Look Closer

This photograph captures Senator Joseph McCarthy (right) and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn (left), whispering during a break from the Army–McCarthy hearings in June 1954, a televised event that may have inspired Lawrence’s image for Panel 11. During McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the men interrogated American citizens suspected to be communists. Their investigations created widespread fear and discredited many of Lawrence’s fellow progressive artists and friends as disloyal Americans.

Read Closer

Carl Van Doren’s history reproduced this coded message handwritten by military officer-turned-traitor Benedict Arnold to British General Henry Clinton. Arnold informed Clinton and his aide de-camp, John André, of General George Washington’s secret plan to cross the Hudson, a betrayal to which Lawrence alluded in the whispering figure.

Excerpt from Carl Van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1941)

120.9.14.286.9.33-ton 290.9.27 be at 153.9.28.110.8.19.255.9.29 evening 178.9.8 on 131.9.94.287.8.33 to 128 9.24.114.9. 10 289.8.16 he is to .167.9.27. the 116.9.23 12.9.17. and 120.9. the and 290.9.27 160.9.23 at 190.8.32. 153.9. 20

General Washington will be at King’s Ferry Sunday Evening next on his way to Hartford, where he is to meet the French admiral and general. and will lodge at Peekskill.

Arnold’s code note of September 15, 1780, informing the British when Washington would cross the Hudson and might be captured, with Odell’s decoding of the note.