01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, July 1, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

Nathanael Greene wrote to his wife:

I expect it will fall to my lot to sit as president of the court which will decide upon the fate of Maj. John André, the British officer who had been caught aiding Benedict Arnold's treason. It will be a disagreeable business, but it must be done.

True to Greene's expectations, Gen. George Washington assigned him to preside over André's military tribunal. On Sept. 29, 1780, Greene and 13 other generals solemnly heard the case inside the old Dutch church in Tappan, N.Y.

"You will be asked various questions, but we wish you to feel perfectly at liberty to answer them or not as you choose," Greene told André, a talented 29-year-old native of Switzerland. André spoke five languages, wrote comedic sketches that had kept the British laughing during their occupation of Philadelphia, and was a good artist, too.

"Take time for recollection," Greene said, "and weigh well what you say."

André told his story of sneaking ashore from the war sloop Vulture to meet with Arnold on the western banks of the Hudson near West Point, the American citadel that Arnold was planning to surrender to the British for 20,000 pounds.

"Did you consider yourself under protection of the flag?" the tribunal asked; this was the key question: Had André come ashore with a flag of truce to meet Arnold on an officer-to-officer basis? Or had he sneaked ashore as a common spy?

"Certainly not," André answered; "if I had, I might have returned under" the protection of that flag. Instead he'd donned a disguise and ridden through the country under a false name.

The tribunal was unanimous: André had acted as a common spy, and should be hanged by the neck until dead.

Execution was set for Oct. 1, but the British commander in chief, Sir Henry Clinton, won a one-day reprieve. Clinton sent Lt. Gen. Robertson to speak with Washington; Washington sent Greene as his emissary to meet Robertson at Dobbs Ferry on the Hudson. According to Robertson's report, Greene said, "If we give up André, we shall expect you to give up Arnold."

Robertson answered only with silence and "a look of indignant reproof."

After the meeting Greene sent Roberston a message: he had communicated to General Washington the substance of your conversation. . . . It made no alteration in his opinion or determination.

André was to be hanged from a gallows on a hill in Tappan at noon on Oct. 2, 1780.

In the dark hours before his execution André sketched a self-portrait, showing a thin young man wearing a ponytail and a wistful smile. The figure in the portrait had set his pencil down for a final time, and now awaited his final dawn.

That morning, Greene wrote to the uncle of his wife, Caty, Rhode Island Gov. William Greene:

The gallows is erected in full view of the place where I am writing. . . .

Since the fall of Lucifer, nothing has equaled the fall of Arnold. His Military reputation in Europe and America was flattering to the vanity of the first Generals of the Age. He will now sink as low as he has been high before; and as the devil made war upon heaven after his fall, so I expect Arnold will upon America.

Those would prove to be prophetic words.

After writing that morning, Greene rode up to inspect the gallows. The coffin that would hold André lay on the bed of a wagon that pulled up beneath the hangman's noose. André, dressed in his uniform of scarlet jacket and white pants, climbed into the back of the wagon; he stepped onto his coffin and, hands on his slender hips, walked the length of it.

Dr. James Thacer, diarist and regimental surgeon, heard André say, "It will be but a momentary pang."

The executioner, his face smeared in black grease, stepped forward to slip the noose over André's neck. André held him off and himself put the noose over his own collar, drawing the knot snugly by his right ear. He took a handkerchief from his scarlet coat and tied it over his eyes. An officer commanding the execution said his hands must be tied; André slipped off his blindfold, pulled out another handkerchief, then slipped his blindfold back into place; his arms were bound behind his back with his own kerchief.

Then, an artificer, or craftsman, who was present wrote:

"The wagon was suddenly drawn from under the gallows, which, together with the length of the rope, gave him a most tremendous swing back and forth, but in a few moments he hung entirely still."

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.

Greene, George Washington. The Life of Nathanael Greene, Vol. 2. New York: Hurd and Houghton. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1871.

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

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

A continuing series.