot soldier the last year of the war—(who lived to the age of ninety-six,
dying in 1862) and whose grandson, Dr. H. Dyle
Smith, of Hudson, N. Y., is my informant, he having received the details from David.
This explains how Andr6 was able, the next
day, to minutely describe to Tallmadge, as the boat left West Point (or possibly Beverly Dock), how he had expected to ascend the steep height " at the head of a
body of picked troops."—(Tallmadge's Memoirs.)
Smith says he himself was imprisoned in the
provost-marshal's hut, and was there visited by the I Rev. Mr. Mason, a Presbyterian clergyman of New
York."8
That day Washington thus wrote to Greene,
at Tappan:
I have concluded to send to camp to-morrow Major Andre\ of the British army, and
Mr. Joshua H. Smith, who has had a great hand in carrying on the business between him
and Arnold. They will be under an escort of horse, and I wish you to have separate
houses in camp ready for their reception, in which they may be kept perfectly secure; and
also strong, trusty guards, trebly officered, that a part may be constantly in the room with
them. They have not been permitted to be together, and must be still kept apart. I
would wish the room for Mr. Andr£ to be a decent one, and that he may be treated with
civility, but that he may be so guarded as to preclude a possibility of his escaping, which
he will certainly attempt to effect, if it shall seem practicable in the most distant degree.
Smith must also be carefully secured and not treated with asperity.
1 This was First Lieutenant Samuel Shippard, of the First New Jersey (Colonel Dayton). I regret not being
able to secure any detailed information about him.
2 I am indebted to Judge J. O. Dykman for a very interesting letter addressed to him in 1887 by the late William
D. Garrison, of the Grand Union Hotel, New York. The writer says: " I well remember the cell
(casemate) in Fort Putnam, on the arch of which appeared Andre's name. It was the northerly cell
looking east, and had an inside dark cell. The larger (outside) cell had a fireplace, and a grated opening
looking east. On the north side of this cell (on the arch or roof) was, in letters nearly three feet high,
done with a burnt stick or charcoal, Major Andre. The lime had struck through from the mortar, so as
to cover the inscription, and it would not have been seen unless attention were drawn to it. This was
prior to 1858 or '59, when the cell was demolished to build a battery on North Dock."
(Mr. Garrison was a native of the village of Garrison's, opposite West Point, and entirely familiar with the
scenes of West Point itself. Yet, since receipt of the letter, I have had an interview with Colonel P. S.
Micliie, the veteran Professor of Mathematics at West Point, who says none of the casemates have ever
been destroyed. Mr. Garrison may have stated this particular point from hearsay.)
* This was Rev. John Mason, page 54.
