Philadelphia

June 1779

CHAPTER XII

* * *

Peggy Arnold started at the unexpected rap at her door. At half-past two on a warm Tuesday afternoon, during her private time? Who in the entire staff of servants would dare breach the rule? Two o’clock until three o’clock in the afternoon of every weekday was a sacred hour. The mistress of the estate was not to be disturbed for any reason short of dire emergency.

“Enter.”

The door opened and a uniformed male servant bowed. “Forgive the intrusion, madam. I carry a message from the General. He instructed that it be delivered immediately.”

Peggy stared. “My husband?”

“Yes, madam.”

She walked quickly from her vanity dresser to the door to accept the sealed note and open it.

 “My Life: I have received an answer regarding your purchases from the crockery dealer. Needful I meet you alone in the library at three p.m. Reply.”

Peggy’s heart leaped, racing, and her breath came short.

The servant shifted his feet, nervous, wishing to be gone. “Madam, will there be an answer?”

“Yes. Tell the General I will be there. You are dismissed.”

The door closed and Peggy stared at the note. Stansbury! André! We have an answer!

She forced her wildly racing mind to slow, to go back once more and carefully put the pieces of the bizarre plan together, inspecting each minute detail for the flaw that could bring it crashing down on their heads and send her husband to the gallows. She paced on the thick India carpet as her mind reached back, as it had incessantly, every day for two months.

Some fragments of the mosaic she had known for nearly one year, but the horrendous reach of it was not revealed to her until April 8, 1779. On that day she and Benedict Arnold had gathered a small, select group of family and intimate friends for their marriage. Benedict could not stand on his leg, but no matter. A fellow officer stood beside him, holding him erect for the simple, very private ceremony.

Peggy had happily wrapped herself in the overwhelming opulence of the Penn estate and had gloried in being Mrs. Benedict Arnold, wife of the Military Governor of the great city of Philadelphia. She soon realized, however, that the price of the wealth and the honor, and sharing the powers and social status of his office, was watching her husband endure constant pain, some days crippling him altogether. Had all else in his life been in order, she believed he could have risen above the agonies of being crippled. But within forty-eight hours of their marriage, it seemed to her their world was threatened by powerful people whose sole design was to bring down her husband.

Joseph Reed and the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania had published their despicable Proclamation, accusing Benedict of eight offenses that the Council hoped would destroy him. He answered them defiantly, and the Council brought the charges in the Pennsylvania courts. Benedict refused to recognize the courts’ authority to try him, protesting it was a military matter and appealing to General George Washington to convene a military court-martial to weigh the charges against him. The answer from General Washington was slow in coming, but in time the military proceeding was set for May 1, 1779. Other critical matters required it be postponed until June 1, 1779, and on the day the inquiry finally commenced, the British began a major offensive to the north, and once again General Washington had to postpone the trial while he moved to check General Clinton.

Despondent, with a growing suspicion that Congress, the Pennsylvania Council, and now the one friend on whom he had staked his future—General George Washington—had each intentionally or by coincidence conspired to ruin him, Benedict had returned from the aborted trial at Washington’s headquarters in the New Jersey highlands with his head down, shoulders sagging. He was unable to see a way to defend himself, strike back at his enemies, and move on to the wealth and glory that so clearly he had earned.

All this Peggy had learned one fragment at a time, and her heart reached out to her husband, wanting to share his unbearable burden, probing for any way she could find to lift him, inspire him. They had talked long and deep in the night, sometimes until dawn, searching to find a way through the confusing, bitter tangle of political and military accusations. In the end they knew they had to accept the hard truth. All Benedict’s dreams—all he had worked for, fought for, suffered for—was lost in the torrent of charges and acrimony that were now being trumpeted in the headlines of most newspapers and hotly debated throughout the United States.

Benedict found himself in the gall of bitterness, unable to understand how one who had given everything he possessed in mortality, short of his life, to the American cause, could find himself under fierce attack from every quarter. He was utterly alone, abandoned by everyone and everything he had fought to protect and save.

Then, in their darkest hour, from the depths of despondency, the casual suggestion had arisen between them: if the Americans were determined to deny him all he had earned, were there others who would be more willing?

On a night in May 1779, the germ took root, unspoken at first, then timorously given shape and form in words.

Would the British give him the reward denied him by the Americans?

Once the thought had seized their minds, it grew rapidly to an obsession. It drove them on, with the treason quickly taking on the mask of acceptability, and acceptability instantly becoming the honorable remedy by which they would cure all the ills in their lives. After all, had not the war forced America into an unholy alliance with France, the Catholic archenemy of the American Protestant faith? Had not the bloody conflict been protracted by good men turned evil, who were prolonging the war to get wealth from corrupt business dealings at the cost of the lives of their countrymen and every worthy goal set before the world in their Declaration of Independence?

Ending the war with Mother England was the answer. Stop the killing. Seek a peaceful solution. It was fair. It was just. If Benedict could be the instrument by which it came to pass, it was his duty to do so. And if he succeeded, could anyone deny him his just due? The fame and fortune he so richly deserved?

Covertly, hesitantly, they pondered the question: how does one go about the perilous business of contacting a sworn enemy to propose treachery? Who could they trust? One mistake would lead to the gallows.

Peggy clasped her hands to her breast. André! Of course! John André! Her ardent admirer, her escort to great balls and banquets in times past, he who had written poetry for her and read it so passionately, with violins softly moaning in the background. Was it not André who called Peggy and her cluster of friends his “Little Society of Third and Fourth Streets”? She had never lost touch with him, even after her marriage.

She was keenly aware that when André’s General Charles Grey followed General Howe to England, André had cultivated the favor of Howe’s successor, the churlish General Henry Clinton, now the commander of British forces in America. So ardently had John André courted the general that Clinton first appointed him an aide, then, in April of 1779 elevated him to the critically sensitive position of officer in charge of British intelligence, with the responsibility of encouraging rebellious Americans to defect to the British side. Who better? Peggy exclaimed. It seemed that fate had provided a trustworthy conduit to make their contact with General Henry Clinton.

How to contact André?

They pondered overnight before Peggy struck on it. Joseph Stansbury! A gregarious, amiable, likeable crockery dealer who was a dedicated social climber. She could not recall how many times he had been in attendance at the banquets and balls, always noticeable, always slapping backs, ingratiating himself to those who occupied the highest social strata in Philadelphia. And few knew that while he professed support for the American cause, he was in truth firmly dedicated to England, where he had been born and educated.

Joseph Stansbury was their man.

They summoned him to a secret meeting. He gaped at the audacity of their proposal, his mind reeling. Carry treasonous messages between Benedict Arnold and the British? Insanity! It was only when his brain recovered some sense of reason that he realized the possibilities. It was the gallows if the shocking scheme failed and he was discovered. But if he succeeded, it would be a great victory for England and mean a fortune for him. He weighed the proposal for days before he agreed.

In the privacy of a small room off the Arnold’s library, the three conspirators made their plan. Stansbury would carry a coded message to André in New York on the pretense of conducting another of his frequent buying and selling trips for his crockery business. He was sworn to secrecy; not another living being was to know.

The message was delivered, and Stansbury returned with a cautious, tentative answer from a suspicious André. Other messages with offers and counter-offers followed, Arnold demanding a firm commitment for payment of large sums of money for critical information, André refusing, and demanding the information in advance, with payment to be in an amount determined by the British to be adequate.

The two collaborators had collided—reached their first critical impasse. The entire scheme came to a grinding halt with the Arnolds waiting for André to soften his demands by agreeing to a firm price for Arnold’s perfidy. Days became weeks with nothing from Stansbury. It seemed André had disappeared from the face of the earth, until the servant delivered the coded message from Benedict to Peggy. The unnamed crockery dealer was Joseph Stansbury. Benedict had heard from him. Something crucial had happened.

He wanted Peggy in the library within the hour.

At five minutes before the hour Peggy hurried from her suite on the second floor, down the hall to the great, curving mahogany staircase to the first floor, across the cavernous parlor, into the broad hallway to the library. Ahead of her she watched her husband laboring on his crutches, wincing despite the two-inch lift in his left shoe. She called to him, he turned and waited, and they walked on to the large door together. Benedict paused to work with his key, entered, and held it for her to pass through and take a velvet, overstuffed chair next to a small oaken table with a delicate lamp imported from the Orient. With his teeth set against the chronic ache in his left leg and hip, he took the chair opposite her and laid his crutches on the floor. She folded her hands in her lap and turned to him, tense, waiting, battling a rising sense of foreboding.

He was unable to mask his bitterness as he spoke.

“A message came from André. His superiors will not commit to a guaranteed payment of the money.”

Peggy closed her eyes and her shoulders sagged. They had lost! They had taken the deadly risk, and it had come to nothing. Anger flared, and she tossed her head defiantly. “Then they shall not have the information they need.”

Arnold continued. “André said there would be no money at all until I have delivered what he calls a ‘real advantage,’ or at least made ‘a generous effort.’”

Peggy snapped, “Meaning what?”

Arnold rubbed weary eyes before he answered. “He said that rather than limiting my efforts to general information, I should send an accurate plan of Fort West Point. With it should be specific information of the number and type of boats guarding the Hudson River, and the order of battle for the American army.”

“West Point?”

“Fort West Point, on the Hudson River above New York.”

“Is Fort West Point important to them?”

Arnold nodded, eyes downcast for a moment. He raised them, and in them Peggy saw the keenest combat mind in the American army. “If the British were able to occupy Fort West Point, they could cut the United States in two. It would fragment the states, weaken the entire American effort. The British could defeat them, one half at a time, and the revolution would fail completely. It would be over. We would have our reward, and the world could return to sanity.”

Peggy remained silent for a time, working with her thoughts. “What do you plan—”

Arnold raised a hand to stop her. “That’s not all. André said that if I would assume a command and arrange a meeting with him under a flag of truce, he was convinced that we could strike an agreement in a short time.”

Peggy’s heart leaped. “Assume a command? What did he mean? You’re in command of this entire city.”

“I think he was suggesting command of Fort West Point. Within a month I will be able to move about with this leg, and I could command such a fort if I were appointed by Washington. If I had command there, I could surrender the fort to the British without a shot being fired.”

“Would General Washington likely be disposed to make such an appointment?”

“I don’t know. André had one other proposal. British General William Phillips was captured at Saratoga and is in a prison camp in Virginia. André proposes Phillips be paroled to New York, then on to my headquarters here, where we can strike a bargain. But there’s danger. We would violate the flag of truce if we used it to arrange giving information on Fort West Point to the British. And if Phillips comes here to discuss the same thing, he would be in violation of the oath he must take to get a parole. Either way, none of us would be protected. If the Americans found out, I could be hanged.”

Peggy heaved a great sigh. “Then what’s to be done?”

For a long time Arnold sat in silence, pondering, weighing, before he answered.

“Nothing. At least for now. I refuse to deal with them without a firm commitment that I will receive the compensation I demand. To give up what I have for a reward that is unnamed is to give up a certainty for an uncertainty, and that I will not do. I have my duty to you. To give up what I have without knowing that I will gain by it is out of the question.”

Peggy stared at her hands for a time. “I agree. I will draft a coded letter to André to conclude the entire matter. All we have dreamed of can still be ours if we are careful in how we handle your present opportunities with the Americans. I still believe General Washington will see us through the political nonsense, and one day this country will realize the debt it owes you.”

She stood. “And on that day, your name will take its rightful place in history, and all you have given for the American cause will be justly rewarded.”

She walked to the door and turned. “I will draft the answer to John André tonight.”

She closed the door, and he sat in the silence, pondering his options. One thought rose in his mind, above all others.

If I had command of Fort West Point, would the British meet my demands? Money. Wealth. My rightful place in history as the man who justly and fairly brought peace between the Mother Country and her erring children? Would they commit to it?

He sat for a long time before he reached for his crutches.

Notes

The decision of Benedict Arnold and his wife Peggy to commit treason by selling out to the British for money became a reality when they made their plan, and then selected Joseph Stansbury, a socialite crockery merchant, to carry their coded letter to John André, who was an aide to British Major General Clinton. André was soon promoted to the position of adjutant general and advanced to the rank of major, by General Clinton. The coded letters were exchanged, with the British refusing Arnold’s high demands. The British suggested that if Arnold would arrange to surrender Fort West Point, on the Hudson River about eighty miles north of New York, negotiations could continue. At that time Arnold was still military governor of Philadelphia, but he did shortly open the question with General Washington of his appointment as commander of Fort West Point (Flexner, The Traitor and the Spy, pp. 275–301; Leckie, George Washington’s War, pp. 554–62).