SOURCE: An introduction to The Spy, Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, 1849, pp. iii-vii.

In the following introduction to The Spy, Cooper discusses the basis of the novel and the state of the union since the Revolutionary War.

The author has often been asked if there were any foundation in real life for the delineation of the principal character in this book. He can give no clearer answer to the question than by laying before his readers a simple statement of the facts connected with its original publication.

Many years since, the writer of this volume was at the residence of an illustrious man, who had been employed in various situations of high trust during the darkest days of the American Revolution. The discourse turned upon the effects which great political excitement produces on character, and the purifying consequences of a love of country, when that sentiment is powerfully and generally...