The Tragedy of Benedict Arnold

The marriage took place on February 22 in the First Church, a conservative church on the New Haven town green. Peggy was twenty-two, Benedict twenty-six, good sensible ages for a first marriage. There were cynics who saw this marriage as a real coup for the young man from Norwich. But in fact Arnold’s prospects were as sound as any in that difficult time, despite the headache of British duties. And after all, Peggy’s father Samuel may have been sheriff of the county, but he was also a merchant whose wharf and store were not far from his handsome house.

It seems to have been a loving marriage, at least on Benedict’s part. He was deeply in love with Peggy. Yet she had been aloof during their courtship, not replying to his letters. In May, 1766 he wrote complaining that he had been in the West Indies seven weeks but had “heard not one syllable from you since I left home.”¹ Nonetheless she agreed to marry him, and he didn’t seem concerned that his betrothed was such a melancholy, reluctant correspondent, perhaps attributing her behavior to her shyness. He quickly found that marriage did not make her more communicative. This was particularly hard because Arnold’s shipping business meant he had to be away from home for months at a time on long and often dangerous voyages. He may have been away when, nearly a year to the day of their wedding, little Benedict was born. These absences were difficult for the newly married couple. Arnold wrote “his dear girl” as often as he could during these journeys, assuring her, “you and you only can imagine how long the time seems since we parted and how impatient I am to see you and the dear little pledge of our mutual love. God bless you both and send us a happy meeting soon.”² He pleaded for news of his little family but, it was some two months later, while he was still in the Caribbean buying and trading cargoes, before he received a letter from Peggy assuring him that she and little Ben were well. ³ He occasionally got news of his family when he chanced to meet and quiz the captain of another New Haven vessel, but these ships seldom brought the longed-for letter from Peggy. In frustration he wrote complaining to his “dear girl,” “I assure you I think it hard you have wrote me only once when there have been so many opportunities.”⁴ Still, he ended this letter on a loving note, asking that “the best of Heaven’s blessings attend you, and may we both be under the care of a kind Providence, and soon, very soon, have a happy meeting is the sincere prayer of your ever affectionate husband.”⁵

In August a year later Peggy gave birth to a second son, Richard. Three years afterward, in 1772, a third child, Henry, was born. His growing family made Arnold’s voyages, with the attendant anxiety of partings and worries, all the more imperative. His wife, his sister, and his little sons were depending on him. These absences were the cost of a merchant trader’s life, and New Haven and all other American ports were filled with families anxiously awaiting the return of their men. New England was known for the rooftop lookouts on its houses, the “widow’s walk.” Many mariners’ wives helped keep the business records and handle various transactions while their men were off on voyages.⁶ In Arnold’s case it was his sister Hannah who helped. Peggy seems to have resented these long absences, for she rarely answered Benedict’s letters pleading for news of her and their little ones. She also must have fretted about the debts her husband was working frantically to repay. He wrote her not to let creditors bother her, and please could she write to him.⁷ But her letters never became more frequent. Indeed, in 1773, six years after they were married, Benedict’s patience was exhausted. He wrote in exasperation from a business voyage to Quebec, “I am now under the greatest anxiety and suspense, not knowing whether I write to the dead or the living, not having heard the least syllable from you this last four months.⁸ I have wrote you almost every post . . . have this three posts expected answers and been disappointed. I am now loaded and am set to sail tomorrow for Barbados.” A few days later, still not having set sail for the long voyage south, he wrote again, “With an aching and anxious heart, I resume my pen. The post arrived yesterday and no letters. This I cannot account for . . . I have now given over any thoughts of hearing from you until I get to the West Indies . . . I sail this afternoon.” Benedict left Quebec in October. He hoped to be home by December.

What of the much loved “dear girl.” Certainly Benedict never understood her, never broke through her reserve. Shy, depressed Peggy must have wondered what the good of financial prosperity was if she was left without her husband for months at a time, left in the company of her sister-in-law Hannah and her own parents, raising her children alone. Most merchants hired captains to sail to the West Indies and negotiate the deals for them. But not Benedict. He did hire other captains but he also insisted on traveling himself. It was his shrewd eye for a bargain that made his enterprise such a success, but there was a toll to be paid for those long absences.

Peggy’s silence while he was away became a permanent feature of their relationship. It was a difficult life Benedict had chosen, but one he knew and possessed a talent for. Torn as he was between being home with his family or at sea, he had little choice. He was desperate to make a success of his business and avoid his father’s fate, arrest for debt. Most of all he was anxious to keep his reputation as a man of integrity and honor.

Like many hundreds of colonial traders Benedict found debt could not be avoided. Within months of his marriage to Peggy, Benedict’s financial problems became worse. In fact, despite his hard work and careful calculations, he was slipping into debt even before his marriage. By 1767 he owed some £1,700 to his London suppliers.⁹ In his father’s day men who could not pay their debts were jailed, but in 1767 the Connecticut authorities decided that prisons overflowing with debtors made little sense when other means might be found to repay creditors. They came to agree with an anonymous Connecticut writer who argued in 1755 that it was unjust to imprison a man who “by the badness of the Time in Trade, or by the mere Providence of God, has been reduced.”¹⁰ The legislature decided to permit debtors to take an oath to keep working to repay their bills.¹¹ Happily Benedict was a beneficiary of this new approach. His friend and attorney, Jared Ingersoll, negotiated a deal with his London creditors permitting him to continue in business to repay the sums he owed them.¹² Benedict’s sloop Sally and her cargo were to be held as security and payment “of one half of the demands.” The deal included a schedule for repayment. Ingersoll was to approve the amount of security Arnold had to pay in case his next voyage did not turn sufficient profit and he needed another trip to raise the sum required. Ingersoll was also to ensure that Benedict was permitted sufficient time to sell the cargo. With the burden of this debt repayment schedule Benedict drove himself even harder, expanding the range of products he purchased. Sometimes he traded goods from one Caribbean island to another, rather than bringing products from the tropics back to New England. His hard work paid off. Despite British economic policies, he managed to repay his debt and once again prosper.

Ever in the background though, were the policies and taxes coming from London to regulate and benefit from American trade. Sometimes the news was hopeful, other times dismal. In 1766 a reluctant British Parliament withdrew the hated Stamp Act by a narrow majority. Immediately afterward, however, a large majority of MPs approved the Declaratory Act. Modeled on the 1719 Irish Act, the Declaratory Act reaffirmed Parliament’s right to legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” In their joy over the repeal of the Stamp Act few Americans noticed this ominous legislation. They would be reminded of it in February 1767. While Arnold was desperately trying to regain solvency, Parliament passed the Townshend Act. Since the colonists objected to an excise tax the Townshend Act imposed the customary import taxes, this time on glass, paint, lead, paper, and tea. Parliament also acted to ensure more vigorous collection of these taxes. Customs officers assigned to monitor American imports who remained in Britain and hired agents to work in the colonies now were dismissed. The British government was intent on cracking down on the casual manner in which those who evaded the required duties were dealt with.

Many Americans were, as always, incensed by new taxes. They protested and organized boycotts of the taxed goods and of merchants who imported them. Boycotts did not satisfy the Massachusetts legislature, however. Members drafted a sharp letter denouncing the tax and sent copies to all the other colonial assemblies urging them to do likewise. The British government was fed up with this quarrelsome colony. Their response was swift and angry. Four army regiments were sent to Boston, one soldier for every four inhabitants.

This was a dangerous policy. The king’s soldiers were resented and taunted. On March 5, 1770, a few dockside youths began throwing ice at a lone British sentry. The frightened soldier called for help. The rowdy crowd of his tormentors grew. A British officer and his men rushed to protect him from the disorderly mob. Shots were fired and five Bostonians were killed. It had not been premeditated. The soldiers had been harassed and endangered. But the Sons of Liberty promptly labeled the incident the Boston Massacre. Three local engravers, eager to make money from the tragedy, dashed off prints of the event. The most famous, by Paul Revere, was entitled The Bloody Massacre perpetrated on King Street, and sold like proverbial hotcakes. News of the shootings spread quickly and provoked fury throughout the colonies. The actual details of the event dropped away, leaving only the violence of the shooting, stark and awful. Armed soldiers had killed unarmed colonists.

Arnold was in the Caribbean when he learned of the incident. The news traveled from colony to colony quickly but was slow reaching him on St. George’s Key as he explained in a letter to his New Haven friend Douglas:

I am now in a corner of the world whence you can expect no news of consequence, yet was very much shocked the other day on hearing the accounts of the most wanton, cruel, and inhumane murders committed in Boston by the soldiers. Good God! Are the Americans all asleep; and tamely yielding up their liberties, or are they all turned philosophers, that they do not take immediate vengeance on such miscreants; I am afraid of the latter and that we shall all soon see ourselves as poor and as much oppressed as ever a heathen philosopher was.¹³

John Adams successfully defended the soldiers, but Arnold and the general population knew that even if this case could somehow be justified in law, such incidents were bound to happen when a professional army was bivouacked in the midst of civilians during a time of peace. Every common law tenet and the English Bill of Rights told them so. Local militia, made up of citizen-soldiers like Comfort Sage and Arnold himself in 1757, could be trusted to have the welfare of their people at heart. Not so professional soldiers, especially foreign ones.

Voyages to the Caribbean may not have been as dramatic as war, but carried all sorts of hazards, quite apart from the fitful winds and turbulent seas. Arnold’s long absences in the Caribbean, his growing success, his manner and politics bred jealousies and nasty gossip. And nasty gossip threatened to diminish his hard-won reputation. Late in 1770 news reached Arnold that someone was spreading a rumor in New Haven that he had contracted venereal disease while in the Caribbean the previous year. This outrageous claim was obviously false as he was in good health. But Benedict was furious. It had “hurt my good character here very much,” he wrote, “and given my family and friends much uneasiness.”¹⁴ Poor Peggy and Hannah, both devout and refined women, suffered from the taunt that he had consorted with prostitutes and picked up this dreadful disease. However successful Arnold became, he could not let this or any smear on his reputation stand. Someone else might have just denounced the rumor as a lie and pointed to his own good health. Not Arnold. He tracked down the suspected source, a New Haven ship’s captain, possibly a former employee, and had Ingersoll sue the man for libel. He got depositions from men with whom he had worked in the West Indies testifying that he was in “perfect health” when he was in Honduras, where he was supposed to have contracted the disease, and that he lived a temperate life while there, “eating, and drinking wine and punch, and any spirituous liquors as freely as any person” and keeping good company.¹⁵ With his father’s sad example before him, Arnold was painfully aware of the dangers of excessive drink. Arnold even fought a duel in the West Indies against a Mr. Brookman who was spreading the tale about “a whore I wanted to take from him.”¹⁶ Successful people tend to have detractors. Successful, feisty people have even more. Arnold was feisty and proud. All his adult life he was plagued by a variety of enemies ready to tarnish his name, compete with him for positions, and generally sully his honor.

In addition to the rumors of dissipation and disease, there were direct insults to his honor as a gentleman. In an era when perceived slights to a man’s honor were considered serious, Benedict was typical of many men, especially self-made men, who resorted to duels to protect their reputations. The rough and tumble world of international trade in the West Indies was the perfect seed ground for misunderstandings among proud, independent men. The tale of a duel retold by generations of Arnold’s own family was one he fought in Honduras against Captain Croskie, the British captain of a merchant ship. As Arnold was preparing to set sail Croskie invited him to attend a party. Preoccupied with numerous tasks before departure, Arnold simply forgot to send his regrets. However, he went to Croskie’s home the next morning to pay his respects and apologize for this neglect. The apology was not enough for the British captain who snapped that Arnold was “a damned Yankee, destitute of good manners or those of a gentleman.”¹⁷ Benedict quietly removed his glove and handed it to Croskie. The arrogant Briton had demeaned him as an ignorant Yankee rube. Croskie also had sworn at Arnold, an offense that qualified as blasphemy back in Connecticut.

The duel was arranged for the next morning on a nearby island. It was agreed each man was to bring only a second and a surgeon. Arnold arrived at the appointed time and waited for Croskie to appear. After a long delay he was about to leave when Croskie arrived in a boat with six natives. Arnold insisted that only Croskie and his two attendants be permitted to dock. When Croskie objected Arnold stood on the beach, pistol in hand, forbidding the rest to come ashore. Croskie conceded and final preparations were made. As the challenged man Croskie had the first shot. He missed. Then Arnold fired and wounded Croskie. The injury was attended to by the surgeon and Arnold called to Croskie to resume his position and take another shot, warning, “I give you notice, if you miss this time I shall kill you.” At this point Croskie decided discretion was the better option, gave his hand to Arnold and apologized. The two men returned together, in the same boat.

There was a rumor that while he was in the Caribbean Arnold came across the young Frenchman who had courted his sister in Norwich, and challenged the young man to a duel. Whatever the truth of it, Benedict survived these tests of his manliness without physical injury and, the attitudes of the time being what they were, with his reputation and honor intact.

By 1772 when his third son was born, Benedict was once again prosperous, so prosperous that he got three acres of prime land on Water Street from his father-in-law and began building a house for his growing family. It was a fine site on a rise overlooking the harbor. The new house was built on a grand, even ostentatious scale, measuring forty-eight feet long by thirty-eight feet deep. The house was covered in traditional New England clapboard, painted white. On the roof was the equally traditional and poignant widow’s walk.¹⁸ The interior was finished in lavish style with mahogany panels and marble fireplaces. Around the house were formal gardens. Behind it stables for a large number of horses, a coach house, and an orchard. It was a show of wealth, of having arrived. But interestingly it also looked like the house Arnold’s own father had built for his family, before his fortune collapsed and he became an alcoholic.¹⁹ On Sundays when Benedict was at home he, Peggy and their little sons attended the First Church. Prayers for the Lord’s blessings on that home and that family were certainly, if silently made, prayers that the widow’s walk never be a lookout for an actual widow.

They hardly needed the clergyman to remind them that life and health were precious and transient. Fears for his fragile Peggy were in Benedict’s mind in a letter to her of January, 1774.²⁰ He was alarmed and troubled to learn of the death of a neighbor, Adam Babcock’s young wife, and another young woman.

It has been a few days since I heard of the death of Mrs. Babcock and Polly Austin, which surprise me much. They were in the prime of life and as likely to live as any of us. How uncertain is life, how certain is death.

Benedict prayed,

May their loud and affecting calls awaken us to prepare for our own exit, whenever it shall happen. My dear Life, pray by no means neglect the education of our dear boys. It is of infinite concern what habits and principles they imbibe when young.

I hope this will find you all well and that the Almighty may preserve you in health and happiness is the sincere prayer of, dear Peggy,

Your loving husband,
Benedict Arnold.

Life held unpleasant surprises beyond the death of the young. There was politics. On April 12, 1770, the month following the Boston Massacre, Parliament agreed to repeal the Townshend Act. But revenues were needed and the British taxpayer was tired of paying for colonial defense. Therefore, three years later, in 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act granting the British East India Company a monopoly on importing tea to the colonies. Apart from the revenue, the monopoly was meant to help the company’s finances. Again Americans responded with boycotts. These were made more difficult because the East India tea was actually cheaper than smuggled tea. When late that year three ships loaded with East India tea entered Boston Harbor the local Sons of Liberty feared if the tea were unloaded people would buy it. Their campaign against the tax would collapse. Unable to get the governor to prohibit the landing, a group disguised as Indians boarded the vessels. They broke open the 342 chests of tea, worth some £10,000, dumping the contents into the harbor. The British government was furious and demanded that the company be reimbursed. The Massachusetts assembly refused. After all, unknown “red Indians” had been the vandals. The British government decided it had no option but to make an example of Boston by punishing the town and the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony until restitution was made for the tea and for losses sustained by Crown servants, and until King George III himself had determined that “peace and obedience to the laws” had been restored.

In the meantime the punishment they devised was draconian. The Massachusetts charter, with its guarantee to residents of the rights of Englishmen, was revoked. The governor of Massachusetts was removed and replaced with the military commander for the colonies, General Thomas Gage. The governor’s council was now appointed by the Crown, not chosen by the colonial legislature. The port of Boston was closed, town meetings forbidden without prior permission and the colonial government moved north to Salem. Trials of crown officials could be moved to another colony or even to Great Britain. More British troops were sent to reinforce those already in Boston. The Quebec Act, passed a few months later, settled how the British meant to govern Canada and was regarded as intolerable as well. Not only was the Catholic church permitted to remain the official church and French civil law to be retained for private affairs, but the act transferred to Canada the Indian territory that would later become the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota.

These “Intolerable Acts” shocked other colonies and alarmed the Second Continental Congress. Contributions of food and supplies were sent to the people of Boston. Protection was needed but the regular militia was in the hands of the government and of uncertain loyalty. Colonists in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other colonies began to form voluntary groups of militia, prepared to act in an emergency, the Minutemen. They were prepared to defend their towns and families should the British take military action in Massachusetts or elsewhere. At the town of Concord, some thirty miles from Boston and away from the watchful gaze of General Gage and his army, they began feverishly assembling an arsenal, including cannon, for a militia army. Its task was to defend the colony should Gage send his men to attack the colonists and burn their homes and villages.

Arnold was outraged by the treatment of Massachusetts and the precedent it posed for other colonies. Once home he joined a group of sixty-five young New Haven men who formed themselves into a militia company and started drilling regularly. In March 1775 Connecticut officials adopted the group as the Governor’s 2nd Company of Guards. The Guards, or Foot Guards as they preferred to call themselves, were asked to select their own officers. They chose as their captain that zealous, respected, and wealthy patriot, Benedict Arnold.

Barely a month later, on April 19th, 1775, General Gage moved. He sent eight hundred regulars west to Lexington to capture those renowned troublemakers, John Hancock and Sam Adams. The main task of the troops, however, was to march to Concord to destroy the weapons being assembled for a secret American army of some fifteen thousand. The military expedition into rural Massachusetts was meant to be a surprise, but was quickly discovered. When they reached Lexington some seventy men of the local militia stood on their little town green hoping to dissuade the regulars. The British officers ordered the men to drop their weapons and disburse. As they began retreating shots were fired. When the shooting stopped eight Lexington men lay dead, another ten were wounded.

As news of the British advance reached nearby towns their men came streaming into Concord. Others gathered along the route the army would take back to Boston. The King’s men set fire to gun carriages and other weapons they were able to find at Concord and retreated into the town center as the local militia began shooting. When, after some delay the regulars began the retreat to Boston, they endured a withering fire as hundreds of local men joined the chase. In response the troops fired into houses and set others ablaze. Before they reached Boston and safety, the King’s soldiers lost 19 officers and 246 soldiers, dead and wounded, the colonists some 90 men, fathers, brothers, friends, and neighbors. War had begun.