Pretending to respond to a leading Setauket-area Tory's request for supplies, Robert Townsend, writing as "Samuel Culper, Jr." used this message as insurance that a message he sent to spymaster Benjamin Tallmadge would get to the rest of the network without being seized by a suspicious British patrol.
Townsend's exact message is unknown, but we do know that less than a week before Benedict Arnold wrote to John Andre, his British cohort, with key secrets, including the recent arrival of the French Fleet. The French Fleet, the largest show of assistance so far from America's new ally, was particularly vulnerable immediately after arriving.
Historians also have the memo Abraham Woodhull attached for ferryman Caleb Brewster, a frantic note urging haste and expressing the belief that the entire future of the country rested on the message Brewster was tasked with carrying.