Victory at Yorktown (9 page)

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ON THE AFTERNOON
of September 25, when Washington went to his room to clean up before dinner, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Varick appeared at the door, flushed with fever and unsteady on his feet. Varick reported that Mrs. Arnold had screamed at him from her room that morning, and when he ran to see what the trouble was, he found her running through the hall, almost naked; after he persuaded her to go back to bed, she asked if General Washington would come to see her. She said there was a hot iron on her head and that only the General could take it off. Would His Excellency go to the distraught lady? Varick asked.

The General climbed the stairs and found her room in a state of chaos and the lady herself in total disarray, her nightclothes half off, but exhibiting, as Alexander Hamilton wrote his fiancée, Elizabeth Schuyler, “All the sweetness of beauty, all the loveliness of innocence, all the tenderness of a wife and all the fondness of a mother.…” What Betsy Schuyler was to make of this is not known, but Hamilton's description may have caused her to wonder what was going on in the highest echelons of the army. “She received us in bed,” he went on, “with every circumstance that could interest our sympathy. Her sufferings were so eloquent that I wished myself her brother, to have a right to become her defender.” Poor Washington. He could face an enemy in battle without flinching, but this was something else. “… one moment she raved, another she melted into tears. Sometimes she pressed her infant to her bosom.” When Varick said that her visitor was General Washington, she cried, “No! That is the man who was agoing to assist Colonel Varick in killing my child.” The General did his best to disabuse her of this notion, but she persisted, saying, “General Arnold will never return. He is gone. He is gone forever … the spirits have carried him up there,” she said, pointing at the ceiling.

Finally realizing he could do nothing to calm her, Washington went away, filled with pity for the unfortunate, half-crazed young woman. The predicament of the consummate Virginia gentleman, reserved, undemonstrative, always in charge of the situation, was excruciating, but it might have been entirely different had he and his associates known that the performance by the beauteous maiden in distress was a very clever act, from her feigned madness to her professions of innocence, her insistence that she had known nothing of her husband's plans.

Downstairs in the Robinson house at the dinner table that evening, Washington was as usual completely composed, but an uncomfortable meal it must have been, with neither the General nor anyone else mentioning Arnold's baffling disappearance. “Dull appetites surrounded a plentiful table,” Varick wrote. When they finished eating, Washington asked Varick to join him for a walk and as they strolled around the grounds told the colonel that neither he nor Major Franks was under suspicion, but that they should regard themselves as being under temporary arrest. Varick understood, and told the General all he knew about Arnold's recent activities, citing in particular his own and Major Franks's suspicions of Joshua Hett Smith and how he might fit into the puzzle.

The next morning Washington sent Peggy Arnold home to Philadelphia with an admiring Major Franks as her escort. The commander had more important matters on his mind than Mrs. Arnold just then—above all, the security of West Point. Benedict Arnold had systematically weakened the post's defenses by refusing to invest time or money on maintenance or improvements, by neglecting the deficiency in munitions, and by sending large work parties—several hundred men at a time—out beyond the defensive works to cut firewood. The vigilant Colonel Lamb, horrified by what was happening, had written to a fellow officer: “What will become of this garrison? Exclusive of the guards, we have between four and five hundred men, daily on fatigue. This is murder to a garrison whose troops ought to have some little discipline.” Sick at heart, he never suspected that the commandant was determined that when the time came for the British to attack West Point, the fort would be captured quickly and effectively.

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THE ORIGINS OF
the plot went back several years—to 1778, in fact, when Benedict Arnold, who had finally been promoted to major general after suffering the agony of a leg shattered leading the charge against an enemy redoubt at Saratoga, and surviving a long hospitalization, received some of the recognition he craved and was appointed commandant in Philadelphia, after the British pulled out. The son of an alcoholic father and a pious, domineering mother, Arnold and his sister, Hannah, were the only ones of seven siblings to survive childhood. He became an apothecary's apprentice, bookseller, successful merchant, horse trader, smuggler, married man, and father of three sons before turning out for the Lexington alarm and then talking the authorities into allowing him to try the daring, seemingly foolhardy plan to capture Fort Ticonderoga.

By the time he reached Philadelphia, his active military career appeared to be at an end and his black hair was beginning to gray. Yet anyone seeing him for the first time couldn't help being impressed by a man five feet nine inches tall who looked to be enormously energetic, restless, and strong, with penetrating, ice-gray eyes above a beak of a nose and heavy, jutting jaw. He had not been in Pennsylvania long before he began concocting schemes to garner quick illicit commercial profits by questionable trading (abetted by his aide-de-camp, David Franks). He moved into the elegant Penn mansion, entered into the high life of a city that probably had more loyalists than any other, and reveled in what he saw as a prominent role in high society. Soon he met and fell in love with eighteen-year-old Peggy Shippen. As a sample of Arnold's sense of honor, in September of 1777, when he was wooing her, he sent Peggy several letters that were almost word for word duplicates of love letters written to another young lady five months earlier. He had made copies of those at the time and preserved them for future use after his advances were rejected. Peggy was the youngest of three charming daughters, whose father, Judge Edward Shippen, was no loyalist but was too conservative to be a rebel. He insisted on a generous prenuptial settlement, which Arnold proposed to meet with a large tract of land offered him by General Philip Schuyler (for his role at Saratoga). But in the meantime he ran afoul of the Whigs in town, whose opinion of him as a Tory was confirmed by his association with a moneyed family. Arnold was more than twice Peggy's age, and his lusty, rather coarse, swarthy features were in marked contrast with her striking, feminine looks; but early in 1779 they became engaged, and in April, five days after Congress ordered Arnold court-martialed on four charges, they were married. By the end of the honeymoon, Arnold was ready to betray his country and Peggy was a partner in his plans.

Badly in need of money to maintain his newly acquired lifestyle and under attack for his dubious financial dealings, in early May he took the fateful step of offering his services to the British in New York. The go-between was Joseph Stansbury, a Philadelphia dealer in fine china with strong loyalist ties and useful connections to British intelligence, and the contact man in New York was then Captain John André, a dear friend of Peggy's from the British occupation days. Both men were probably suggested for their roles by Arnold's bride.

Unbeknownst to Arnold, he was under close scrutiny by the British. In June of 1780 Major André wrote in cipher to Joseph Chew, a loyalist and former colonel in the British army during the French and Indian War, requesting that he hire men to watch Arnold's movements when he traveled from West Point to Connecticut. Any information he gathered would give André “an idea of schemes in that quarter.”

Arnold's decision to betray his country required no inward struggle of conscience, no long, agonizing assessment of the pros and cons. It all came down to money and the position he desired in society—two objectives that had driven him for most of his adult life. Unlike Arnold, most officers in the Continental Army or the militia were motivated by a deep commitment to their country's independence. Most of them possessed a strong sense of personal honor. Benedict Arnold had neither. Completely amoral, he had no hesitation whatever in betraying his country or the men around him like John Lamb and Elisha Sheldon, who served with him and considered him their friend. What Benedict Arnold wanted came before country or friend.

After a protracted period of uncertainty and no response by André or General Clinton to Arnold's traitorous offer, he and Peggy decided that whatever communication he had with British headquarters should be sent to Philadelphia and be forwarded to Manhattan by his wife—a circuitous route, to be sure, but essential until Arnold was able to establish a reliable system of couriers between what were to be his new headquarters at West Point and Clinton's in New York. Finally, having heard nothing concrete about the rewards he could expect for betraying his country, he angrily demanded £10,000 sterling, “to be paid to me or my heirs in case of loss”; £500 a year to make up for the pay and other “emoluments” he would be giving up; and a bonus of £20,000 for delivering West Point and its garrison. As usual, Arnold was taking a risk, especially since he had not then been given the command on which the bargain depended; but this fell into his hands at last on August 3, when General Washington put him in charge of West Point.

And there matters had stood when Arnold learned that the commander in chief would soon be passing through Peekskill on his way to Hartford.

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ON THE MORNING
of September 26, Major General Nathanael Greene's general orders broke the news of Benedict Arnold's treason to a dismayed army.

Treason
of the blackest dye was yesterday discovered! General Arnold, who commanded at West Point, lost to every sentiment of honor, of public and private obligation, was about to deliver up that important post into the hands of the enemy.… Happily, the treason has been timely discovered to prevent the fatal misfortune.… Great honor is due to the American army that this is the first instance of treason of the kind when many were to be expected from the nature of the dispute.… His Excellency, the Commander-in-Chief, has arrived at West Point … and is no doubt taking the proper measures to unravel fully so hellish a plot!

Washington had indeed taken action, putting West Point in the hands of Alexander McDougall, an experienced, reliable man who was in poor health but could readily cope with the situation until General Arthur St. Clair arrived to relieve him. But Washington was still as much in the dark as Colonel Alexander Scammell, who wrote to a friend: “Treason! treason! treason! Black as h-ll.… Heaven and earth! we were all astonishment, each peeping at his neighbor to see if any treason was hanging about him. Nay, we even descended to a critical examination of ourselves.” Not knowing if further treachery was afoot or if others were involved in the plot, Washington understandably turned to his most reliable veterans to man the fort, ordering men of Anthony Wayne's Pennsylvania line to join him posthaste. It was night when two of his brigades were ordered to march immediately, and one young officer recalled “the dark moment … in which the defection of Arnold was announced in whispers. It was midnight, horses were saddling, officers going from tent to tent ordering their men, in suppressed voices, to turn out.…” As Wayne proudly described his response to a friend, “… his Excellency (in imitation of Caesar and his Tenth Legion) called for his
veterans
; the summons arrived at one o'clock in the morning, and we took up our line of march at 2 and by sunrise arrived at [Stony Point], distant from our former camp 16 miles, the whole performed in four hours in a dark night, without a single halt or a man left behind.” When Washington got word of Wayne's forced march and timely arrival, he quite rightly called the feat “fabulous.”

Riding to Tappan, where the main army was encamped, the General ordered Major Tallmadge to bring André there for trial, triggering a remarkable change of emotions on the major's part, and of just about every American who came in contact with the British officer. Seated beside André in the barge that took them downriver to Tappan, Tallmadge listened to his prisoner's questions, the most important of which was how his actions would be viewed by General Washington and a military tribunal, which was certain to hear the case.

Tallmadge did his best to avoid replying but finally told André that he had had a much-loved classmate at Yale named Nathan Hale, and asked if André knew what happened to Hale after he was caught by the British while collecting information on the strength and probable movements of General Howe's army in New York.

“Yes,” said André. “He was hanged as a spy, but you surely do not consider his case and mine alike.”

Tallmadge replied, “Precisely similar, and similar will be your fate.”

The American major didn't care much for André at first, but after his trial by a court consisting of Nathanael Greene as president, plus five other major generals and eight brigadiers, during which the defendant confessed to espionage and answered every question openly and honestly, Tallmadge wrote, “I can remember no instance where my affections were so fully absorbed in any man.” That statement summed up the views of most of Washington's officers.

On October 1, having considered the board's report carefully, Washington announced that Major André “ought to be considered as a spy … to suffer death,” and directed that the sentence be executed at noon the next day.

The American commander summoned Captain Aaron Ogden of the light infantry and handed him a packet of letters to take under a flag of truce to the British lines, saying he should report to Lafayette for further instructions. The young Frenchman suggested (as Washington could not do) that Ogden inform the commander of the British post that if General Clinton would turn over Benedict Arnold to the Americans, André would be released immediately. The British officer to whom this was confided galloped off and was back in two hours, stating gloomily that “A deserter was never given up.”