Into the hornet’s nest Arnold went, into the wreckage of the once fine city of Philadelphia, just abandoned by the British army. When Washington selected Arnold as the military governor of Philadelphia, it seemed the perfect post while Arnold’s leg healed. He could not yet ride a horse let alone take the field. But Washington was certainly aware that for all Arnold’s genius as a military leader, he was impetuous, impatient, clearly no politician. He lacked Washington’s near inexhaustible deference to the sensitivities and procrastination of civilian leaders. Nor had Washington any illusions about what his protégé would face in Philadelphia, the largest city and busiest port in the United States. The state’s politics were a volatile tangle. In addition to the raw ideological divisions between loyalists and patriots, the patriots themselves were bitterly divided between radicals and moderates. Although the Pennsylvanians had ultimately agreed to the Declaration of Independence, there had been considerable debate almost until the final vote in Congress. However tactful Washington was about the city and its people in public, in private his opinion of nearly all Philadelphians was scathing. He reckoned, “Speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration and almost of every order of men.”1
Arnold’s task, as Washington explained it, was delicate. He was to maintain order in Philadelphia after the British army evacuated the city in June, 1778. On May 30 Arnold officially accepted the post, taking the oath of fidelity to the United States at Valley Forge before General Henry Knox. His exact instructions were “to take every prudent step in your power to preserve tranquility and order in the city and give security to individuals of every class and description. Restraining, as far as possible till the restoration of civil government, every species of persecution, insult or abuse, either from the soldiery to the inhabitants or among each other.”2 In the wake of the nine-month-long British occupation this was no easy task. As they prepared to abandon the city and their local supporters, the British had counseled Philadelphia loyalists to seek some accommodation with Congress. This casual abandonment of Americans who assumed the British would protect them was alarming. Washington and the British commander had this in common. Washington also hoped Congress would make some accommodation for the Philadelphia loyalists. He was sorry Congress, not in a forgiving mood, did not offer them some protection when the British left, rather than suffer the loss of “thousands of valuable artisans and their goods.”3 As Washington had predicted, three thousand local loyalists, among them many of the city’s most prominent families, terrified of retribution, frantically dragged what goods they could to the departing British fleet and sailed off in a chaotic exodus.4 Behind them the once fine capital lay shrouded in smoke from the fires the British set as they left.
In good military style the British force had burned any equipment they could not move, including ships under construction. The fires burned for two days. Arnold and the first contingents of Continental soldiers entered the city on June 19 to the cheers of residents. What awaited them and thousands of returning refugees was a ruined, filthy, and stinking city: six hundred houses had been destroyed, piles of garbage and excrement blocked alleys and courtyards, public buildings and churches were stripped and desecrated, and shops were boarded up, while a vast store of rations lay rotting in the commissary.5 As British officers left, many looted the city’s homes they had used. John André, whose path was to cross Arnold’s with tragic results, had been living in Benjamin Franklin’s home. As André packed to leave, Lord Gray, his superior, asked him to take a variety of Franklin’s possessions including paintings, books, and a printing press.6 Houses that had been used as soldiers’ barracks were in worse shape. The soldiers had cut holes in the floor, using these as their privy. Little wonder many outraged residents, horrified at what they found on their return, were likely to take revenge on neighbors suspected of collaboration.7
Anticipating confusion if not looting and violence after the British exodus, Congress required that all items be secured until the army inventoried them. It was Arnold’s duty to enforce this act. He was to find that restoring order as civilian authorities returned and assuring peaceful reconstruction was made especially difficult by the rift between Pennsylvania’s radical and moderate patriots. It is questionable whether anyone appointed to this task with these instructions could have avoided the wrath of the state’s governing executive council. The radicals, among them Joseph Reed and Timothy Matlack, the executive council’s president and secretary respectively, were spoiling for revenge. More moderate men, mostly Quakers and Anglicans, men like John Dickinson, Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, and James Wilson, were true patriots but wanted forbearance and reconciliation. Unfortunately they were not in power.
Within a week of their return to the city the executive council members were upset with Arnold. Back in March, in preparation for the British evacuation, the exiled state legislature had passed “An Act for the Attainder of divers traitors” ordering twelve individuals who they claimed supported the British to appear and be voted guilty of high treason.8 This procedure, simply voting someone guilty of a crime, was deemed so offensive by the drafters of the future American Constitution that they specifically banned it.9 It also seems to have been banned by the 1776 Pennsylvania constitution that required a jury trial before anyone could be found guilty of a criminal offense.10 The executive council didn’t seem to care. In addition, between early May and June 18th, in three separate proclamations, the Pennsylvania executive council broadcast the names of some 332 people who they intended to prosecute.11 They were also eager to confiscate the property of loyalists or suspected loyalists who had fled.
Even before the British seizure of Philadelphia the Pennsylvania government had required all white men eighteen years or older to take an oath of allegiance to the new order.12 Anyone who failed to comply was unable to appear in court, serve as a guardian, executor or administrator, receive a legacy, or make a will, and for good measure was liable to paying double taxes. Further, those refusing to subscribe to the oath would be imprisoned for up to three months or fined £10 and had to leave the state within a month, forfeiting their goods and chattels to the Commonwealth and their real property to their legal heirs.13 The disabilities refusal to take the oath imposed were to last for life.
Under these onerous penalties even those unenthusiastic about the revolution were likely to take the oath. Now, after the British had left, nonresidents needed a permit issued by Congress, the Executive Council, or Washington just to enter the city or face a fine of up to £50 and imprisonment at the pleasure of the court. Arnold, like Washington and many leading patriots, was more moderate and more charitable. His instructions, after all, were “to preserve tranquility and order in the city and give security to individuals of every class and description.” Rounding up and arresting large numbers of leading residents and charging them with the heinous crime of treason or disloyalty was not the way to accomplish that task. Washington himself might not have been able to reconcile the executive council to a more generous approach. Certainly Arnold was not. The councilors were furious when Arnold refused to arrest this list of “known” enemy sympathizers.14 Joseph Reed charged Arnold with attempting to protect loyalists.
The relations between Arnold and the executive council were made still worse by personal jealousies and prejudices. Arnold was Washington’s man and Reed was one of Washington’s harshest critics. Arnold was a Continental Army officer and a popular hero. History, as Congress and the council were keenly aware, demonstrated that unless armies are carefully controlled they can be a threat to liberty. Popular generals were especially worrisome. No one wanted another Oliver Cromwell, the parliamentary general who overthrew the English parliament in 1653 and made himself a virtual dictator with the support of the army. To avoid a similar attempt, Congress wanted Continental Army troops, and especially leading officers, subjected to strict civilian control. As one of the army’s greatest heroes any signs of arrogance on Arnold’s part had to be crushed. Indeed, Congress specifically authorized “the supreme executive powers of every State” to monitor “the conduct and behavior of all Continental officers, civil or military” and to notify the Commander in Chief of any “reprehensible conduct.”15
In addition to political differences with the Pennsylvania governing council, there were social antagonisms. Arnold was tired of the austere life in the army and resentful of the sacrifices he and other officers made, risking their lives while civilians, like many Philadelphia “patriots,” led comfortable lives or even made profits on the war. After years of hardships and dangers in camp and battle, grievously wounded and in almost constant pain, he felt entitled to live large. He was not willing to comport himself in the humble fashion the Pennsylvania councilors and Congress felt was appropriate.
Arnold’s lively new aide, Major David Solebury Franks, was to get him into trouble on this score. Franks had been at Arnold’s side during his hospital stay and preceded him into Philadelphia, entering immediately after the last British soldier crossed the Delaware. Arnold ordered Franks to select his new headquarters. Franks chose the mansion of the Penn family.16 It was imposing, elegant, and probably the largest house in the city.17 It was a double house that, with its offices, stretched 120 feet back. It had been General Howe’s headquarters during the British occupation but they had stripped it as they left. Arnold needed to refurbish it immediately to make it suitable for his duties. That expenditure would be resented. So too would the fact he was driven around the city in a liveried coach-and-four, just as Howe had been. Arnold was also anxious to replenish his depleted fortune and immediately began taking advantage of every opportunity his position afforded to do that. All of this offended the watchful council.
To cap it off, while serving as commandant the crippled widower, father of three young sons, courted and miraculously won the hand of the beautiful eighteen-year-old Philadelphia belle, Peggy Shippen, daughter of a prominent family that had stayed in the city throughout the British occupation.
Margaret Shippen, Peggy, was an unusually able and educated young woman. She grew up in a literary household reading the great works in her father’s well-stocked library, as well as the newspapers and political pamphlets of the day. This was a far cry from the lighter fare deemed suitable for most young women of her class. Peggy was born in 1760, the fifth child and fourth daughter of Edward and Hannah Shippen. The Shippens were one of the richest and most distinguished families in America. Peggy’s father and grandfather were judges. The first Shippen in the New World, another Edward, arrived in 1688. He docked in Boston bringing with him a small fortune earned in trade and a knack for investing it wisely. When he married a Quaker they fled Puritan Massachusetts Bay for religiously tolerant Rhode Island where they were granted sanctuary by Governor Benedict Arnold, Arnold’s great-grandfather.18 The Shippens later moved to Pennsylvania, the great Quaker refuge, where they lived on a riverfront estate some two miles deep, investing in land and trade. William Penn’s colonial charter named Edward Shippen the first mayor of Philadelphia. Shippen also served as speaker of the colony’s assembly.
The Shippen men had a reputation for plain speaking and absolute integrity. Peggy’s grandfather was a founder of both the University of Pennsylvania and the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. He was a kind and jolly gentleman, much beloved by his granddaughter.19 Peggy’s own father had followed the same legal career. He held a slew of public offices, many simultaneously. In 1758 he was appointed a vice admiralty court judge. Governor Penn appointed Shippen to the upper house of the legislature. The post of admiralty court judge turned out to be an uncomfortable one as complaints grew about British governance and, in particular, the reliance on admiralty courts to avoid jury trials. In 1776 with passage of the Pennsylvania Constitution, Shippen lost his post of vice admiralty judge and his other offices as well, putting the family in some financial distress. As the political crisis worsened, Peggy’s father refrained from taking a public stand. In 1777 as a suspected loyalist he was put on parole and took his family to their country house on the Schuylkill River.20 In August he was once again free and moved back to Philadelphia. Although often labeled a loyalist, his Quaker background as well as his cautious nature may have been behind his neutral stance. John Adams and George Washington dined at the Shippen table, but so too did British officials.
When war broke out, remaining neutral was exceedingly difficult, especially living in Philadelphia, seat of the Continental Congress. Neutrals risked alienating both sides. Edward Shippen’s best efforts, however, were unable to keep the younger men of his family from getting involved in the fighting. Neddy Burd, the fiancé of Peggy’s sister Elizabeth, fought in the American army. He was captured by the British in the battle for Long Island in 1776 and held prisoner on a British ship. Peggy’s brother, Edward, on the other hand, joined the British army. He was at Trenton, and when Washington captured it in December 1776, he was taken prisoner. Edward was personally freed by Washington, for which his father was very grateful. However, the senior Edward never forgave his son for his reckless act and stripped him of all financial power over the family business. Edward’s responsibilities were given to Peggy, a testament to her father’s belief in her good sense and ability.21 When the British occupied Philadelphia the Shippens remained while other families fled. And they remained when the British left.
Peggy grew into a beautiful young woman, dainty and blond with gray eyes. Lord Rawdon, General Howe’s young chief of staff, reckoned Peggy Shippen the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in England or America.22 She was devoted to her father and seems to have been his favorite. While often described as a rich belle, one of her friends explained that she did not frequent parties, nor behave in a frivolous manner, at least not until the British army took over the city. When the British occupied Philadelphia seventeen-year-old Peggy, rich, attractive, and accomplished, was unable to resist the gala entertainments—the dinners, balls, parties, and theater performances organized by British officers—that transformed the dour, wartime city. A royal navy captain who sometimes escorted her later admitted, “We were all in love with her.”23 That year Peggy’s father began despairing of his sensible and frugal daughter who was turning heads and whose head was turned in turn.
As the British occupation wore on, the darker side of British military behavior became more glaring. General Howe was engaged in a very public affair with a married woman and many officers boasted of fathering illegitimate children. Fortunately for the American cause, during those months devoted to pleasure Howe and his men never attacked Washington’s destitute and starving army, bivouacked only a few miles away at Valley Forge.
When the British withdrew after months of partying, the city was left in appalling condition. Thousands of residents who enjoyed those months of gaiety now fled with the British. Others like the Shippens remained to face the wrath of Congress and Pennsylvania’s radical government and of neighbors returning to despoiled homes. It was Arnold’s delicate task to keep order and some semblance of harmony as the refugees returned.
In the process of tackling his new responsibilities, Arnold met and fell deeply in love with Peggy Shippen, belle of the British occupation of Philadelphia. They met at a gala on July 4 to celebrate the second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Over the dinner table and in the newspapers Peggy had learned of Arnold’s daring military exploits in 1776 and 1777. A new ship commissioned for the Pennsylvania navy was named for Arnold.24 It was scarcely more than two months since Arnold was pressing his unwanted attentions on Betsy DeBlois. Whatever Miss DeBlois’s attractions, however, they surely paled in comparison to Peggy’s. For Arnold it was love at first sight; for Peggy it was the flattering attention of the war’s daring and wounded hero, military commander of her city. In September he wrote Peggy the same letter of passion and commitment he had sent to Betsy. Why waste such an excellent letter? This time it was to meet with a more positive response, although not at first. As custom and courtesy demanded, Arnold also wrote to her father explaining that his “fortune is not large, though sufficient (not to depend upon my expectations) to make us both happy. I neither expect nor wish one with Miss Shippen.”25 He mentioned his reputation, “My public character is well known: my private one is, I hope, irreproachable,” and referred to his three “lovely children.” Arnold then addressed “Our difference in political sentiments,” hoping that would be “no bar to my happiness . . . I flatter myself the time is at hand when our unhappy contest will be at an end, and peace and domestic happiness be restored to everyone.” Differences in “political sentiments” seem not to have been a bar, or at least not the only bar for Judge Shippen, although Arnold was refused at first. Arnold continued his siege of fair Peggy, and by February the two were betrothed.
Meeting Peggy in July did not divert Arnold from seeking a more suitable post, even one that would take him away from her. The navy appealed to him. Unlike a field command his injury would not be such a handicap, and he had a lifetime’s experience with sailing. Privateering also would help refurbish his sadly diminished fortune. On July 19 he wrote to Washington pointing out that although his wounds “are in a fair way and less painful than usual,” he saw “little prospect of my being able to take the field for a considerable time.”26 Since he had been “obliged entirely to neglect my private affairs since I have been in the service,” he wished to retire from public business, “unless an offer which my friends have mentioned should be made to me of the command of the Navy to which my being wounded would not be so great an objection as it would remaining in the Army.” He asked Washington’s “sentiments respecting a command in the Navy.” Despite all Arnold’s sensible arguments and the extraordinary skill he had demonstrated in building and commanding the little fleet on Lake Champlain, despite his unsuitableness for his post in Philadelphia, Washington demurred, replying on August 3 that he was happy to hear Arnold’s wounds were healing and wishing a situation for him where he “can be of the greatest advantage and where abilities like yours may not be lost to the public.” However, Washington claimed to be “no competent judge in marine matters to offer advice on a subject so far out of my line.” Instead of agreeing to a naval command Washington responded that Arnold was the best judge in the case.27 It is unclear why Washington took this line. Perhaps he wanted Arnold to remain in the army. Arnold was his best field officer and one whose loyalty he could count on. Congress would have had to make the naval appointment in any case, but Washington’s help would probably have sealed the deal since the authorities were already unhappy with Arnold as military commander of Philadelphia and would have been relieved to see him off to sea. A chance was lost that might have been beneficial to both the American cause and Arnold’s future. Instead he was doomed to remain at his post in Philadelphia or retire from the army. He remained at his post. Sadly, the dye was cast.
With the option of a naval post quashed for the time being, Arnold proceeded to take advantage of opportunities that came his way to replenish his personal funds. His eagerness to do so clearly had many causes. His recent visit home made clear how depleted his fortune was and how few prospects wartime provided to restore it. How could Arnold forget that his father had become a debtor, bringing deep humiliation to his family? Arnold had been pulled out of boarding school and lost the opportunity to attend college. Certainly that disgrace and hardship must not happen to his own sons. Arnold himself had been bankrupt briefly, but with help and hard work had managed to recoup his losses. Others depended on him for support. He had a sister and three children and hoped to marry a young woman used to luxury. As for the propriety of seeking profit, he and other members of the army, including Washington, were thoroughly disgusted with the profiteering, complacency, and even scorn of civilians living in comparative safety while the troops who fought for them endured hardship, mortal danger, and penury. Congress had not paid him for three years but that didn’t keep delegates from demanding that he scrupulously account for every penny that had been advanced for his military campaigns. Now his opportunity to serve his country and his pocketbook with a command at sea had been denied. Other expedients were necessary to secure his and his family’s future and he took them.
Some of Arnold’s questionable decisions as commander of Philadelphia were made with an eye for turning a profit, others were simply done from a sense of justice to injured parties. The result was a series of misadventures that made him even more toxic, if possible, in the eyes of the executive council. For example, Congress had ordered all the shops in Philadelphia closed until the army could inventory the contents. But Arnold needed to refurbish the Penn mansion promptly, which he did in grand style. The army badly needed clothing. He made a private deal with the clothier general of the army, James Mease, and his assistant William West to purchase goods for the army and other items at their own risk. These other goods were to be sold for the benefit of Arnold, Mease, and West.28 The shops of other merchants, however, were still ordered to be closed. While this would be one of the charges of the executive council against Arnold for abusing his position, apparently the practice was not unusual for commanding generals at the time.29 Historian Carl Van Doren points out that other American generals “paid in falling currency at a time of falling prices, even engaged in speculations, like many citizens whose love of country did not interfere with their love of profits.”30 In Arnold’s case it’s unclear whether the sale of items for profit ever took place.
A naval venture involving the sloop Charming Nancy began in June when Arnold was still at Valley Forge before leaving for Philadelphia.31 The ship’s owner, Philadelphia merchant Robert Shewell, asked permission to sail the ship and her cargo out of the Delaware River, then held by the British, to a port held by Americans. That day he approached Arnold Congress voted that no property was to leave Philadelphia until it was clear who the owners were. Arnold is unlikely to have known of this act and on his own initiative gave Robert Shewell a safe conduct pass for the Charming Nancy. With Arnold’s pass the ship set sail with a cargo of commodities that would have been subject to the order of Congress. Shewell’s two partners were from New York, then in British hands, and had brought their ship to Philadelphia planning to sell the cargo to the British. Arnold doesn’t seem to have had a financial interest in the ship at that time although he did later. In any event his protection failed to shield the vessel from American privateers. A New Jersey admiralty judge released the ship from its captors back into the hands of its owners.
Arnold also involved himself in the conflict over the proper ownership of a prize ship. In early September Gideon Olmsted from Arnold’s home state of Connecticut and three other Americans were seized and impressed by the British navy for their trade ship Active on a voyage from Jamaica to New York. Since a British prison likely awaited them when they docked, the four Americans managed to take over the ship, locking the officers up and overpowering the crew. They then sailed for Egg Harbor, New Jersey. When they were off Chestnut Neck, New Jersey, the Active was captured and brought to shore by the privateer Convention, owned by Pennsylvania. Another American privateer also claimed to have assisted in the capture. There were doubts whether the four Americans could have overpowered the captain and crew of the Active. The fight over profits from the sale of the ship and its cargo became a legal landmark. A Pennsylvania judge and jury awarded the four mutineers just one quarter of the value of the prize. Arnold took up their cause advancing money for an appeal to Congress in return for splitting any award. A committee of Congress did find in their favor ordering the monies from the ship’s sale to go to Olmsted and his three colleagues. But the Pennsylvania court refused to back down.32 Congress was unwilling to contest the result and Arnold lost his considerable advance.
When British vessels attacked Egg Harbor in October, burning houses and ships, Arnold got involved in another seemingly innocent action that would come to haunt him. He ordered a militia regiment of one hundred men to march to Egg Harbor and defend it. Only fifty men turned out, a totally inadequate number. A ship owner with a cargo at Egg Harbor pleaded with Arnold to save his cargo. Arnold agreed to help if he got half of the profit from the goods.33 Wagons for public use had been assembled in Pennsylvania and some were idle at the time. Arnold ordered twelve of these wagons to retrieve the private property at Egg Harbor that was likely to fall into British hands. Although these wagons were otherwise idle and he paid for their use, by October Arnold was so unpopular that everything he did was seen as improper.34
If all this were not enough to damn Arnold, he also managed to trample on the wrong toes. The Council charged him with “imposing menial offices upon the sons of freemen on militia duty.” The relations between the militia and members of the army were touchy. Militia units with their short enlistments and variable training, their own officers, and uncertain behavior in battle didn’t always mesh smoothly with the Continentals and could be resented by the regulars. The militia in turn sometimes shared the assumption that only money induced Washington’s men, the so-called dregs of the earth, to enlist. The incident that exposed these issues involved Arnold’s aide, Major Franks. Franks had asked a militia soldier to fetch a barber for him, and when the barber did not appear ordered the man to fetch him again.35 The young militia sergeant found the order demeaning for a free man and complained to his father. It turned out the insulted young man was the son of the particularly powerful secretary of the Pennsylvania Executive Council, Timothy Matlack. The first Arnold knew about this tempest in a teapot was when the young man complained to Arnold directly. Arnold responded that orders given by him or his aides to any man in service were to be obeyed. Later that same day Arnold received an outraged letter from the sergeant’s father, Secretary Matlack.36 Their exchange of letters highlights a key difference of perspective on the priority of the cause that engaged them all and the public’s often demeaning attitude toward the Continental regulars. Matlack’s letter pointed out to Arnold the key role of militia who he insisted be treated “in such manner as to make the duty as agreeable to them [as] is consistent with the service in which they are called.” How, he asked, would Arnold have felt when he served in the militia if ordered to summon a barber? “Free men,” Matlack insisted, “will be hardly brought to submit to such indignities; and if it is intended to have any of the respectable citizens of the state, in service in the militia, military discipline in such instances must be relaxed.” He considered that “Military duty of every kind is rather disagreeable; and perhaps, to free men, garrison duty more disagreeable than any other. The sergeant above mentioned entered the service to discharge his duty; and as an example to other young men of the city, and not from necessity, in any sense of the word.” Matlack asked that Arnold prevent any further complaints of this kind.
The next day Arnold replied. “No man has a higher sense of the rights of a citizen and free man than myself: they are dear to me, as I have fought and bled for them, and as it is my highest ambition and most ardent wish to resume the character of a free citizen whenever the service of my country will permit. . . . At the same time,” he added, “I beg leave to observe, that whenever necessity obliges the citizen to assume the character of a soldier, the former is entirely lost in the latter, and the respect due to a citizen is by no means to be paid to the soldier, any further than his rank entitles him to it. This is evident from the necessity of military discipline, the basis of which is implicit obedience, and however the feelings of a citizen may be hurt, he has this consolation, that it is a sacrifice he pays to the safety of his country.”37 During his own militia service Arnold wrote, “my feelings were hurt not only as a citizen, but more so as a soldier: they were however sacrificed to the interest of my country. The event proved unfortunate to me; but I have the satisfaction to think I rendered some service to my country.” He argued that any order not against the laws or principles of the Constitution should be obeyed. Matlack was still not satisfied, insisting the order in question should have been made to a menial servant. He was “mortified” to find Arnold justifying the order.38 If such offensive orders were issued in the future, he warned, “it is my duty as a father, to withdraw my son from a service in which commands are to be given him which to obey would lessen him in the esteem of the world; and I shall consider it a duty which I owe to myself to acquaint my fellow citizens of my reason for so doing.” Arnold replied that “if the declaration that you will withdraw your son from the service and publish the reasons is intended as a threat, you have mistaken your object. I am not to be intimidated by a newspaper.”39 Matlack’s complaint would be one of the charges the executive council levied and broadcast against Arnold. It should be added that Arnold had always been very popular with the militia. Washington had specifically sent him to New York State to ensure that militia rallied to the defense of the state from Burgoyne.
In September as relations with the Pennsylvania authorities worsened, Arnold tried once again to switch from his army post in Philadelphia to the navy. He sent Congress a plan to capture one of Britain’s Windward Islands and use it as a base to intercept British shipping.40 He offered to serve as commodore of the new fleet of privateers that would be based in New London, Connecticut. Congress agreed to consider the scheme but never acted on the plan. Once again Arnold’s efforts to find a position that would enable him to serve his country and remove him from the constant harassment of the Pennsylvania council came to nothing.
By December Arnold was so disgusted with the aspersions on his honor by council members and members of Congress’s new Board of War that he had challenged some of them to a duel. When Washington learned of this he wrote to Arnold on December 13, seriously worried. After mentioning that he was sending a regiment to help guard stores in Philadelphia and Trenton, since the local militia “complained of the hardship of being turned out for these purposes,” Washington added that he had “(. . . never heard, nor is it my) wish to be acquainted with the causes of the coolness between some gentlemen composing the Board of War and yourself.”41 Of course Washington himself had causes of coolness with the Board of War. He expressed the hope these unnamed causes “may never rise to such a height as to oblige either party to make a public matter of it, as I am under more apprehensions on account of our own dissentions than of the efforts of the enemy.”42 But public it was to become.
In January Matlack and Arnold had an exchange about the wagons Arnold had sent to transport goods from Egg Harbor. Arnold provided Matlack with the official reports and in response to aspersions on his personal conduct replied in exasperation, “I shall only say that I am at all times ready to answer my public conduct to Congress or General Washington, to whom alone I am accountable.”43 This was too much for the self-important Pennsylvania council. Reed wrote the president of Congress, then John Jay, demanding Arnold’s removal from his command in Philadelphia for unspecified charges he labeled “willful abuse of power and criminal acts.”44 Congress was unwilling to take action without more information and appointed a committee to investigate.
From the start the Pennsylvania councilors were determined to bring the proud shopkeeper-made-general down a peg. With the army and Congress dependent upon the cooperation of their state, whose capital they shared and whose capitol building they occupied, the Pennsylvania authorities had the leverage to manage it. Arnold would find that out to his detriment. For the moment though he set off for New York State to investigate possible land purchases with an eye to retiring from the service.
In February, 1779, after months of fuming, the Council drew up eight formal charges against Arnold. As regulations required they forwarded their complaints of Arnold’s misuse of public wagons and other infractions to General Washington, but also, as Washington feared, made a point of publishing them in the Pennsylvania Packet, a newspaper with a wide circulation. To elevate their various complaints to some higher principle the Council summed up Arnold’s tenure in their city as “oppressive to the faithful subjects of this state, unworthy of his rank and station” and “disrespectful to the supreme executive authority.” Disrespectful, that is, to themselves.45 They demanded Arnold’s punishment and removal.
Arnold learned of the charges on February 6 during a meeting with Washington at Middlebook, New Jersey. A day later the Pennsylvania council, determined to destroy his reputation, had their charges published in the newspaper and sent copies of their charges against him to the governor of every other state. Matlack, father of the aggrieved militia sergeant, was especially nasty, dredging up two-year-old charges that Arnold had plundered Montreal when his army retreated from Canada, charges long ago dismissed, and sending these anonymously to the Packet.46 Matlack admitted to Arnold the flimsy basis for his allegation: “When I meet your carriage in the street, and think of the splendor in which you live and revel . . . of the purchases you have made, and compare these things with the decent frugality necessarily used by other officers in the Army, it is impossible to avoid the question, From whence have these riches flowed if you did not plunder Montreal?”47 The charges concluded by damning Arnold’s brief service in Philadelphia as “highly discouraging to those who have manifested their attachment to the liberties and interests of America, and disrespectful to the supreme executive authority.”48 They went further. They called on the attorney general of Pennsylvania to prosecute Arnold “for such illegal and oppressive conduct cognizable in the courts of law.”49 As long as Arnold remained in command in their capital city they refused to pay for any charges of the army or to mobilize the militia except during an emergency.
How the slander rankled. The Council president, Joseph Reed, formerly serving with Washington, had become one of Washington’s bitter critics. He and these other politicians, tending home and business, questioned Arnold’s attachment to liberty, he who had repeatedly risked his life for his country and had a crippled leg and ruined family business for his trouble. London’s Royal Gazette gleefully reported that once Arnold was wounded, “Congress . . . considering him unfit for any further exercise of his military talents, permit him to fall into the unmerciful fangs of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania.”50
Arnold wrote to reassure Peggy, now his betrothed: “Let me beg of you not to suffer the rude attacks on me to give you one moment’s uneasiness; they can do me no injury. I am treated with the greatest politeness by General Washington and the officers of the Army, who bitterly execrate Mr. Reed and the Council for their villainous attempt to injure me.”51 He hoped to be back at Peggy’s side by Friday: “’till then all nature smiles in vain; for you alone, heard, felt, and seen, possess my every thought, fill every sense and pant in every vein.”52 If Peggy was uneasy about these attacks on her intended, it did not deter her. That April Arnold’s dear Peggy became his bride.
On April 8, a fine spring morning, Benedict Arnold and Peggy Shippen were married. The ceremony took place in the library of her family home and was conducted by the Episcopal Bishop William White. Arnold’s mother Hannah, a devout Protestant, would have shaken her head. Although the bishop was a representative of the Church of England, the church that had driven Quakers, Puritans, and many other Protestant dissenters to cross the Atlantic, his sympathies were with the American cause. The bridegroom was still unable to stand without help and leaned on the arm of his aide, Franks, next to his lovely bride as he took his vows. Throughout the reception that followed he sat with his injured leg resting on a camp-stool.53 In preparation for the wedding, Arnold scraped together all the funds and credit he could to buy the beautiful country estate of Mount Pleasant, a splendid house and some ninety-six acres on the Schuylkill, near where the Shippens had taken refuge during some of the fighting for Philadelphia. He settled the estate on his dear Peggy and his sons. It was a grand gesture but for the moment he and Peggy moved into a modest house in Philadelphia owned by her father while he rented the magnificent Mount Pleasant estate to the Spanish ambassador to help with his mortgage payments.54 Hannah and his two younger sons journeyed to Pennsylvania and moved in with Arnold and Peggy. This was especially helpful to Peggy as she was soon pregnant with her first child.
Arnold and Washington conferred about the best course of action. Washington had recommended a congressional committee investigate. Arnold preferred a court-martial to clear his name, an expedient he had asked for on other occasions. Other officers, including some of Washington’s best men, had looked to courts-martial when charged by Congress with wrongdoing and were invariably cleared. Congress had never been particularly kind to Arnold, especially the outspoken Massachusetts delegation, but he was confident he could rely on a court-martial. His fellow officers would see how wronged he was. They understood the difficulties of dealing with politicians. If honor and reputation were to be preserved, he was confident he could depend on the help and understanding of his brothers in arms to exonerate him. Their verdict would justify the sacrifices he had made and victories he had won for his often ungrateful country.