INTRODUCTION
1. J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1899), p. 410.
2. Jared Sparks, The Life and Treason of Benedict Arnold (Boston: Harper, 1835), p. 5.
3. Ibid., p. 8.
4. Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Univ.of N.C., 1979), p. 290.
5. Ibid., p. 291.
6. I am particularly fortunate in being able to make use of Russell M. Lea’s fine collection of revolutionary war correspondence, only published in 2008. See Russell M. Lea, A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold (Westminster, Md.: Heritage, 2008).
7. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold; His Patriotism and His Treason, (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg & Co., 1880), p. 4.
8. Mary Caroline Crawford, Mrs. John A. Logan, and Everett Titsworth Tomlinson, Peggy Shippen: The Traitorous Belle of the American Revolution: Brief Historical Accounts of Mrs. Benedict Arnold (2016); Forrest Bachner, The Colour of the Times: Margaret Shippen Arnold and the American Revolution—A Novel of Treason (Gilbertsville, N.Y.: Illume, 2016); Allison Pataki, The Traitor’s Wife: The Woman Behind Benedict Arnold and the Plan to Betray America (Brentwood, Tenn.: Howard, 2014); Nancy Rubin Stuart, Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married (Boston: Beacon, 2014); Stephen Case and Mark Jacob, Treacherous Beauty: Peggy Shippen, The Woman Behind Benedict Arnold’s Plot to Betray America (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2012); Bruce Adamson and Tim Shippen, America’s First Conspiracy: The Peggy Shippen and Benedict Arnold Story (2012); Ann Rinaldi, Finishing Becca: A Story about Peggy Shippen and Benedict Arnold (New York: Great Episodes, 2004).
9. Eliot A. Cohen, Conquered into Liberty (New York: Free Press, 2011), p. 196.
10. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (1765–1769), 1:395.
11. Ibid., pp. 395, 400.
12. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, p. 178.
13. Lewis Burd Walker, “Life of Margaret Shippen, Wife of Benedict Arnold,” Letters of Peggy Shippen and Family in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. xxv, Philadelphia, 1901, p. 156.
ONE: THE PRICE OF HONOR
1. Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence] (Westminster, Md.: Heritage, 2008), p. 283.
2. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold (Chicago, 1880),
pp. 204–205.
3. Ibid., p. 212, MSS of F. S. Foster.
4. Ibid., p. 205.
5. Ibid., p. 29
6. Ibid.
7. James Thacher, The Battles and Generals as Seen by an Army Surgeon, reprinted in Eyewitness to the American Revolution (London: Longmeadow, 1994), p. 75.
8. Ibid., p. 57.
9. Ibid., p. 75.
10. Arnold Correspondence, p. 291.
11. Thacher, Battles and Generals, p. 67.
12. Ibid., p. 80.
13. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 213.
14. Ibid.
15. Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2013), p. 155.
16. Ibid., p. 155.
17. Ibid., p. 155.
18. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, p. 241.
19. Arnold Correspondence, p. 291.
20. Ibid., pp. 291–292.
21. James Kirby Martin, Benedict Arnold: Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered (New York: NYU Press, 1997), p. 408.
22. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 292–293.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., p. 293.
25. Lincoln spent five months recuperating at home. His leg, like Arnold’s, never fully healed, and he limped the rest of his life.
26. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 213.
27. Hannah had been looking after Arnold’s three young sons since his wife died in 1775.
TWO: GREAT EXPECTATIONS
1. Among many essays on the importance of personal honor to George Washington and John Adams see Peter McNamara, ed., The Noblest Minds: Fame, Honor, and the American Founding (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999); Lorraine Smith Pangle and Thomas L. Pangle, “George Washington and the Life of Honor” pp. 39–72 and C. Bradley Thompson, “John Adams and the Quest for Fame,” pp. 73–96.
2. Hamilton Bullock Tompkins, “Benedict Arnold, First Governor of Rhode Island”; (A paper read before the Newport Historical Society, October 1919), Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society, no. 30: 1–18; Like many successful merchants including his great-great-grandson, he had his critics. Samuel Gorton, in his book Simplicity’s Defense complained that Arnold sold strong drink and ammunition to the Indians, trading with them on the Sabbath, and refused to sell goods to settlers of Warwick unless they agreed to be under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.
3. James Kirby Martin, Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered (New York, 1997), p. 16.
4. Ibid., p. 17.
5. F. M. Caulkins, History of Norwich (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood & Co., 1866), p. 254.
6. James Thomas Flexner, The Traitor and the Spy: Benedict Arnold and John André (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1953; reprinted 2010), p. 3; Martin, Benedict Arnold, 253.
7. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 24.
8. Some books put the date of his birth at January 14, 1741. The difference is a calendar change. The date of January 3 is “old style.” Parliament changed the beginning of the year from March 15 to January 1, beginning in 1751.
9. Caulkins, History of Norwich, pp. 352–353.
10. There was a Dr. David Jewett, surgeon, from Montville who fought in the Revolution but it is unclear whether this is the same Dr. Jewett whose school Benedict attended. See Henry A. Baker, A History of Montville, Connecticut formerly The North Parish of New London from 1640 to 1896 (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood & Co., 1896), p. 96.
11. Cited by Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 22.
12. Flexner, Traitor and Spy, p. 5.
13. Cogswell was a relation of Benedict’s father whose mother was a Cogswell.
14. Boys as young as twelve or thirteen could be admitted to college at this time. See Benjamin Tallmadge, Memoir of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge (New York, 1858; reprinted 1961), p. 6.
15. Flexner, Traitor and Spy, p. 6. Flexner adds: “No authentic record from any period of his life shows him torturing the weak—he preferred to cast himself as their protector.”
16. See Flexner, Traitor and Spy, pp. 4–5; Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 22.
17. Ibid., pp. 4–5.
18. Ibid.
19. Dorothy A. Mays, Women in Early America: Struggle, Survival and Freedom in a New World, on diphtheria online at http://library.thinkquest.org.
20. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 5.
21. In 1771 Dr. Samuel Bard, a prominent American physician, described the course of the disease in “An Enquiry into the Nature, Cause and Cure of the Angina Suffocative, &c.”: “On days one through five, children exhibited . . . inflamed eyes, bloated and livid countenance and a few red eruptions on the face . . . the tonsils appeared swollen and inflamed with a few white specks on them, which increased to cover them. . . . A slight fever . . . on days two to three, there was a gradual increase in breathing difficulty and . . . prostration. A dry cough . . . Constant fever became evident . . . as the disease progressed to coma, facial swelling, profuse sweating and increased breathing difficulty, until death occurred on the fourth or fifth day from apparent suffocation.
22. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 24. Martin dates this letter to August 13, but Lea in his collection of Arnold’s correspondence puts it at August 12. See Arnold Correspondence, p. 1.
23. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 24.
24. James Shepherd and Gary Walton, Shipping in Maritime Trade, and the Economic Development of Colonial North America (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1972), p. 8–9, 86, 88–89 and see appendix 3, Tables 18 and 21.
25. Arnold Correspondence, p. 1.
26. The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, Vol. 1, 1650, pp. 533–34; Vol. 5, October, 1706, p. 5.
27. The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut: Vol. 2, 1676, p. 282; Vol. 2, 1706, p. 5.
28. Caulkins, History of Norwich, p. 175.
29. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 26.
THREE: DESCENT
1. Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold, (Westminster, Md.: Heritage, 2008); Arnold Correspondence; see Hannah Arnold to Benedict Arnold, Norwich, April 17, 1754, p. 2.
2. Francis Manwaring Caulkins, History of Norwich, Connecticut from Its Settlement in 1660 to January 1845 (Norwich, 1845; repr. Carlisle, Mass., n.d.), p. 178.
3. Dorothy A. Mays, Women in Early America: Struggle, Survival and Freedom in a New World, on diphtheria online at http://library.thinkquest.org, page 245.
4. Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work: Wages, and Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), p. 16; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (New York: Knopf, 1982), p. 182.
5. Elaine Forman Crane, Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports, and Social Change 1630–1800 (Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press, 1998),
pp. 128–130.
6. Kurt Nadelmann, “On the Origin of the Bankruptcy Clause,” American Journal of Legal History, vol. 1 (July 1957), p. 221.
7. The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, Vol. 5, May 1711,
pp. 223–224.
8. Ibid.
9. Caulkins, History of Norwich, p. 180.
10. Ibid., p. 180.
11. Arnold Correspondence, p. 3.
12. Caulkins, History of Norwich, p. 181.
13. James Thomas Flexner, The Traitor and the Spy: Benedict Arnold and John André (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1953; reprinted 2010), p. 9.
FOUR: THE FORTUNES OF WAR
1. Joyce Lee Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 139–142.
2. Many authors had asserted that Arnold fled to the army on two occasions before 1757, deserting at one point, possibly in order to reenlist for additional bounty. The confusion was caused by another Benedict Arnold who was from Norwalk, Connecticut, not Norwich, and who was several times described as a weaver. James Flexner, in The Traitor and the Spy, tracks down the mistake. See pp. 7–8; p. 410 n. 2.
3. Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1763 (New York: Vintage, 2000), p. 151.
4. Rangers used guerrilla-style tactics rather than traditional European massed forces. Rangers would be used by both sides during the American Revolution.
5. Harold Selesky, War and Society in Colonial Connecticut (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1990), p. 110.
6. Ian K. Steele, Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the “Massacre” (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), p. 124.
7. Selesky, War and Society, p. 108.
8. Connecticut Historical Society, vol. 1, p. 236.
9. Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 200.
10. Ibid., p. 201.
11. In addition to the 154 men in the Norwich company, there were thirteen men responsible for “the return of the horses.” See Connecticut Historical Society, vol. 1, p. 236.
12. Steele, Betrayals, p. 110. This was an extraordinary number of mounted men for the militia. The need for haste doubtless occasioned it. Arnold was an excellent rider and the Lathrops had many horses. He is likely to have been one of those on horseback.
13. The letter to the governor of Massachusetts, for example, didn’t reach him until August 6. Steele, Betrayals, p. 125.
14. Steele, Betrayals, pp. 96, 98, 100. Montcalm actually had only about seven thousand men. See William Nester, The First Global War (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000) pp. 53–61. A fort was reckoned to be able to hold off an attack by a force three times as large for several days.
15. Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 192.
16. Ibid., p. 192.
17. Steele, Betrayals, p. 98.
18. Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 192.
19. Ibid., p. 194.
20. Ibid., p. 194.
21. Ibid., p. 194.
22. Ibid., p. 195.
23. Ibid., p. 196.
24. Ibid., p. 197.
25. Ibid., p. 197.
26. Montcalm and his officers did their best to retrieve Indian prisoners. These had been taken to Montreal. Some two hundred were recovered by the end of August, at an average cost of 130 livres and thirty bottles of brandy each. Perhaps forty were adopted into Indian families and refused to return. About two hundred went missing. Anderson, Crucible of War, pp. 198–199.
27. Fred Anderson, The War that Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War (New York: Penguin, 2006), p. 114.
28. Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe: France and England in North America, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1884), vol. 1, pp. 4–5.
29. Ibid.
30. Arnold served only fourteen days. The days varied presumably by how long it took members to fulfill their duties and get home.
31. Steele, Betrayals, p. 124.
32. Anderson, War that Made America, p. 113.
FIVE: TAKING CHARGE
1. Albert Van Dusen, “The Trade of Revolutionary Connecticut,” (doctoral dissertation, Univ. of Pennsylvania), p. 147. See Proquest Publication
No. AAT 001640.
2. Gary Walton, “A Quantitative Study of American Colonial Shipping: A Summary,” Journal of Economic History, vol. 26, no. 4 (December 1966), pp. 595–598.
3. Gaspare Saladino, “The Economic Revolution in Late Eighteenth Century Connecticut” (PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin), pp. 5, 7. Proquest Publication No. AAT 6412747.
4. Saladino, “Quantitative Study,” p. 150.
5. James Kirby Martin, Benedict Arnold: Revolutionary Hero (New York: NYU Press, 1997), p. 30;. Russell Lea, ed. Hero and Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold (Westminster, MD) suggests she died of yellow fever. Since yellow fever was a disease more common in tropical areas it seems unlikely this was the cause of her death. On the other hand there was a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1762, beginning in August of that year, a season that was unusually hot. On yellow fever see Suzanne M. Shultz, “Epidemics in Colonial Philadelphia from 1699–1799” and “The Risk of Dying” online, p. 27. And see Arnold Correspondence, p. 3. Lea writes that she died in 1758, but 1759, as Martin has it, seems the accurate date. Her gravestone states that she died in 1759 although it gives her age as fifty-nine. Still the number may have deteriorated over the years.; Francis Manwaring Caulkins, History of Norwich, Connecticut: From Its Settlement in 1660, to January 1845 (Carlisle, Mass, 1845), p. 204
6. Francis Manwaring Caulkins, History of Norwich, p. 254.
7. James Kirby Martin, Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered (New York, 1997) p. 30.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid, pp. 30–31.
10. Ian Quimby, Apprenticeship in Colonial Philadelphia (New York: Garland, 1985), p. 52.
11. Ruth Wallace Herndon and John E. Murray, Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 2009), p. 81.
SIX: SMOOTH AND CHOPPY WATERS
1. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold (Chicago, 1880), p. 20; Francis Manwaring Caulkins, History of Norwich, Connecticut: From Its Settlement in 1660, to January 1845 (Carlisle, Mass, 1845), p. 258.
2. James Kirby Martin, Benedict Arnold: Revolutionary Hero (New York: NYU Press, 1997), p. 35.
3. Jim Murphy, The Real Benedict Arnold, (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), p. 23.
4. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 405.
5. Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and A Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence] (2006), p. 4.
6. Doneva Shepard, Doneva Shepard’s family, friends and neighbors, Adam Babcock, webpage.
7. See Lawrence Henry Gipson, Jared Ingersoll: A Study of American Loyalism in Relation to British Colonial Government (New Haven, 1920), p. 233 and Benedict Arnold, “Waste Book,” MS New Haven Colony Historical Society.
8. Charles Collard Adams, Middletown Upper Houses: A History of the North Society of Middletown, Connecticut, from 1650 to 1800 (New York: Grafton, 1908).
9. For Sage’s Revolutionary War experience see John L. Rockey, History of New Haven County, Connecticut (New York: W.W. Preston, 1892), vol. 1., p. 29 ff.
10. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 27.
11. Murphy, Real Benedict Arnold, p. 25. Martin, who claims Arnold aroused hostility in the old-line residents, sees little significance in his becoming a Mason and notes he did not hold an important position in the lodge. Of course, since he was young and was traveling much of the time this does not seem surprising. See Martin, Benedict Arnold, pp. 38–39, 49.
12. Murphy, Real Benedict Arnold, p. 27.
13. H. Mansfield, The Descendants of Richard and Gillian Mansfield Who Settled in New Haven, 1639 (New Haven, Conn.: Mansfield, 1885) p. 24.
14. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 27.
15. Murphy, Real Benedict Arnold, p. 28.
16. The Molasses Act of 1733 had taxed molasses, sugar, and rum that were imported from non-British colonies like the French West Indies.
17. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People, vol. 1 (New York: Mentor edit., 1972), p. 252.
18. Ibid., p. 252.
19. John Warner Barber, History and Antiquities of New Haven (Conn.) From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time (New Haven, Conn.: Punderson & Barber, 1831), p. 49.
20. Murphy, Real Benedict Arnold, p. 32.
21. Lawrence Henry Gibson, American Loyalist: Jared Ingersoll (New Haven, 1920), p. 204.
22. Peter Boles’s last name is sometimes spelled “Bowes” or “Bowles.”
23. Many sources describe the Boles affair. I am relying chiefly on Martin, Benedict Arnold, pp. 42–45.
24. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 43.
25. “Arrest Warrant 1766,” Sherman Family Collection, 1745–1795, Oversize Item #1, New Haven Colony Historical Society.
26. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 44.
27. Barber, History and Antiquities of New Haven, pp. 49–50.
28. Ibid., p. 50.
29. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 48.
SEVEN: LOVE, MARRIAGE, DUELS, AND HONOR
1. Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (Fort Mill, S.C.: Quill, 1990), p. 63.
2. James Kirby Martin, Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered (New York, 1997), p. 50.
3. Ibid., pp. 50–51.
4. Ibid., p. 51. And see Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 63.
5. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 51.
6. Ulrich Laurel Thatcher, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (New York, 1982), p. 37; Elaine Forman Crane, Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports, and Social Change (Boston, 1998), pp. 128–130.
7. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 63.
8. Ibid., pp. 63–64.
9. Jim Murphy, The Real Benedict Arnold, (New York, NY, 2007).p. 39. Murphy calculates that £1700 owed in 1767 was equivalent to some $71,700 in 2007.
10. Bruce Mann, Republic of Debtors (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2002), p. 84.
11. Kurt Nadelmann, “On the Origin of the Bankruptcy Clause,” American Journal of Legal History, vol. 1 (July 1957), p. 224.
12. Murphy, Real Benedict Arnold, p. 40. See Lawrence Henry Gipson, Jared Ingersoll, p. 232 #2.
13. Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and A Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence](2006), pp. 5–6.
14. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 52.
15. Ibid., p. 52.
16. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 52; and Murphy, Real Benedict Arnold,
p. 36.
17. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold: His Patriotism and His Treason (Chicago, 1880) p. 20; F. M. Caulkins, History of Norwich (Norwich, CT, 1845), p. 31.
18. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 54.
19. See illustrations of the Arnold house in Norwich and Benedict Arnold’s house in New Haven.
20. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 65.
EIGHT: “MY COUNTRY CALLED”
1. “Letter from the Committee of Safety of Massachusetts to the Governor of Connecticut, Massachusetts Archives, vol. 2:370.
2. Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six (New York: Da Capo, 1995; first pub. 1958), p. 90.
3. Circular letter to Massachusetts towns from the Committee of Safety, Massachusetts Provincial Congress, April 20, 1775.
4. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold: His Patriotism and His Treason (Chicago, 1880) p. 20; F. M. Caulkins, History of Norwich (Norwich, CT, 1845), p. 34. Proceedings of a Court-Martial for the Trial of Major General Arnold, (New York, 1865).
5. Ibid.
6. Britannus Americanus, Boston, 1766, Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz, eds., American Writing During the Founding Era, 1760–1805, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Press, 1983), vol. 1, p. 89.
7. James Kirby Martin, Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered (New York, 1997), pp. 60–61.
8. Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and A Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence](2006), pp. 8–9. Warren would be killed at Bunker Hill and Arnold worked hard to ensure that his young family was financially supported.
9. Commager and Morris, Spirit of ’Seventy-Six, p. 90.
10. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 36.
11. Commager and Morris, Spirit of ’Seventy-Six, p. 90.
12. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 37.
13. Ibid., The covenant was written by S.D., Silas Deane.
14. Ibid.
15. John Adams, Second Session of Congress, p. 92, Records of the Continental Congress, second session.
16. Arnold Correspondence, p. 15.
NINE: THE RACE TO SEIZE FORTS
1. See among other sources Richard L. Blanco, ed., The American Revolution, 1775–1783: An Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (New York: Garland, 1993), 1:20.
2. Blanco, American Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 571–572.
3. Eliot A. Cohen, Conquered into Liberty (New York, 2011), p. 139.
4. Ibid., p. 136.
5. Ibid.; Fort Ticonderoga, New York, Blanco, American Revolution, vol. 1, p. 570.
6. Cohen, Conquered into Liberty, p. 138.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 141. Cohen describes Easton as “vindictive.” His appeal to the War Department after the war claiming to be entitled to a pension was rejected. Papers of the War Department, John Pierce to James Easton, “The Commissioner of Army Accounts rejects Colonel James Easton, October 24, 1785.”
9. Cohen, Conquered into Liberty, p. 142.
10. Ibid., p. 141.
11. Blanco, American Revolution, vol. 1, p. 573.
12. Cohen, Conquered into Liberty, p. 141.
13. Peter Force, ed., American Archives, Arnold’s Report to Massachusetts Committee of Safety, April 30, 1775, vol. 2, p. 748.
14. Cohen, Conquered into Liberty, p. 142.
15. Force, American Archives, fourth series, vol. 2, p. 557.
16. Ibid., p. 716.
17. Arnold to Massachusetts Committee of Safety, May 29, 1775, Arnold Correspondence, p. 22.
18. Joseph Henshaw to Colonel Arnold, May 31, 1775, Hartford, Arnold Correspondence, pp. 46–47.
19. Colony of Massachusetts Bay to Col. Arnold, Watertown, June 1, 1775, Arnold Correspondence, p. 48.
20. Hannah Arnold to Benedict Arnold, New Haven, June, 1775, Arnold Correspondence, pp. 48–49.
21. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold: His Patriotism and His Treason (Chicago, 1880), p. 44.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Arnold to Spooner Committee, Crown Point, June 24, 1755, Arnold Correspondence, pp. 57–58.
25. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 129.
26. Residents of Ticonderoga to Benedict Arnold, Lake Champlain, July 3, 1775, Arnold Correspondence, pp. 60–61.
27. Arnold to Continental Congress, Albany, July 1, 1775, Arnold Correspondence, p. 66.
TEN: BURIED IN THE PUBLIC CALAMITY
1. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold (Chicago, 1880), p. 48 note.
2. James Kirby Martin, Benedict Arnold: Revolutionary Hero (New York, 1997), p. 102.
3. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 48 note.
4. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 104.
5. James Thomas Flexner, The Traitor and the Spy: Benedict Arnold and John André (Syracuse, 1953; reprinted 2010), p. 55.
6. Flexner, Traitor and Spy, p. 55.
7. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 102.
8. Ibid.
9. Joyce Lee Malcolm, Peter’s War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2009), p. 85.
10. Barnabas Deane to Silas Deane, June 1, 1775, near Ticonderoga, cited in Arnold, Benedict Arnold, p. 45.
11. Martin, Benedict Arnold, pp. 98–99.
12. Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York: Penguin, 2010), p. 194.
13. Malcolm, Peter’s War, p. 78.
14. Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and A Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence](2006),p. 52–53.
15. Eliot Cohen, Conquered into Liberty (New York, 2011),.
16. For earlier accounts of the invasion of Canada through Maine see Arthur S. Lefkowitz, Benedict Arnold’s Army: The 1775 American Invasion of Canada During the Revolutionary War (El Dorado Hills, Calif.: Savas Beatie, 2007), pp. 23–26.
17. Lefkowitz, Benedict Arnold’s Army, p. 24.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid. Note that Martin, Benedict Arnold, apparently unaware of Montresor’s later admission, writes that Montresor “had moved easily and quickly over the route,” p. 107.; Blanco, American Revolution, vol. 2, p. 1505.
20. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 51.
21. Hal T. Shelton in Blanco, American Revolution, 1775-1783, 2 vols. (New York, 1993), vol. 2, p. 1092.
22. Martin, Benedict Arnold, pp. 107–108.
23. Roy Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York, 2010), p. 210.
24. Lefkowitz, Benedict Arnold’s Army, on Daniel Morgan, pp. 46–47.
25. Ibid., pp. 47–48.
26. Ibid., p. 49.
27. Ibid.
28. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 52.
29. Lefkowitz, Benedict Arnold’s Army, p. 48.
30. Blanco, American Revolution, vol. 2, 1505.
31. Lefkowitz. Benedict Arnold’s Army, p. 33.
32. Arnold Correspondence, p. 68.; and Lefkowitz, Benedict Arnold’s Army, p. 25.
33. Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds. The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six” (New York, n.d.), pp. 153–154.
34. Arnold Correspondence, p. 69.
35. Ibid., p. 71.
36. Ibid., p. 74.
37. Ibid.
ELEVEN: HONOR IN A “DIREFUL, HOWLING WILDERNESS”
1. For background on Guy Carleton see George M. Wrong, Canada and the American Revolution: The Disruption of the First British Empire (New York: Macmillan, 1935), p. 233ff.
2. Ibid., pp. 229–230.
3. Ibid., p. 230.
4. Not all Canadians were pleased with the Quebec Act settlement. British merchants and immigrants from the thirteen colonies objected and many Canadians were sorry to see the tithe to support the Catholic Church maintained, as well as traditional duties such as the labor duty, the hated corvée. Eliot Cohen, Conquered into Liberty (New York, 2011), pp. 133–134.
5. The Quebec Act, 14 Geo. III c. 83. The Northwest Territory comprised the present states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
6. Cohen, Conquered into Liberty, p. 148.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 149.
9. Arthur S. Lefkowitz, Benedict Arnold’s Army: The 1775 American Invasion of Canada during the Revolutionary War (New York, 2008), p. 63.
10. Ibid., p. 63.
11. Russell M. Lea, A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence[(Westminster, MD, 2008), p. 75.
12. Journal of Private Joseph Ware, September 19, 1775, George F. Scheer and Hugh F. Rankin, eds., Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolution Through the Eyes of Those Who Fought and Lived It (New York: Da Capo Press, 1957), p. 117.
13. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold (Chicago, 1880),
p. 53.
14. Ware, Journal, p. 117.
15. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 75–6.
16. Ibid., p. 78.
17. Ibid.
18. Journal of Private James Melvin, September 19, 1775, Scheer and Rankin, Rebels and Redcoats, p. 119.
19. Arnold Correspondence, p. 80.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 83.
22. Ibid., pp. 83–84.
23. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, pp. 65–66.
24. Arnold Correspondence, p. 84.
25. Ibid., p. 86.
26. Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds. The Spirit of ’Seventy-
Six” (New York, n.d.), p. 201.
27. Arnold Correspondence, p. 90.
28. Cohen, Conquered into Liberty, p. 151.
29. Ibid., p. 152.
30. Ibid., p. 151.
31. Ethan Allen’s account, Scheer and Rankin, Rebels and Redcoats, p. 114.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Cohen, Conquered into Liberty, p. 152. Fortescue judges it “a most discreditable surrender.” Fortescue, A History of the British Army (London, 1899), vol. 3, p. 54
35. Revolutionary War Archives.
36. Paul David Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 2000), p. 64.
37. Ibid.
TWELVE: A FIERCE ATTACK, A WINTER SIEGE
1. For this account of Carleton’s adventures getting into Quebec, see Paul David Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton: Soldier-Statesman of Early British Canada (Madison, 2000), p. 74.
2. Nelson, Sir Guy Carleton, p. 75.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 76.
5. George Washington to Benedict Arnold, Cambridge, Dec. 5, 1775, John Rhodehamel, ed., George Washington: Writings (New York: Library of America, 1991), pp. 192–193.
6. Washington to Schuyler, Cambridge, 5 Dec. 1775, Russell M., Lea, ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence](Westminster, MD, Heritage Books, 2006), p. 93.
7. Ibid., p. 94.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 95. The following information, unless otherwise noted, is drawn from Arnold Correspondence. And see Senter, Arnold Correspondence, p. 95. Montgomery had altered the original attack plan of simultaneous attacks on the upper and lower town because deserters might give away the scheme. Arnold to General Wooster, Dec. 31, 1775, Arnold Correspondence, p. 98.
10. There was a rumor that deserters had disclosed the American plan to the British. See George MacKinnon, Wrong, Canada and the American Revolution: The Disruption of the First British Empire (1935), p. 301.
11. Arnold Correspondence, p. 100.
12. Senter writes in his diary that Montgomery was very anxious, “as if anticipating the fatal catastrophe.” Arnold Correspondence, p. 96. Also see Abner Stocking, “Journal” in Henry Steele Commanger and Richard B. Morris, eds., The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six (De Capro Press, New York, 1995; first publ. 1958), p. 204.
13. Arnold Correspondence, p. 95.
14. Ibid., pp. 96ff.
15. Ibid., pp. 97–98.
16. The distance from Quebec City to Philadelphia is six hundred miles, as the crow flies.
17. Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York, 1990), p. 224.
18. Ibid., pp. 224–225.
19. Arnold Correspondence, p. 105.
20. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 225.
21. Bayard Tuckerman, Life of General Philip Schuyler, 1733–1804 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1903), p. 118.
22. Nelson, Sir Guy Carleton, p. 80.
23. Ibid., pp. 80–81.
24. Tuckerman, Life of General Schuyler, pp. 118–119.
25. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 224.
26. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 113–114.
27. Ibid., p. 120.
28. Ibid., p. 121.
29. Ibid., p. 118.
30. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 85.
31. Ibid., p. 85.
32. Arnold Correspondence, p. 115.
33. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p 85.
34. Arnold Correspondence, p. 108.
35. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, pp. 87–88.
36. Arnold Correspondence, p. 111.
37. Ibid., p. 112.
38. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 88.
39. Ibid.
40. Arnold Correspondence, p. 124.
41. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 94.
42. Arnold Correspondence, p. 126.
43. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, pp. 90–93.
44. Ibid., p. 92.
45. Ibid., p. 93.
46. Arnold to Gates, Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 96.
47. Ibid., p. 94.
48. Arnold, Benedict Arnold, p. 97.
49. Ibid.
THIRTEEN: DEFENDING THE LAKES
1. Hannah Arnold to Benedict Arnold, August 5, 1776, FO. Vereau 18, no. 3, Quebec Archives.
2. Ibid.
3. Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York, 1990), p. 260.
4. Ibid., p. 261.
5. Arnold to Gates, July 15, 1776, Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence] (Westminster, MD, Heritage Books, 2006), p. 152.
6. Hannah Arnold to Benedict Arnold, August 28, 1776, MS FO Vereau 17, no. 13, Quebec Archives.
7. Hannah Arnold to Benedict Arnold, September 1, 1776, MS FO Vereau 18, no. 13, Quebec Archives.
8. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 150–151.
9. Ibid., p. 151.
10. Ibid., p. 154.
11. Ibid., p. 154.
12. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold: His Patriotism and His Treason (1888), p. 103.
13. Ibid., pp. 103–104.
14. Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York, 1990), p. 262.
15. Eliot Cohen, Conquered into Liberty (New York, 2011), p. 181.
16. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 262.
17. Arnold Correspondence, p. 128.
18. Ibid., p. 129.
19. Ibid., p. 133.
20. Ibid., p. 138.
21. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 263.
22. Ibid.
23. Arnold Correspondence, p. 156.
24. Ibid., p. 155.
25. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 107.
26. Valcour Island, The American Revolution: An Encyclopedia, Richard Blanco, ed. 2 vols. (Garland, 1993), vol. 2, p. 1687.
27. Arnold Correspondence, p. 163.
28. Ibid., p. 164.
29. Ibid., p. 165.
30. Gates to Arnold, Ticonderoga, August 18, 1776, FO Verreau 18, no. 6, Quebec Archives.
31. Arnold Correspondence, pp 169–170.
32. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 107.
33. Ibid., p. 100.
34. Gates to Arnold, October 3, 1776 MS FO Verreau 18, no 29, Quebec Archives.
35. Randall, Benedict Arnold, pp. 291–292.
36. Ibid., p. 292.
37. Ibid., p. 304.
38. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 185, 187–189.
39. For the damage to the American fleet see Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 113–114.
FOURTEEN: DON’T TREAD ON ME
1. Russell M. Lea, A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence[(Westminster, MD, 2008), pp. 186–187.
2. Ibid., p. 196.
3. Ibid., p. 189.
4. Arnold to Gates, Ticonderoga, October 15, 1776 in Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold (Chicago, 1880), p. 118, note 1.
5. Striking the ship’s flag was a signal of surrender. Arnold to Gates, October 15, 1776, Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, n. 1, p. 119.
6. William Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York, 1990), p. 316.
7. Arnold Correspondence, p. 203.
8. Ibid., p. 118.
9. Ibid., p. 120.
10. Ibid., p. 117.
11. Ibid., p. 120.
12. J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army (London, 1899), vol.3, p. 182.
13. New Jersey edition, October 21, 1776 and the Pennsylvania Gazette, October 23, 1776; Arnold Correspondence, p. 201.
14. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 323.
15. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 218–219.
16. Ibid., p. 219.
17. James Kirby Martin, Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered (New York, 1997), p. 314
18. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (1765–69), vol. I: 395.
19. Blackstone, Commentaries, pp. 395, 400.
20. Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Beginnings of the Military Establishment in America (New York: Free Press, 1975), p. 4.
21. Max M. Mintz, The Generals of Saratoga (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1990), p. 122.
22. Arnold Correspondence, p. 216; Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 305
FIFTEEN: “BESMIRCHED HONOR”
1. Washington to Arnold, Morristown, March 3, 1777, Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence (Westminster, MD, 2008), pp. 217–218.
2. Ibid., p. 219.
3. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, pp. 129–130.
4. Richard M Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War (New York, 1997), p. 287.
5. James Lacey and Williamson Murray, Moment of Battle: Twenty Clashes That Changed the World (New York: Bantam, 2013), pp. 211–212.
6. Arnold Correspondence, p. 221.
7. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 320.
8. Arnold Correspondence, p. 222.
9. John Rhodehamel, ed., George Washington: Writings (New York, 1991), p. 270.
10. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 203–205.
11. Martin, Benedict Arnold, p. 288.
12. Ibid, p. 288.
13. Ibid., pp. 188–189.
14. Ibid., p. 289.
15. Ibid., p. 297.
16. A British officer reported of the stores at Danbury: “We found the greatest magazine the Rebels had ever collected: & full leisure to destroy it—viz. About 4000 bbls of beef & pork; 5000 bbls of flour 100 puncheons of rum; and a vast quantity of rice, coffee, salt, sugar, medicines, tents, clothing, shoes, wagons—harness . . .” Arnold Correspondence, p. 230.
17. Arnold Correspondence, p. 227.
18. The poor animal was later found to have received wounds from nine balls. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 131.
19. Arnold Correspondence, p. 228.
20. Ibid., p. 237.
21. Ibid., pp. 237–238.
22. Ibid., p. 238.
23. Ibid., pp. 238–239.
24. Ibid., p. 239.
SIXTEEN: SAVAGE WARFARE
1. Some English towns with tiny populations still had the right to send two members to Parliament, giving the local squire the opportunity to appoint these.
2. J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army (London, 1899), vol. 3, p. 156. Fortescue claims he gave these speeches in the House of Lords but Burgoyne sat in the House of Commons.
3. Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds. The Spirit of ’Seventy-
Six” (New York, n.d.), p. 538; James Lacey & Williamson Murray, Moment of Battle: The Twenty Clashes That Changed the World (New York, 2013), p. 208 .
4. Commager and Morris, Spirit of ’Seventy-Six, p. 538.
5. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. 3, pp. 207, 209.
6. Commager and Morris, Spirit of ’Seventy-Six, p. 546.
7. Ibid.
8. Cited by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America (New Haven, 2013), pp. 146-147.
9. Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six, p. 548.
10. Joyce Lee Malcolm, Peter’s War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution (New Haven, 2009), p. 150.
11. Eliot A. Cohen, Conquered into Liberty (New York, 2011), p. 201.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 202.
14. Ibid.
15. O’Shaughnessy, Men Who Lost America, p. 154.
16. Bayard Tuckerman, The Life of General Philip Schuyler, 1733–1804 (New York, 1903), p. 159.
17. Ibid., pp. 167–168.
18. Arnold to Hancock, Philadelphia, July 11, 1777, Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence](Westminster, MD, 2008), p. 246.
19. Ibid., pp. 245–46.
20. Ibid., p. 246.
21. Ibid., pp. 246–47.
22. Ibid., p. 248.
23. Ibid., pp. 248–49.
24. An account of Burgoyne’s reaction to the Indians arriving with two scalps, which describes Jane’s hair as black. It might have looked black from blood on it. See Max M. Mintz, The Generals of Saratoga: John Burgoyne & Horatio Gates (New Haven, 1990), p. 162.
25. Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War (New York, 1997), p. 274.
26. There is some confusion about this with some claiming Jane was shot instead.
27. Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six, p. 559.
28. Mintz, Generals of Saratoga, p. 162.
29. Ketchum, Saratoga, p. 277.
30. Arnold Correspondence, p. 247.
31. Ibid., p. 249.
32. Tuckerman, Life of General Schuyler, p. 133.
33. Ibid., p. 224.
34. Arnold Correspondence, p. 251.
35. Ibid., p. 252.
36. Ibid., p. 253.
SEVENTEEN: DEFENDING NEW YORK, AGAIN
1. Burgoyne to Germain, camp near Saratoga, August 20, 1777, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six (New York, 1958), pp. 577–578.
2. Ibid., p. 579.
3. Ibid., p. 577.
4. Ibid., p. 578.
5. Ibid., p. 579.
6. Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War (New York, 1997), p. 370.
7. Ibid., pp. 351, 370.
8. Arnold to Lamb, September 5, 1777, Isaac Q. Leaks, ed., Memoir of the Life and Times of General John Lamb, an Officer of the Revolution (Albany, N.Y.: Joel Munsell, 1857), pp. 171–172.
9. Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of Empire (New Haven, 2013), p. 154.
10. James Lacey and Williamson Murray, Moment of Battle: Twenty Clashes That Changed the World (New York, 2013), p. 211
11. Ketchum, Saratoga, p. 287.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 212.
14. Almons Remembrancer, August 16, 1777; Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six, p. 569.
15. George F. Scheer and Hugh F. Rankin, eds., Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolution Through the Eyes of Those Who Fought and Lived It (New York, 1957), pp. 263–64.
16. Stark to Gates, Bennington, August 22, 1777, Commager and Morris, Spirit of ’Seventy-Six, p. 572.
17. Ibid., p. 573.
18. Ketchum, Saratoga, p. 213.
19. Arnold to Gates, Stillwater, September 22, 1777, Commager and Morris, Spirit of ’Seventy-Six, pp. 581–582.
20. Ketchum, Saratoga, p. 352.
21. Lacey and Murray, Moment of Battle, p. 214.
22. Ketchum, Saratoga, p. 363. The comment was from Captain Ebenezer Wakefield of Dearborn’s light infantry, Mintz, Generals of Saratoga,
p. 193.
23. Lessing’s Field book, vol. 1, p. 52, Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold p. 172.
24. Digby had fought against Arnold at Valcour Island; Arnold Correspondence, p. 265.
25. Ketchum, Saratoga, p. 363.
26. Churchill papers, Arnold Correspondence, p. 266.
27. Ibid., p. 265.
28. Ibid., p. 267.
29. Ibid., p. 268.
30. Ketchum, Saratoga, p. 385.
31. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 271–272.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., pp. 272–273.
EIGHTEEN: THE FATAL BLOW
1. Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence] (Westminster, MD, 2008), p. 280.
2. Ibid., p. 281.
3. Recollections of Captain E. Wakefield, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six (New York,1983), p. 581.
4. Ibid., p. 594.
5. Arnold Correspondence, p. 279–280.
6. Mattoon to Schuyler, Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six (1995), p. 594.
7. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold: His Patriotism and His Treason (1888), p. 201.
8. Ibid., pp. 201–202.
9. Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six, p. 585.
10. Ibid., p. 588.
11. Clinton wrote this from Fort Montgomery, October 8, 1777. J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army (London, 1899), vol. 3, p. 238.
12. This was a letter of Burgoyne to Germain, October 20, 1777, Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six, p. 599.
13. Ibid., p. 599. Burgoyne had several suggestions for Parliament. British use of Indians to terrorize Americans, their urging of black slaves to rise up, their distrust of loyalists, and abandoning them when they retreated are all reasons for the failure of loyalists to come to their aid, along with a lack of leaders and coordination.
14. Arnold Correspondence, p. 278.
15. Arnold, Benedict Arnold, p. 197.
16. Arnold Correspondence, p. 281.
17. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, p. 239–240.
18. Ibid., p. 240.
19. Arnold, Benedict Arnold, p. 200.
20. Ibid., p. 205.
21. Ibid., pp. 204–205.
22. Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six, p. 598.
23. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, pp. 207–208.
24. Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six, p. 598.
25. Ibid., p. 595.
26. Arnold Correspondence, p. 283.
NINETEEN: THE WAGES OF VICTORY
1. William Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York, 1990), p. 373.
2. Roy Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York, 2010), p. 335.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 336.
5. John Adams, Autobiography, September. 1775, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six (New York, 1983), p. 664.
6. Ibid., p. 665.
7. Ibid.
8. Chernow, Washington pp. 349–50.
9. J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. 3 (London, 1899.), pp. 246–47.
10. Ibid.
11. Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six, p. 693.
12. Ibid., p. 695.
13. Ibid., p. 697.
14. Ibid., p. 691.
15. Ibid., p. 696.
16. Ibid., p. 694.
17. Carl Van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution (New York: Viking, 1941), p. 88.
18. Ibid., p. 97.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., pp. 97–98.
21. Journals of the Continental Congress, February 3, 1778.
22. Ibid.
23. Nellie P. Waldenmaier, Some of the Earliest Oaths of Allegiance to the United States (privately printed, 1944).
24. Leake, General John Lamb, p. 242.
25. Ibid., p. 243.
26. Chief among Washington’s critics were the politicians Sam Adams and John Adams, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, and Dr. Benjamin Rush. They were also critical of Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin’s efforts abroad.
27. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 403.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., p. 404.
30. Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six, p. 652.
31. Ibid., pp. 652–53.
32. Ibid., p. 653.
33. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 405.
34. Ibid., p. 373.
35. Arnold Correspondence, p. 294.
36. Ibid., p. 295.
TWENTY: THE EYE OF THE STORM
1. Dave R. Palmer, George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2006), p. 290.
2. Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence] (Westminster, MD, Heritage Books, 2006), p. 298.
3. Washington to Henry Laurens, June 2, 1778, in John W. Jackson, With the British Army in Philadelphia, 1777–1778 (Novato, Calif.: Presidio, 1979), p. 258.
4. Ibid., p. 260. Some of the furniture loaded onto the British ships was thrown overboard to make room for military supplies. p. 259.
5. Ibid., p. 262.
6. Ibid., p. 268–269. André gave his superior, Lord Grey, a portrait of Franklin by Charles Willson Peale that was to remain in the Grey family estate in Britain until 1906, when it was returned to America. It now hangs in the White House.
7. Ibid., pp. 260–266.
8. Carleton E. W. Larson, “The Revolutionary American Jury: A Case Study of the 1778–1779 Philadelphia Treason Trials,” SMU Law Review, vol. 61, no. 4 (Fall, 2008), pp. 1451–1452.
9. Article I, sec. 9, American Constitution.
10. Article IX of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, explaining that in all prosecutions for criminal offenses, “a man hath a right to be heard by himself and his council, to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and a speedy public trial, by an impartial jury of the country, without the unanimous consent of which jury he cannot be found guilty.” It is unclear whether the Council anticipated a jury trial since trials for treason did occur thereafter.
11. Larson, “Revolutionary American Jury,” pp. 1451–1452.
12. See Wilbur H. Siebert, The Loyalists of Pennsylvania (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1920), p. 56.
13. Ibid., p. 59.
14. Arnold Correspondence, p. 302.
15. Journals of the Continental Congress, February 9, 1778 at http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query
16. The Penns spent the Revolutionary War in England. And see William S. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 40; Full citation. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York, 1990), p. 223.
17. Arnold Correspondence, p. 321.
18. William Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York, 1990), pp. 383-84.
19. Ibid., pp. 384–85.
20. Carl van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution (New York, 1941), p. 184.
21. Randall, Benedict Arnold, pp. 387–88.
22. Ibid., pp. 383, 387.
23. Ibid., p. 392.
24. Ibid., p. 387.
25. Arnold Correspondence, p. 306.
26. Ibid., p. 303.
27. Ibid., p. 304.
28. Ibid., p. 302.
29. Van Doren, Secret History, p. 172.
30. Ibid., p. 414.
31. Richard K. Murdoch, “Benedict Arnold and the Owners of the Charming Nancy,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 84, no. 1, (January, 1960), pp. 22-55.
32. Ibid., p. 177.
33. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 310–11.
34. The Council was upset they hadn’t countersigned the pass, and some of the materials were hauled to a store in Philadelphia where they were sold and the proceeds shared with Arnold. Arnold Correspondence, p. 312.
35. The third charge before the Court-Martial. See next chapter, Proceedings of a General Court-Martial.
36. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 307–308.
37. Ibid., p. 308.
38. Ibid., pp. 309–310.
39. Ibid., p. 312.
40. Ibid., p. 313.
41. Ibid., pp. 313–314.
42. Ibid., p. 314.
43. Ibid., p. 315.
44. Ibid.
45. Charges against Arnold printed in the Philadelphia Packet, February 9, 1779, pp. 317–319.
46. Ibid., p. 319–320.
47. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 307–308.
48. Charges against Arnold printed in the Philadelphia Packet, February 9, 1779, Arnold Correspondence, p. 317–319.
49. Ibid., p. 319.
50. Ibid., p. 319 n. 79.
51. Arnold Correspondence, p 316.
52. Ibid., p. 317.
53. Van Doren, Secret History, p. 188.
54. Arnold Correspondence, p. 324.
TWENTY-ONE: THE COURT-MARTIAL
1. Proceedings of a General Court-Martial for the Trial of Major General Arnold, ed. Francis Bailey (New York, 1865 facsimile of orig. edit. of 1780), p. 128.
2. Deane to Greene, Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York, 1990), pp. 469-70.
3. Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence](Westminster, Maryland, 2008), p. 317.
4. James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender, A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763–1789 (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1982), p. 106.
5. Ibid., p. 152.
6. Ibid., p. 106.
7. Joyce Lee Malcolm, Peter’s War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution (New Haven, 2009), pp. 195-96.
8. Ibid., pp. 320–321.
9. Arnold Correspondence, p. 329.
10. Ibid., p. 326.
11. Ibid., p. 327.
12. Ibid., p. 330–331.
13. Carleton E. W. Larson, “The Revolutionary American Jury: A Case Study of the 1778–1779 Philadelphia Treason Trials,” SMU Law Review, vol. 61, no. 4 (Fall, 2008), p. 1452
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 1441.
16. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 355–356. When later questioned, militiamen cited “the exceeding lenity which has been shown to persons notoriously disaffected to the Independence of the United States” as a reason for this attack. See Larson, “Revolutionary American Jury,”
p. 1444.
17. Ibid., p. 361.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., p. 362.
20. Ibid., pp. 325–6.
21. On Howe see Charles E. Bennett, Donald R. Lennon, A Quest for Glory: Major General Robert Howe and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 122–123.
22. Proceedings of a General Court-Martial, pp. 5ff.
23. Ibid., p. 10.
24. Ibid., p. 19.
25. Ibid., p. 114.
26. Malcolm, Peter’s War, p. 198.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., p. 106–107.
29. Proceedings of Court-Martial, p. 128.
30. Ibid., p. 144.
31. Arnold Correspondence, p. 387.
TWENTY-TWO: BECOMING GUSTAVUS MONK
1. Jared Ingersoll was writing in 1780. See Lawrence Henry Gibson, Jared Ingersoll: A Study of American Loyalism in Relation to British Colonial Government (New Haven, 1920), p. 375.
2. Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1979), pp. 290, 288.
3. J.W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. 3 (London, 1899),
p. 410.
4. Arnold to Washington, Philadelphia, April 18, 1778, Russell M., ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence] (Westminster, MD, Heritage Books, 2006), p. 325.
5. Ibid., p. 326.
6. Ibid., p. 329.
7. Ibid., p. 330.
8. Ibid., p. 340.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., p. 331.
11. Ibid., pp. 331–33.
12. Ibid., p. 332.
13. Ibid., pp. 332–33.
14. Carl Van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution (New York, 1941), p. 197; John Bakeless, Turncoats, Traitors & Heroes: Espionage in the American Revolution (1959), p. 294.
15. André drew a portrait of Peggy Shippen during the British occupation of Philadelphia.
16. Van Doren, Secret History, p. vi.
17. Ibid. Van Doren lists other traitors, some who were only identified as traitors when Clinton’s papers were discovered.
18. Clinton to Lord Germain, Robert McConnell Hatch, Major John André: A Gallant in Spy’s Clothing (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), pp. 203–4.
19. Ibid., p. 77.
20. Arnold Correspondence, p. 334.
21. Van Doren, Secret History, p. 199.
22. Ibid.
23. Van Doren, Secret History, p. 205.
24. Ibid., p. 206.
25. Arnold Correspondence, p. 343.
26. Carl Van Doren and others have assumed Margaret Arnold was a party to the conspiracy from the start. See Van Doren, Secret History, p. 202. Van Doren writes his conclusion that André’s “plans for a correspondence with Peggy Arnold make it impossible to doubt that she was perfectly aware of the Conspiracy from the beginning,” but then adds, “This letter, apparently so innocent, actually so well devised for its secret purpose, may or may not have been sent, may or may not have reached Peggy Chew and Peggy Arnold. No answer from either of them survives.” On this and other highly speculative evidence of Margaret Shippen’s involvement in the plot, and contrary to all evidence of contemporaries and her own behavior, Van Doren’s book made its reputation. His conclusions have been accepted uncritically by nearly all later authors.
27. Van Doren, Secret History, p. 202. Van Doren is so determined to believe Peggy Arnold was involved in the plot that he refers to this failure of André to involve her in correspondence as Peggy having no need to be involved in “a superfluous subplot.”
28. Van Doren, Secret History, p. 214.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., p. 207.
31. Arnold Correspondence, p. 348.
32. Ibid., p. 350.
33. Ibid., pp. 350–51.
34. Ibid., p. 351.
35. Ibid., p. 353.
36. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold; His Patriotism and His Treason (Chicago, 1880), p. 266.
37. Arnold Correspondence, p. 383.
38. Ibid., p. 384.
39. Ibid., p. 385.
40. For Deane’s activities see Robert H. Patton, Patriot Pirates: The Privateer War for Freedom and Fortune in the American Revolution (New York: Vintage, 2008), p. 50 ff.
41. Deane managed to obtain the French cannon that helped defeat Burgoyne at Saratoga. See Patton, Patriot Pirates, pp. 186, 188.
42. Ibid., p. 190.
43. Ibid., p. 191–92.
44. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 385–86.
45. Ibid., p. 387.
46. Ibid., p. 394.
47. Ibid., p. 391.
48. Ibid., pp. 391–92.
49. Ibid., pp. 398–99.
50. Hatch, Major John André, p. 205.
51. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 399–400.
52. Ibid., p. 401.
53. Ibid., p. 402.
54. Ibid., p. 402.
55. Ibid., p. 403.
56. Ibid., pp. 406–7.
57. Ibid., p. 408.
TWENTY-THREE: TREASON
1. J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. 3 (London, 1899), p. 335.
2. Robert McConnell Hatch, Major John André: A Gallant in Spy’s Clothing (Boston, 1986), pp. 214–15.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 205.
5. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 416–17.
6. Ibid., p. 423.
7. Ibid., p. 435.
8. Ibid., pp. 422–23.
9. Ibid., p. 435.
10. Ibid., p. 424.
11. Ibid., p. 420.
12. Ibid., p. 424.
13. Ibid., p. 437.
14. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 273.
15. Lewis Burd Walker, “Life of Margaret Shippen, Wife of Benedict Arnold,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. xxv, 1901,
p. 44.
16. Ibid., pp. 42–48.
17. Arnold Correspondence, p. 430.
18. Hatch, Major John André, p. 217.
19. Arnold Correspondence, p. 437.
20. Ibid., p. 438.
21. Ibid., pp. 441–42.
22. Ibid., p. 442.
23. Ibid., p. 444.
24. Ibid., p. 451.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., p. 449.
27. Ibid., p. 453.
28. Ibid., p. 458.
29. Ibid., p. 471.
1. Lewis Burd Walker, “Life of Margaret Shippen, Wife of Benedict Arnold,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. xxv (1901), p. 146.
2. Washington to Lafayette. September 25, 1780, Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold (Westminster, MD, 2006), p. 493.
3. Ibid., p. 493.
4. Ibid., p. 473ff. Lea, the editor, is very familiar with the area.
5. Ibid., p. 480.
6. Robert McConnell Hatch, Major John André: A Gallant in Spy’s Clothing (Boston, 1986), pp. 4–5. Jameson also wrote Washington later that he had mentioned his intention of writing Arnold of André’s capture to Tallmadge and other field officers, “all of whom were clearly of opinion that it would be right, until I should hear from your Excellency.” Again this was not true. Arnold Correspondence, p. 515.
7. Hatch, Major John André, p. 5.
8. Arnold Correspondence, p. 495.
9. Ibid., p. 488–89.
10. Ibid., p. 513.
11. Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York, 1990), p. 564.
12. Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 (Chapel Hill, 1979), p. 291.
13. Arnold Correspondence, p. 495.
14. Ibid., p. 500.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., p. 502.
17. Walker, “Life of Margaret Shippen,” p. 151.
18. Hamilton to Elizabeth Schuyler, September 25, 1780, Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 301.
19. Carl Van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution ( New York, 1941) claims Peggy was instrumental in Arnold’s betrayal and most scholars have accepted his evidence. However re-examining his claims and taking account of Peggy’s behavior before and especially after Arnold’s flight it is clear she did not know of his plan.
20. Hamilton to Ms. Schuyler, September 25, 1780, Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold (Chicago, 1880), p. 302.
21. Ibid., p. 319.
22. Royster, A Revolutionary People at War, pp. 292–293.
23. David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), pp. 250–51.
24. Ibid., p. 512.
25. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, pp. 303–304.
26. Richard K. Murdoch, “Benedict Arnold and the Charming Nancy,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 84, no. 1 (January 1960) p. 53, no. 96.
27. Walker, “Life of Margaret Shippen,” p. 160.
28. Ibid., pp. 160–61.
29. Ibid., p. 162.
30. Arnold Correspondence, p. 505.
31. Hatch, Major John André, p. 254 and see Arnold Correspondence, p. 517.
32. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 305.
33. Ibid., p. 305.
34. J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. 3 (London, 1899), p. 336.
35. Hatch, Major John André, p. 255.
36. Arnold Correspondence, p. 514.
37. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 306.
38. Ibid., pp. 306–7.
39. Ibid., p. 307.
40. Randall, Benedict Arnold, p. 567.
41. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 308.
42. Arnold Correspondence, p. 526.
43. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 309.
44. Ibid., pp. 309–10.
45. Ibid., pp. 311–12.
46. Ibid., pp. 312–13.
47. Arnold Correspondence, p. 542.
48. Ibid., pp. 542–43.
49. Ibid., pp. 543–44.
TWENTY-FIVE: AFTERWARD
1. Arnold to Inhabitants of America, October 7, 1780, Russell M. Lea, ed., A Hero and a Spy: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Benedict Arnold [hereinafter Arnold Correspondence] (Westminster, MD, 2008), pp. 544–46.
2. The Articles of Confederation were not ratified until 1781.
3. Hessian captain Johann Ewald, who fought under Arnold and thoroughly disliked him, wrote in his diary that Arnold’s letter to Americans met with ridicule for its inclusion of arguments he had never used before: that Congress represented ‘the tyranny of the usurpers in the revolted provinces’ and that the promises of the British Commission of 1778 were better than the insidious offers of France.” Captain Johann Ewald, Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal, trans. and ed. Joseph P. Tustin (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1979), p. 426 n. 36.
4. Arnold Correspondence, pp. 563–65.
5. Emphasis in the source. Lewis Burd Walker, “Life of Margaret Shippen, Wife of Benedict Arnold,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. xxiv, No. 4 (1900), p. 428.
6. Ibid., p. 424.
7. Isaac Newton Arnold, The Life of Benedict Arnold (Chicago, 1880), p. 340.
8. Johann Conrad Döhla, A Hessian Diary of the American Revolution, trans. & ed., Bruce E. Burgoyne (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Pres, 1990), pp. 138–39.
9. Ewald, Diary, p. 251.
10. Ibid., p. 258; an estimated 2,200 men served under Arnold.
11. Ibid., pp. xxiii, 260–61.
12. Ibid., p. 296.
13. Ibid., pp. 294–95. The bankruptcy law of Connecticut Arnold used was recent and lawful, and as his behavior demonstrated his moderation, irked the real zealots such as those on the Pennsylvania Executive Council.
14. Ibid., pp. 295–96.
15. Ibid., p. 420 n. 2.
16. Ibid., p. 260.
17. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, pp. 347–48.
18. Ibid., pp. 260–61.
19. Ewald, Diary, p. 269.
20. Ibid., p. 286.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., p. 286.
23. Ibid., pp. 286–87.
24. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 348.
25. Ibid., p. 352.
26. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, pp. 349–50.
27. “The Narrative of Rufus Avery,” in Rev. N. H. Burnham, The Battle of Groton Heights: A Story of the Storming of Fort Griswold (New London, Conn., 1899), p. 23.
28. Ibid., p. 351.
29. Memoirs of Major General William Heath, September 10, 1781, Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six, pp. 730–31.
30. Eric D. Lehman, Homegrown Terror: Benedict Arnold and the Burning of New London (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2014), p. 154.
31. No one saw the stabbing but a long footnote on page 23 of the 1903 edition of Burnham’s book explains that Ledyard’s clothing showed he was stabbed from the side, not the front and not many times afterward as the popular story asserts.
32. Lehman, Homegrown Terror, p. 156.
33. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 354. On the behavior of attacking troops see Gunther Rothenberg, Chapter 6, “The Age of Napoleon,” in Michael Howard, et. al., eds., The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 92–94.
34. Ibid., p. 363.
35. Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot, Traitor (New York, 1990), p. 594.
36. Walker, “Life of Margaret Shippen,” pp. 460–62.
37. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, p. 387.
38. Ibid., pp. 388–89.
39. Ibid., p. 391.
40. “The Last Will and Testament of Benedict Arnold”, Letters and Papers of Lewis Walker, Box 3, Folder 23, Burd-Shippen Family Papers, 1891–1898. DAR 1966.01, Darlington Collection, Univ. of Pittsburgh.
41. “The Last Will and Testament of Margaret Arnold”, Letters and Papers of Lewis Walker, Box 3, Folder 23, Burd-Shippen Family Papers, 1891–1898, DAR 1966.01, Darlington Collection, Univ. of Pittsburgh.
42. The information about Arnold’s final illness comes from Isaac Arnold, who had copies of the family letters describing his last illness. Arnold, Life of Benedict Arnold, pp. 393–395.
43. Ibid., p. 395. It is uncertain what the source of this tradition is as the author writes “Tradition says.”
FINAL THOUGHTS
1. Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1788 (Chapel Hill, 1979), p. 288.
2. Richard M. Ketchum, Victory at Yorktown: The Campaign that Won the Revolution (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), p. 10.
3. Ibid., p. 11.
4. Royster, A Revolutionary People at War, p. 288.
5. Ibid., p. 288.
6. Ketchum cites Loyalist William Smith Jr. in New York, who wrote of a French alliance, “I dread France—She will be guided only by motives of Interest. No Promises will bind her—She will perceive it more advantageous to her Ambition to foment animosities than hastily to plunge into a War—She will deceive both Parties that her ends may be achieved at our Expense.” Ketchum, pp. 9–10.
7. Ibid., pp. 155–156.
8. Carl van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution (New York, 1941). p. 181.