02:25 PM EDT on Friday, June 30, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

On Sept. 26, 1780, Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene told his officers to stand in front of their men and read these orders:

Treason of the Blackest dye was yesterday discoverd. General [Benedict] Arnold who commanded at West Point, lost to every sentiment of Honor, of private or publick obligation, was about to deliver up that Important Post into the hands of the Enemy. Such an event must have given the American cause a deadly wound if not a fatal stab. Happyly the Treason has been timely discovered to prevent the fatal misfortune. The Providential train of circumstances which led to it affords the most convincing proff that the Liberties of America is the object of divine Protection. . . .

Arnold has made his escape to the Enemy, but Mr. [John] André (the adjt General to the British Army who came out to negociate the Business) is our Prisoner.

In Nathanael Greene's words, Benedict Arnold had been the idol of America before he turned traitor, and he'd earned that idolization. Arnold was born near the Thames River in Norwich, Conn., and at 14 had been apprenticed to a druggist.

After his parents died in his early 20s he sold their Norwich place, moved to New Haven with his sister, and opened a shop selling drugs and books. He used money from that business to outfit ships that sailed for the West Indies and Canada, making him a merchant of some wealth.

When shooting broke out on the Lexington Green, Arnold was a militia captain with a shock of black hair, gray eyes and a strong, stocky body. His militia company arrived in time for the siege of Boston, and he helped lead the raid that captured the cannons of Fort Ticonderoga.

Arnold was a smart and fearless commander. Twice he'd been wounded in the war -- once in a blizzard outside of Quebec on an epic, unsuccessful attempt to take that city, and once at Saratoga, where he'd stormed British entrenchments, exposed their flank and played a key role in capturing an army of 5,000 men.

At the time of his treason, Arnold was a 38-year-old general married to a beautiful, gray-eyed blond-haired woman not half his age. Arnold, the military commander in Philadelphia, married the 18-year-old Peggy Shippen in April 1779; she was a woman of Loyalist sympathies who liked living the high life, and he enjoyed providing her with it.

A month after his marriage Arnold began selling his services to the British. His liaison to the British commander in chief was a Maj. John André, a Swiss-born 28-year-old who possessed a great wit: a talented actor, comedian, poet and artist who sketched a haunting self-portrait in the hours before Nathanael Greene ordered his execution.

Even Greene liked André; days before the hanging he wrote to Caty: Mr. André is a very accomplished character, and while we abhor the act we cannot help pitying the man. From his apparent cheerfullness he little expects his approaching fate.

Capture of a spy

Benedict Arnold had been on the British payroll for a year when he began badgering Gen. George Washington for the command of West Point, a key American fortress on the Hudson River. Washington, wanting to do well by a man who had twice been wounded while serving heroically, gave him the command.

Arnold repaid the favor by sending the British the itinerary that Washington would keep on his trip to Hartford, right down to where and when he would lodge and the times that he'd be at King's Ferry.

Arnold also offered to surrender West Point to the British for 20,000 pounds.

In mid-September 1780, André sailed up the Hudson in the sloop Vulture to discuss the surrender terms with Arnold. The two men met at midnight on the western bank; they spoke until dawn lightened the sky, making it dangerous for André, in his scarlet coat, to be rowed back to the ship. He agreed to spend that day with Arnold at a house on the bluff; as the two men ate breakfast there they heard the same firing that Greene had heard from his camp: an enterprising American major had trained some cannon on the Vulture, forcing it to slip away. When the Vulture went, it took André's ride.

The next day, Friday, Sept. 22, André set out for New York on horseback, wearing a borrowed coat and a beaverskin cap; in his socks he carried plans for West Point, the fort's troop strength, the disposition of its cannon, its ordnance -- everything an opponent would want to know.

An American lieutenant, Joshua King, assigned to guard André after his capture, said André told him this story of his capture:

As his horse drew near Tarrytown on Saturday morning, three "bushmen" -- American militia -- ordered him to halt.

André said, "I hope, gentlemen, you belong to the lower party." Tories, who occupied the lower part of Hudson near New York were called the lower party, Whigs the upper.

"We do," one said.

"So do I. I am a British officer on business of importance and must not be detained."

He was then curtly ordered to dismount, and stripped of his watch.

"I am happy, gentlemen, to find I am mistaken. You belong to the upper party and so do I. A man must make use of any shift to get along, and to convince you of it, here is General Arnold's pass."

He produced a pass signed by Arnold that gave John Anderson permission to travel through.

"Damn Arnold's pass," said one. "You said you was a British officer. Where is your money?"

Finding no money in his pockets, the three men pulled off André's boots, where they discovered the plans for West Point.

Word was sent to Gen. Benedict Arnold that a prisoner named John Anderson had been taken; the papers were forwarded to General Washington.

The courier sent to find Washington missed him. On Monday morning, Sept. 25, Washington sent word to Arnold that he'd be passing through West Point on his way back from Connecticut, and he expected to breakfast at Arnold's house that day.

Arnold sat down to breakfast with the aides Washington had sent forward, including Col. Alexander Hamilton. As they ate, a courier rode up and gave Arnold a message: a spy, John Anderson, had been caught.

Arnold excused himself from the table; he went upstairs and told his young wife, according to the version Nathanael Greene heard, "I have this moment received two letters, which oblige me to leave you and my country forever."

Arnold told his guests he had some business to tend to at West Point; he'd be back to meet his excellency in an hour. He then rode hard for the river, where the Vulture was again plying the waters a dozen miles downstream.

Not a half-hour later Washington arrived at Arnold's house; he took his breakfast, then went on to West Point to inspect the works. He was shocked at their condition. Without actually sabotaging the works, Arnold had let them go to ruin; the big chain stretched across the Hudson to block British shipping was so rusted it could easily be broken.

And then Washington heard that Arnold had not been at the fort that day.

Washington returned to Arnold's house on the river's east bank to mull things over; then Col. Alexander Hamilton handed him a packet that had just come in by courier: the plans of West Point taken from André.

Washington was uncharacteristically emotional, some said near tears, as he told Hamilton and Lafayette: "Arnold has betrayed us! Whom can we trust now?"

Hamilton and another officer mounted horses and thundered off after Arnold, but he had made good his escape to the Vulture, leaving his young wife, Peggy, and their baby. From the sloop he sent Washington a message saying his wife "is as good and innocent as an angel and is incapable of wrongdoing." This too was a lie.

Peggy Shippen Arnold lay abed the rest of that day and most of the next in a clingy, gauzy robe. She appeared to be hysterical, accusing everyone in sight of wanting to murder her baby. Washington came in to see her; she said, "No, that is not General Washington. That is the man who was a-going to assist Col. Varick in killing my baby."

The sight of this poor, teenage mother in her thin robe touched all of the American officers: "She received us in bed with every circumstance that could interest our sympathy," Hamilton wrote to his wife. "Her sufferings were so eloquent that I wished myself her brother to have a right to become her defender."

Two days she was raving distracted, Greene wrote to his wife.

Even Washington was touched: he gave her a pass to travel. She stopped at the home of a British colonel where she told her friend, Mrs. Theodosia Prevost, the story of how she'd scammed Washington and his officers into letting her go. She had not only known about the scheme to give up West Point, she had encouraged her husband to do it.

gcarbone@projo.com / (401) 277-7434

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources consulted for today's installment:

Boatner III, Mark M. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, Pa., 1994.

Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. Penguin Books: New York: 2004.

Scheer, George F., and Rankin, Hugh F. Rebels & Redcoats. Da Capo Press Inc.: United States of America, 1987. copyright The World Publishing Company, 1957.

Showman, Richard K., ed. The Papers of Nathanael Greene, Vol. VI. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1991.

A continuing series.