Defiant Brides (17 page)

But Walker’s story was specious. Not only had the ever-loyal David Franks escorted Peggy and her child to the Hermitage, but he also delivered her in early October to the Shippens’ home in Philadelphia.

By the time Peggy’s carriage left the Hermitage, on Wednesday, September 27, Arnold’s betrayal had been announced in Philadelphia. Immediately, Joseph Reed and the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council ordered the city sheriff to “make a diligent search for General Arnold’s papers.”
²²
No sooner were the files located than authorities discovered André’s August 16, 1779, “millinery” letter to Peggy.

On Saturday, September 30, a notice, probably written by Reed, appeared in the
Pennsylvania Packet
asserting that the letter proved Peggy’s role in Arnold’s treason. “Our correspondent concludes . . . on the fallacious and dangerous sentiments so frequently avowed in this city that female opinions are of no consequence in public matters,” the
Packet
shrilly announced. “Behold the consequences. Col. Andrie [
sic
], under the mask of friendship and former acquaintance at Meshianzas [
sic
] and balls, opens a correspondence in August 1779 with Mrs. Arnold, which has doubtless been improved on his part to the dreadful and horrid issue . . . and which but for the overruling care of a kind Providence, must have involved this country and our allies in great distress, and perhaps utter ruin.”
²³

Aghast at the public accusations, the Shippens protested that André’s letter was nothing more than a gracious offer to supply Peggy with materials for stylish new bonnets. As her brother-in-law, Burd (who served as the family’s spokesman), asserted, those accusations were ludicrous: “The impossibility of so delicate and timorous a girl as poor Peggy being in the least privy or concerned in so bold and adventurous a plan is great. . . . It is not possible she should have engaged in such a wicked one.” Even General Washington, Burd added, “certifies ‘that he has every reason to believe she is innocent & requests all persons to treat her with that humanity & tenderness due to her sex & virtues.’”
²⁴

The same Saturday of the
Packet
notice, the beat of a solitary drum summoned Philadelphians to the streets. Behind the drummer marched six soldiers, a commander, and a wagon displaying an effigy of Arnold. The dummy had two faces and held a mask in his right hand. In his left, the figure clutched a message from Satan, announcing his completion of mischief. Behind the dummy stood the devil, “shaking a bag of money at the general’s left ear” and grasping a pitchfork poised to drive the traitor into hell “as the reward due for the many crimes which the thief of gold had made him commit.”
²⁵
As the wagon paraded by the Shippens’ home and passed through other city streets, spectators shouted, whistled, and hooted. Later they set Arnold’s effigy on fire. “The public clamor,” Burd grimly noted, “is high.”
²⁶

Adding to the animosity were the
Packet
’s exposes of Arnold’s illegal business schemes. Among his correspondence Arnold had preserved one of Peggy’s letters that further ruined her reputation as a sweet-tempered young woman. Written after a concert at the French minister’s house, Peggy’s note jeered at several other women also in attendance. Philadelphia society was consequently outraged, producing “much offense.” Even so, Burd criticized the
Packet
for printing it. To him, it seemed “rather hard that those observations which are intended merely for the eye of a husband should be made public and criticized.”
²⁷

In the midst of that uproar, on October 2 or 3, Peggy arrived at the Shippen house, where her sympathetic parents fussed over her. Almost immediately “she fell into a kind of stupor,” which Burd attributed to her “violent transitions from one kind of grief to another.” For days, the young woman remained ill, so emotionally distraught that she could not be comforted. Her outbursts were understandable, Burd opined, reflecting the family’s view: “A girl of the most refined feelings, of the most affectionate disposition and dotingly fond of her husband, must be affected in a very extraordinary manner upon such an unhappy event. She keeps to her room and is almost continually on the bed. Her peace of mind seems to me entirely destroyed.”
²⁸

Indeed, there was more to Peggy’s despair than the Shippens knew. Contradictory emotions roiled over her: grief over Arnold’s thwarted plans and their mutual hopes for a large reward; relief that her husband was safe, coupled with doubts about their marriage. Would she ever see Arnold again? Since he was safely ensconced among the British, would she, could she, join him in a new life in England? Or would she remain in Philadelphia, neither married nor single, residing in her parents’ home to raise her son alone?

Peggy’s supportive but unsuspecting relatives expressed disgust with Arnold, declaring that her marriage to him seventeen months earlier had been a mistake. “The sacrifice was an immense one at her being married to him at all,” Burd fumed. His father-in-law, Judge Shippen, worried that his beloved daughter would never recover her stability. Should Peggy be put “into the hands of so bad a man, her mind might, in time, be debased, and her welfare . . . endangered.”
²⁹

For all her angst, Peggy remained curiously loyal to Arnold. To the Shippens’ consternation, she seemed to want “to be persuaded there was some palliation of his guilt . . . and that his conduct had not been so thoroughly base and treacherous as it was generally thought.”
³⁰
Peggy’s tenderness, the Shippens concluded, was typical of her affectionate nature, not to the character of the infamous man she had wed.

Then came rumors that the Supreme Executive Council planned to exile Peggy. “We tried every means to prevail on the Council to permit her to stay among us, and not to compel her to go to that infernal villain her husband in New York,” Burd wrote to his father. In an effort to placate the council, Judge Shippen had Peggy sign a paper promising “not to write General Arnold any letters whatever, and to receive no letters without showing them to the Council if she was permitted to stay.” For several days, Peggy’s future looked brighter, according to Burd, with signs that council members seemed “to favour our request.”
³¹

Finally, on October 27, the council reached a decision.

Once again, Judge Shippen tried to reason with the council. “She is very young and possessed of qualities which entitle her to a better fate,” than being forced to return to her villainous husband.
³³
Other family friends, like John Jay, sympathized. “Poor Mrs. Arnold; was there ever such a villain? His wife is much to be pitied. It is painful to see so charming a woman so sacrificed,” he wrote to Robert Morris.
³⁴

No amount of pleading would change the Supreme Executive Council’s decision.
³⁵
On November 9, the Shippens’ carriage rolled across New Jersey, reaching British lines at Paulus Hook (today’s Jersey City) on November 13. There, Judge Shippen bid a tearful good-bye to Peggy and his infant grandson, Neddy, as they boarded a boat for New York City. “My poor daughter Peggy’s unfortunate connection has given us great grief,” Judge Shippen later wrote his father.

A day later, Burd wrote his own father, “If she could have stayed, Mr. Shippen would not have wished her ever to be united to him [Arnold] again. It makes me melancholy every time I think of the matter. It is much more so to be obliged, against her will, to go to the arms of a man who appears to be so very black.”
³⁶

Peggy’s reaction to her exile has not been recorded. Family letters suggest that she still loved Arnold and believed his attempted delivery of West Point to the British had been a courageous and even a noble deed.

On Tuesday, September 26, Knox’s horror over Arnold’s betrayal was matched by his recognition that the British prisoner was the same man he had shared a cabin with four years earlier at Lake George. Later that Tuesday, Continental dragoons escorted André and Smith to West Point, and, by Thursday, André was transported downriver and lodged at Casparus Mabie’s Tavern in Tappan, New York, near Washington’s headquarters.

Letters from the British demanding André’s release had already reached the commander in chief. From the
Vulture
, Colonel Beverly Robinson arrogantly defended the prisoner’s behavior. His letter claimed that the British officer “went up with a flag at the request of General Arnold, on public business with him, and had his permit to return by land to New York.” Ignoring the fact that the “public business” happened to be treason, the Loyalist contended that André’s imprisonment was a “violation of flags, and contrary to the custom and usage of all nations.” Moreover, “every step Major André took was by the . . . direction of General Arnold, even that of taking a feigned name.”
³⁷

General Clinton also wrote Washington, insisting that he had permitted André to meet Arnold “at the particular request of that general officer.”
³⁸
Within Clinton’s packet was a letter from Arnold, written at the British general’s insistence. “I have the honor to inform you, sir, that . . . a few hours must return Major André to our Excellency’s order, as that officer is assuredly under the protection of a flag of truce . . . for the purpose, of a conversation which I requested to hold with him,” Arnold wrote. “Thinking it proper he should return by land, I directed him to make use of the feigned name of John Anderson, under which he had, by my directions come on shore, and gave him passports to pass my lines to the White Plains on his way to New York.”
³⁹

Washington, who doubted the existence of a flag, since André had not mentioned one in his confession, appointed a fourteen-man board of general officers to weigh the matter in a court-martial. André’s trial began on Friday, September 29, at Tappan’s Dutch Church, with Nathanael Greene as president and Henry Knox as one of the judges. Today, an abstract of those proceedings from John Laurence, the board’s general advocate, is the sole remaining record of what transpired.

According to that document, André appeared that morning before his judges, still dressed in Smith’s old clothes, and described the events leading to his capture. The rowboat that had brought him from the
Vulture
to the shore near Haverstraw had carried no flag, André explained, for he expected to return to the British sloop that same night. Only later, when forced to ride with Arnold to Smith’s manor house, did André realize he had been tricked into crossing into American lines. After the
Vulture
was attacked and towed downstream, André realized he was trapped. The only way he could escape was to don Smith’s old clothes as a disguise.

Ultimately, wrote Laurence, the jury concluded that André had violated several international laws of war. The officer “came on shore from the Vulture sloop of war in the night of the 21
^st
Sept last on an interview with Genl [A]rnold in a private and secret manner; that he changed his dress within our lines and under a feigned name, and in a disguised habit being then on his way to New York, and when taken he had in his possession several papers which contained intelligence for the enemy.” In conclusion, “Major André, adjutant general to the British army, ought to be considered a spy from the enemy and, that agreeable to the laws and usage of nations, it is their opinion he ought to suffer death.”
⁴⁰
The next day, Saturday, September 30, Washington approved orders for André’s execution to occur on Sunday, October 1, at 5 p.m.

Washington’s subsequent letter to Clinton explained that André had “confessed with the greatest candor, ‘that it was impossible for him to suppose he came on shore under the sanction of a flag.’”
⁴¹
Even with a flag, the officer’s intent and behavior would still have violated the international laws of war. A similar notice was dispatched to Clinton. Within that packet were two other letters, one from Peggy to Arnold (now lost) and another, an anonymous letter written in a style suspiciously similar to that of Alexander Hamilton.

“Though an enemy, his [Andre’s] virtues and his accomplishments are admired. Perhaps he might be released for General Arnold, delivered up without restriction or condition. Major Andre’s character and situation seem to demand this of your justice and friendship. Arnold appears to have been the guilty author of the mischief and ought more properly to be the victim, as there is great reason to believe he mediated a double treachery and had arranged the interview in such a manner that if discovered in the first instance, he might have it in his power to sacrifice Major Andre to his own safety.”
⁴²

An anguished Clinton pondered the concept of an exchange but ultimately rejected it, reasoning that it would discourage future informers from cooperating with the British. In a feverish attempt to save André, Clinton asked for a meeting with the Americans. Surely there had been some mistake. The Board of General Officers must not have been “rightly informed” before reaching their decision. Clinton’s deputies would consequently arrive aboard the schooner
Greyhound
the next day, Sunday, October 1, on the shores of the Hudson at Sneeden’s Landing “as early as wind and tides will permit.”
⁴³