Authors: Nancy Rubin Stuart
Three days later, again Arnold demanded “compensation for services agreed on and a sum advanced for that purpose.”
31
When André failed to reply, Arnold grew insistent, demanding £20,000 before he would deliver his information. Finally, reluctantly, on July 24, André conceded that “the sum even of 20,000 pounds should be paid to you. You must not suppose that in case of detection or failure . . . you would be left a victim, but services done are the terms on which we promise rewards; in these you see we are profuse; we conceive them proportioned to your risk.”
32
Before his trip to Connecticut, Arnold understood that his letters were best sent from Philadelphia to avoid interception from spies in the Hudson River Valley. Peggy, or so it was later alleged, consequently, passed them to her husband’s agent, who, in turn, dispatched them to New York. One such letter assured the British that Washington’s forces were too weak to attack New York City and mentioned the imminent arrival of French reinforcements. To untrained ears, Arnold’s letter sounded merely social: “Upon the whole our affairs which do not wear a pleasing aspect at present, [but] may soon be greatly changed.”
33
The words were more prophetic than Arnold anticipated. After General Wayne’s July 16 re-conquest of Stony Point, Washington announced that he intended to appoint Arnold to a special command. Arnold thrilled at the words: the special command must have been West Point. Just after crossing King’s Ferry on his return from Connecticut, he met Washington on horseback. Unable to retain his curiosity any longer, Arnold asked about the post. The commander in chief replied with enthusiasm: “Yes, you are to command the left wing, the post of honor.”
34
Arnold, who was usually a consummate actor, could not hide his disappointment. “Upon this information his countenance changed, and he appeared to be quite fallen,” Washington recalled. “Instead of thank[ing] me or expressing any pleasure at the appointment, [Arnold] never opened his mouth.”
35
Others were equally stunned. Washington’s aide, Tench Tilghman (a patriotic cousin of the Shippens), recalled that after the announcement, Arnold suddenly limped more than usual and complained that his leg was too weak for horseback duty. Again Washington encouraged the former military hero to reconsider the post offered to him. But, Arnold insisted, his fragile health prevented it. He was, he said, better suited to assume the command at West Point. Baffled, Washington wondered at Arnold’s reluctance.
Peggy was as ill-prepared for the announcement as her husband. A day or two later, while attending a gala at the mansion of her relatives Mary and Robert Morris, her conversation was interrupted by another guest, who congratulated her on Arnold’s appointment as commander of the army’s left flank. “The information affected her so much as to produce hysteric fits,” Morris observed. Alarmed, he, Mary, and others tried to calm Peggy, assuming the twenty year old was upset by the dangers of Arnold’s new position. “Efforts were made to convince her that the General had been selected for a preferable station,” Morris added, but “the explanations . . . to the astonishment of all present produced no effect.”
36
On Tuesday, August 3, Washington learned that the British fleet, which had sailed east to attack the French in Newport, Rhode Island, had reversed course and were returning to New York. Immediately, he contacted Arnold and ordered him “to proceed to West Point and take the command of that post and its dependencies from Fishkill to King’s Ferry. . . . You will endeavor to obtain every intelligence of the enemy’s motions. . . . You will endeavor to have the works at West Point carried on as expeditiously as possible by the garrison under the direction and superintendence of the engineers.”
37
Arnold was ecstatic. Indeed, he would fulfill Washington’s expectations for “intelligence of the enemy’s motions” but not as the commander in chief had intended.
With Washington’s announcement, relief swept over Peggy. In contrast, his sister Hannah was appalled. Apparently Arnold had written to her in August that, while Peggy and his infant son “Neddy” would join him at West Point, she should remain in Philadelphia with the nearly eight-year-old Henry, the youngest son from Arnold’s first marriage. Infuriated that she and the boy were not included (the older ones being in boarding school), Hannah retorted, “Ill nature I leave it you, as you have discovered yourself to be a perfect master of it. Witness yours of August 18th.” Nor did she see any advantage to Arnold’s relocation. “As you have neither purling streams nor sighing swains at West Point, ’tis no place for me; nor do I think Mrs. Arnold will be long pleased with it.”
38
Then, in a vicious snipe at Peggy, Hannah added, “Though I expect it may be rendered dear to her for a few hours by the presence of a certain chancellor; who, by the by, is a dangerous companion for a particular lady in the absence of her husband.” In fact, Hannah continued, “I could say more than prudence will permit. I could tell you of frequent private assignations and of numberless
billets doux
, if I had an inclination to make mischief. But as I am of a very peaceable temper I’ll not mention a syllable of the matter.”
39
The “certain chancellor” Hannah alluded to was Robert R. Livingston, with whom Peggy had flirted to win support for Arnold’s command of West Point.
Subsequent to his arrival at West Point on a rainy August 5, Arnold noted the fort’s crumbling walls, decayed nearby forts, and lackluster protection from 1,500 men. Guns, magazines, wagons, horses, and stockpiles of food remained in short supply. In an effort to secure supplies for the British, Arnold wrote Thomas Pickering, the newly appointed quartermaster general, on August 16, “Everything is wanting. . . . The barracks here will not contain more than eight hundred men or any kind of camp equipment; there is not a tent at West Point, and it is with great difficulty that one can be made to cover the troops . . . without these supplies the garrison will be in a wretched uncomfortable situation next winter.”
40
Arnold’s subsequent letter to Washington (copied to the British) also explained that West Point’s six-foot walls offered little protection. The garrison, he explained, could easily be attacked from the land side by transporting cannons on back-country roads from the south.
Still British general Clinton remained so wary of Arnold’s reliability that he had ordered spies to track Arnold’s movement through Connecticut and New York that summer. By late August 1780, convinced that the American turncoat’s proposals were sincere, Clinton finally agreed to pay Arnold £20,000—but on one condition: the British must be assured they could capture three thousand soldiers at West Point.
For Arnold, that was nearly a deal-breaker. In an attempt to further weaken the garrison, he had ordered hundreds of soldiers to the surrounding region to perform trivial tasks: chopping wood and making bricks. Ironically, the unsuspecting Washington then played into Clinton’s demands by dispatching one of Knox’s artillery units to West Point, swelling the troop count to three thousand men.
Still, Arnold remained on edge. A network of spies and double agents roamed the territory between the Hudson Highlands and New York City, and might report his schemes to the patriots. André, too, worried, fearing that at the last minute the traitor might bolt. To quickly conclude the capture of West Point, André urged a secret meeting. It would take place at Dobbs Ferry on the Hudson’s eastern shore, well below West Point. To that Arnold had eagerly agreed. On Sunday, September 10, he consequently sailed downriver for an overnight stay at Belmont, the manor house of Hudson River landowner and attorney Joshua Hett Smith.
Simultaneously, André sailed upriver on the
Vulture
, a British sloop of war, accompanied by the graying Colonel Beverly Robinson, one of New York’s most wealthy and powerful Loyalists. As commander of West Point, Arnold had deliberately chosen to live at Robinson’s abandoned country house. That property, two miles south of West Point on the opposite shore (modern-day Garrison, New York), provided perfect cover for meetings with Robinson, who would allegedly plead to reclaim his property from Arnold.
Ultimately, a series of failed communications prevented the September 11 meeting between André and Arnold. As Arnold’s barge appeared on the horizon near Dobbs Ferry that Monday morning, British gunboats stationed upriver of the
Vulture
, knowing nothing about the rendezvous, fired. Frantically Arnold’s oarsman headed for shore, after which the general waited for hours for André’s all-clear message. On the opposite shore, André waited for a similar message from Arnold. Finally both men gave up.
Three days later, Arnold boarded the barge again and continued downriver to Smith’s manor house to await the arrival of Peggy and their infant, Neddy, from Philadelphia. A quarter of a century later, Smith claimed in his memoir that he felt honored to have hosted the famous general and his family overnight. Only later, Smith insisted, had he learned the truth. “Little did I then conceive I was dispensing hospitality to a man whose defection from the cause . . . afterwards astonished the whole world.”
41
Smith’s defense has long been questioned. His eldest brother, William, a former royal chief justice of New York, had not only defected to the British but was one of General Clinton’s closest advisors. That, in turn, heightened suspicions among the patriots that other members of the Smith family were Tories. Hostilities ran so high against the Smiths, Joshua later claimed, that he and his wife, Elizabeth Gordon, escaped to his Hudson River property. Indeed, one of Smith’s motives for ingratiating himself with Arnold involved his hopes for extra protection or “motives of security.”
42
Sensing the attorney’s vulnerability, the crippled general had accordingly drawn Smith aside.
In a few days, Arnold explained, he intended to meet a certain British gentleman on a business matter. Would Smith be willing to row that man and Robinson from the
Vulture
to his home on Haverstraw Bay? Assured the meeting was legal and conducted under a flag of truce, Smith agreed. To ensure confidentiality, the attorney even promised to clear the manor house by escorting his wife and nephews to relatives in Fishkill.
That Thursday, September 14, Arnold’s aide, David Franks, arrived with “the greatest treasure you have”—his wife, Peggy.
43
The young mother had arrived weary from a bumpy, ten-day journey with her servant, a slave who drove the carriage, and a baby nurse for her son, Neddy. Just before the trip, the baby had apparently hurt his head, for Peggy’s sister-in-law, Hannah, had referred to Neddy as “the poor little sore-headed boy” in one of her notes.
44
Arnold’s passionate love for Peggy, whose “life and happiness” meant all, as even Hannah admitted, inspired him to plan every detail of her trip along with providing her with a list of travel instructions.
45
Among them, “You must by all means get out of your carriage in crossing all ferries and going over all large bridges to prevent accidents.” Peggy must also use her own sheets in lieu of the soiled ones often found at inns. Since it was summer, Arnold also advised his wife to “put a feather bed in the light wagon which will make an easy seat, and you will find it cooler and pleasanter to ride in when the roads are smooth than a closed carriage.” She must also avoid long carriage rides, which “might fatigue you or the dear boy.”
46
Franks was also ordered to stay either at certain inns or with any of several of Arnold’s acquaintances. By the fifth night of the trip, Peggy and her party were advised to stay at a gentleman’s farm near Paramus, the Hermitage. There they would be hosted by Anne Watkins and her daughter, Theodosia Prevost. The latter, the twenty-nine-year-old mother of five, was married to British officer James Marcus Prevost, then stationed in South Carolina. In spite of the usual hostilities towards Loyalists, Theodosia and her mother had shrewdly escaped eviction. Subsequent to the June 28, 1778, Battle of Monmouth, Theodosia had invited General Washington to rest at the Hermitage, where, she promised, the “accommodations will be more commodious than those to be procured in the neighborhood” and assured Washington that she would be “particularly happy to make her house agreeable to His Excellency, and family.”
47
Washington, knowing that the family was politically divided, had accepted that invitation. During his stay at the Hermitage, from July 11 to 14, the commander in chief had supervised care of his wounded men, planned the army’s next move, and tended to other military business. Meanwhile, his officers flirted with Theodosia’s female relatives and guests. One such officer was twenty-two-year-old James Monroe, who described Theodosia as “a lady full of affection, of tenderness and sensibility, separated from her husband, for a series of time by the cruelty of the war . . . fortitude under distress, cheerfulness, life and gayety, in the midst of affliction.”
48
“
PLEASE TO PRESENT MY
best respects to Mrs. Knox,” Arnold wrote Knox on August 8, 1780, four days after assuming command of West Point. “A line from you at any time when you are at leisure will be very acceptable,” he added, hoping to wheedle more military information from Knox.
1
The Continental army was then in crisis, its ranks dwindled to 10,000 men, its supplies nearly exhausted, and morale at its lowest ebb since the start of the Revolution. Not only had the British conquered Charleston in May but only 5,300 French soldiers and 7,000 French sailors had arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, in mid-July—many fewer than anticipated. No sooner were General Rochambeau (Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur) and Admiral Ternay (Charles-Henri-Louis d’Arsac) settled than they heard about the army’s wretched condition. That, combined with reports about America’s bankrupt credit, led them to stall in Rhode Island rather than embrace Washington’s plan for a joint attack on British New York. “Send us troops, ships and money but do not depend on these people nor upon their means. They have neither money nor credit,” General Rochambeau warned France’s foreign minister, Vergennes, also known as Charles Gravier.
2