Defiant Brides (14 page)

By Thursday, September 14, after weeks of embarrassment and delay, Washington agreed to meet the French leaders in Connecticut. “I shall be at Peekskill,” he informed Arnold. “You will be pleased to send down a guard of a captain and fifty at that time and direct the quarters to have a night’s forage for about forty horses. You will keep this to yourself, as I want to make my journey a secret.”
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Arnold was more than “pleased.” Immediately he dispatched Washington’s “secret” schedule to André and Clinton as more proof of his value as a spy. By September 15 he also assured Washington he would provide the necessary protections, as well as “deliver in person” other information.
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To Washington, as to other high-ranking officers, Arnold’s former bitterness seemed to have disappeared. The new commander of West Point seemed committed to help the Revolution triumph over the British.

On Friday, September 15, the day after Peggy’s arrival at Joshua Hett Smith’s manor house, she, Arnold, and their party were rowed upriver to Colonel Beverly Robinson’s country house. Set above the Hudson in a high meadow, surrounded by pastures and orchards, the rambling, two-story clapboard house was one of the Loyalist’s properties before the patriots seized it. Arnold’s decision to live there struck a discordant note with his West Point predecessor, General Robert Howe, who, having lived there himself, pointed out its inconvenience, lying two miles south of the fort on the Hudson’s opposite shore. “At present I apprehend no danger in these quarters,” Arnold scoffed, insisting the house was “convenient for an invalid.”
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Unmentioned, of course, were Arnold’s underlying reason for taking this particular house: woods screened the property from the river.

Shrewdly, too, Arnold had hired the impeccably patriotic Richard Varick, a twenty-seven-year-old veteran of Saratoga and former secretary to General Schuyler. Varick, who was privately studying law, had gratefully accepted Arnold’s part-time position and thrilled at the idea of meeting his beautiful wife. “The presence of Mrs. Arnold will certainly make our situation in the barren Highlands vastly more agreeable and will more than compensate for every deficiency of nature.”
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Those “deficiencies” referred to the isolation of the Hudson Highlands, whose hills and deep valleys were sparsely pocketed with homes and farms. Even to Smith, whose country manor lay twenty miles south, Robinson’s property seemed “dreary . . . environed with mountains, and no way calculated for the residence of a lady of Mrs. Arnold’s taste, she being . . . [an] example and ornament of the politest circles.”
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If the Hudson Highlands touched a raw nerve in Peggy from her earlier residences in the country, no one knew it. Primed by Arnold, she understood that Robinson’s house was an ideal place for Arnold’s treason. Secrecy was of utmost importance, especially in the presence of the observant Franks and Varick. If Arnold’s leap to the British was to succeed, Peggy must play the innocent as his cheerful and charming young wife.

Peggy’s first test came on Sunday, September 17, while she and Arnold were hosting a dinner with West Point’s chief of artillery, the battle-scarred General John Lamb. Among the guests were Joshua Hett Smith and his family, who had stayed overnight on their way to Fishkill. That day tensions as powerful as the currents churning the Hudson one hundred feet below lay beneath the polite banter in Robinson’s beamed dining room. Smith, thrilled to be dining with the famous General Arnold, talked long and loud through the meal, as his host feigned interest in his comments. Varick and Franks though, puzzled by Arnold’s warmth to a suspected Loyalist, fumed, as the former recalled during a subsequent court inquiry.
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Money, they feared, lay behind the commander’s friendliness. Was it possible that Smith had lured their financially strapped employer into another illegal trading scheme?

Adding to these tensions was the arrival of a messenger who handed Arnold a sealed letter whose seal he broke before his guests, scanned and nervously stuffed into his pocket. When General Lamb inquired about the sender, Arnold explained it was from Robinson, who requested a meeting to recover his confiscated home. The message had indeed arrived from Robinson, but it actually contained a seditious signal. Robinson was aboard the
Vulture
, a British man-o’-war, in Haverstraw Bay awaiting the arrival of Major André. Arnold’s meeting with the British major was, consequently, imminent.

After lunch, Arnold, Franks, and Lamb barged south to meet Washington at Smith’s house near Haverstraw and accompany him to Peekskill. During their trip across the river, the commander in chief mentioned that he planned to come back up the Hudson on Saturday, September 23, to tour West Point and spend the night at the Robinson’s with Arnold and Peggy. Privately, Arnold welcomed that information, key news to forward to the British to obtain his reward of £20,000.

Possibly Franks sensed something was amiss. Or perhaps the day’s tensions had worn on Arnold, who subsequently hurled so many “insults and ill treatment” upon Franks, that the aide decided to find another position.
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Back at Robinson’s, Varick was equally disgruntled. Subsequent to Arnold’s departure, he had remained at the table with Peggy and the Smiths. Inevitably, the conversation turned to the Revolution. “America might have made an honorable peace with Great Britain when the commissioners came out in 1778,” Smith opined. To that, Varick had sharply disagreed and soon the two men were quarreling. Peggy, meanwhile, grew jittery, then she began chattering hysterically, as if to block out the dissension. It was not the first time Arnold’s wife seemed rattled. “She would give utterance to anything and everything on her mind,” Franks recalled. As a result, he and Varick already knew to be “scrupulous of what we told her or said within her hearing.”
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Accordingly, the next morning, Monday, September 18, when Peggy defended Smith as “a very ‘warm and staunch Whig,’” Varick attributed her comment to her high-strung nerves. Subsequent events later proved Peggy’s behavior to be a case of the lady doth protest too much, per Shakespeare’s Queen Gertrude. That Monday Varick, nevertheless, had no reason to suspect Peggy of deception.

Later that afternoon, while reading Arnold’s reply to Robinson’s letter, Varick again became suspicious. The tone of the letter was so warm, he complained to Arnold, that it seemed “the complexion of one from a friend, rather than one from an enemy.”
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To disarm Varick, Arnold amended the letter tone and directed Robinson to address his request to the civil authorities. Then, he surreptitiously slipped a second letter into the envelope that read, “I shall send a person to Dobbs Ferry or on board the
Vulture
on Wednesday night the 20th instant, and furnish him with a boat and flag of truce. The ship must remain where she is until the time mentioned . . . [when] the gentleman in New York [André] . . . will be permitted to come.”
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In the double-speak of a spy, Robinson replied on the nineteenth, “I am sorry . . . that it is not proper to allow me to see you, my business being entirely of a private nature. . . . I was induced to make my application to you in hopes of meeting with a favorable reception from a Gent of your character. . . . I have nothing more favorable to say to you . . . other than to wait for a more favorable opportunity of doing something for my family.”
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Arnold understood: André would soon board the
Vulture
and meet him at a specific time and place on the shore at Haverstraw Bay.

Joshua Hett Smith stopped at Robinson’s on his return from Fishkill the following morning to report that a “Mr. John Anderson”—André’s alias—would appear at his manor house near Haverstraw Bay late that night, Tuesday, September 19. The following morning, September 20, an apologetic message arrived from Smith. His tenant farmers, the brothers Samuel and Joseph Cahoon, who were supposed to row Anderson from the
Vulture
to Haverstraw the preceding night, had refused to cooperate. Enraged, Arnold stormed out of the house, leaving a bewildered Peggy behind. After bellowing orders, his startled boatman rowed him to Stony Point. There Arnold borrowed a horse, galloped to Haverstraw, burst into Smith’s house, and insisted upon seeing the Cahoons.

It was near sundown as he was “going for the cows,” Samuel Cahoon recalled, when Smith brought him before the scowling general, who demanded he row a certain British gentleman from the
Vulture
to Haverstraw Bay that very night. “I said I could not go, being up the night before, and told him I was afraid to go,” the farmer recalled. “But General Arnold urged me to go, and told me if I was a friend to my country I should do my best.”
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Intimidated, Samuel convinced his brother, Joseph, to return with him to Arnold. Drams of whisky, bribes of flour, and, finally, threats of imprisonment followed. “If I did not assist . . . for the good of my country and Congress he would put me under guard immediately,” Samuel said.
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At midnight, the Cahoons and Smith rowed with muffled oars six miles downriver to the
Vulture.

By 1 a.m. the morning of Thursday, September 21, Arnold was waiting at a landing beneath Long Clove Mountain at Haverstraw Bay. Through the inky darkness, he spotted an approaching rowboat with three men and a cloaked figure seated in the stern. Once the vessel landed, the passenger disembarked and walked towards a thicket. There Arnold greeted him. The slender, fine-featured man was Major John André. But he was not wearing a disguise. Instead, beneath his blue cloak was his scarlet uniform. As the men talked, André refused to cross British lines to Smith’s manor house on the American side. Clinton had forbidden him to do so, as well as to wear a disguise. Both, the British general had warned André, were the behaviors of a common spy.

Although disgruntled, Arnold provided André with information about West Point, after which the two men argued about the size of his reward. By 4 a.m. Smith interrupted them to warn of the approaching sunrise. Worried about their visibility in the dawning light and the possibility of being shot by the British, the Cahoons balked at rowing André to the
Vulture.
That left the British major trapped. Consequently he had to ride with Arnold through American lines two miles to Smith’s country house.

After a hurried breakfast, Arnold and André gazed down upon the river at the
Vulture
, bobbing quietly at anchor. Suddenly cannon fire burst across the Hudson at Teller’s Point, today’s Croton Point. Arnold was stunned: no cannons had previously been stationed there. A day earlier, though, the doughty commander, Colonel James Livingston, worried about the
Vulture
’s proximity, had ordered heavy guns delivered from Verplanck, which he fired upon the ship at dawn. The “very hot fire . . . continued two hours, and would have been longer but luckily their magazine blew up,” Robinson recalled.
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So badly damaged was the
Vulture
’s hull, rigging, and gangway stanchions that its captain, Andrew Sutherland, launched longboats to tow the battered ship downriver for repairs.

André and Arnold were flabbergasted, for the retreat of the
Vulture
left the British officer stranded in enemy territory. Arnold quickly proposed two possible solutions. Joshua Hett Smith, he assured the edgy André, would see to his safe return to British territory. To ensure that, Arnold coolly issued two passes. The first allowed Smith to travel “with a boat and three hands, and a flag to Dobbs Ferry,” from where André could cross the Hudson to British territory. The second allowed Smith and a “Mr. John Anderson” (the alias for a disguised André) to ride through Westchester County to neutral ground and reach the British border.
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Intuitively, André distrusted the second option. Westchester County was dangerous, especially in its southern reaches, a no-man’s land where skirmishes between patriots, or “cowboys,” and ruffians, or “skinners,” men with no political allegiances, robbed travelers in exchange for permission to proceed to British lines.

Dismissing André’s objections, Arnold foisted maps and papers about West Point upon him, insisting he carry them back to Clinton in his boots. Smith, Arnold reassured the agitated British officer, would ensure his safe return to New York.

By Friday morning, September 22, Arnold had returned to the embrace of a relieved Peggy. During his absence, Varick and Franks had confided in her. The general, they feared, “had some commercial plan” through Smith involving a Mr. John Anderson. If that was true, Varick and Franks said they intended to quit.
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After hearing Peggy’s report, Arnold drew his secretary and aide aside and promised to cut off his relationship with Smith. Privately, he intended to see the country lawyer only once more, in any case, and then only to confirm André’s safe return to the British.

The next morning, Saturday, September 23, Smith arrived at Robinson’s to report that he had delivered André to safe territory. The night of the crossing, he had disguised André in an old velvet jacket, frayed lace shirt, and beaver-skin cap, and had crossed Kings Ferry, arriving at Verplanck, where they slept in a farmhouse. At dawn on Friday, they paid a woman for a breakfast of cornmeal gruel and rode south through Westchester County. Along the way Smith, complaining of an attack of ague—a malaria-like syndrome of fever and chills to which he was prone—convinced André to complete the last few miles of the journey alone to the British border. To that, the British officer had happily agreed.

After hearing Smith’s account, Arnold invited him to stay for the midday meal. During the fish course, the butter ran out. Peggy called for more, but a servant explained that their supply was gone. “Bless me, I had forgot the olive oil I bought in Philadelphia. It will do very well with salt fish,” Arnold replied, adding it cost him “eighty dollars” in Continental money. “‘Eighty pence,’ [meaning] that a dollar was really no more than a penny,” Smith countered. Varick, resenting Smith’s crack, snapped, “That is not true, Mr. Smith.” What followed, according to General Lamb, was “a very high dispute,” which grew so acrimonious that Peggy, “observing her husband in a passion, begged us to drop the matter.”
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