Benedict Arnold

American military leader

• Born: January 14, 1741
• Birthplace: Norwich, Connecticut
• Died: June 14, 1801
• Place of death: London, England

Despite his skillful leadership of the colonial forces in the American Revolution, Arnold’s betrayal of his country has made his name a synonym for treason.

Early Life

Benedict Arnold was born in Norwich, Connecticut. His mother had been a wealthy widow and a member of one of the first families to settle in Norwich. Her family name was Hannah Waterman, but she became Hannah King and inherited her husband’s estate before marrying Benedict Arnold III, the father of the famous general and later traitor. The first Benedict Arnold had served three times as governor of Rhode Island. Benedict Arnold III had been a cooper of limited means but later became involved in the West Indies trade.

Benedict Arnold (the IV) attended local schools, including one directed by the Reverend James Cogswell, a relative of his mother, at Canterbury, Connecticut. He was a fair student, and he earned a reputation for being boisterous, a daredevil, and a prankster. Shortly after he entered his teens, he was apprenticed to an apothecary, but the humdrum routine bored him, and he soon enlisted as a young recruit in the French and Indian War. Almost as quickly as he arrived in New York for training, he deserted the cause and returned home to Norwich. One description of his appearance at the time portrayed him as having dark hair, a dark complexion, and light gray eyes. As he matured, he developed a strong, stocky frame. He was energetic and possessed unusual endurance.

Hannah Arnold died when Benedict was eighteen years old, and without her restraining influence, Benedict’s father became a drunkard. After his father’s death in 1761, the young Benedict left Norwich for the larger town of New Haven, where he became a druggist and a bookseller. He later became a successful merchant and expanded his trade connections with the West Indies and Canada. On February 22, 1767, he married Margaret Mansfield, the daughter of a prominent New Haven government official. Margaret and Benedict had three children: Benedict, Richard, and Henry. Arnold labored to provide his family with the luxuries that wealthy families then enjoyed. In pursuing this goal, he traveled often to the West Indies and Quebec. On trips to the West Indies, his ships carried lumber and horses. On the return voyages, he brought to New England molasses, sugar, and rum. It is likely that part of his wealth came from smuggling.

One incident in Honduras during one of his voyages revealed his hot temper as well as his early affinity for using weapons. When a drunken British sea captain cursed him, Arnold challenged him to a duel. At the first shot, Arnold wounded his opponent, who then decided to apologize rather than face a second round. The aggressive Arnold became a captain in the Connecticut militia in December, 1774. When the conservative New Haven town fathers faced the issue of war, upon news of the battles at Lexington and Concord, they decided to remain neutral. Arnold, however, favored war and led his patriots into the streets of New Haven. He demanded and received the keys to the powder house. Arnold was ready and eager for action.

Life’s Work

Taking his militia company to Cambridge, Benedict Arnold asked the Massachusetts Committee of Safety to sponsor him in an expedition against Ticonderoga. The committee gave him a colonel’s commission and authorized him to recruit troops and to seize the eighty cannon at the fort. Unfortunately for Arnold, Ethan Allen, of Vermont, set out on the same mission. Arnold, without his own troops, joined with Allen’s forces, but the two disagreed on who should have command. They issued joint orders but continued to disagree on who was the rightful superior. They took Fort Ticonderoga in May, 1775, and the cannon were later carried across New England to Boston, where they would be the major factor in forcing the British to evacuate that city. Meanwhile, Arnold’s own troops arrived, and he sailed north on Lake Champlain and conquered the fort at St. John’s in Quebec. When the Massachusetts government began to question his conduct in the Lake Champlain area, Arnold resigned his commission and returned to New Haven. The Massachusetts congress refused to pay Arnold for supplies he had purchased for his troops in the Lake Champlain struggle. To add to his woes, his wife had died on June 19, 1775, before his return home.

Despite discouragements, Arnold went to Cambridge and discussed with George Washington a plan to lead a force against Quebec City by way of Maine. The typical approach for armies had been by way of Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River. A force led by Philip Schuyler would indeed follow this traditional route, but Arnold’s men would set out across the Maine woods to meet Schuyler’s force before reaching Quebec. Arnold eagerly accepted leadership of the Maine expedition and set out in September, 1775. The journey was an arduous and heroic adventure. Many of the seven hundred men he took with him turned back rather than face the hardships of ice, snow, and short provisions. When Schuyler became ill, General Richard Montgomery assumed command and met with Arnold before the assault on Quebec. During a blinding snowstorm on New Year’s Eve, 1775, the two armies attacked Quebec City. Despite their heroism, the venture failed, leaving Montgomery dead and Arnold wounded. Arnold now laid siege to the city until spring, when British reinforcements arrived. He then began a skillful retreat that inflicted heavy losses on the British. After his retreat, charges of misconduct in Canada were brought against him, but after much delay the U.S. Congress finally cleared his name in May, 1777.

Arnold began to get the clear impression that his heroic efforts for the revolutionary cause were going unappreciated. After a brilliant campaign on Lake Champlain, in which he defeated a large fleet of British vessels in October, 1776, Congress created five new major generals, all of whom had been ranked below Brigadier General Arnold. Washington scarcely restrained Arnold from resigning his commission. Arnold returned to Connecticut and while there held off a British attack on Danbury. In recognition of this service, Congress gave him the major generalship he had coveted.

During 1777, Arnold had a major role in preventing the British from severing New England from the rest of the colonies. The British plan—which, if successful, would have been a fatal blow to the colonial cause—called for an assault from Canada, in the north, by way of the Lake Champlain route, to be led by John Burgoyne. At the same time, William Howe was to lead his army from New York up the Hudson River to join with Burgoyne. A third force would come in from the west, via the Mohawk Valley. In August, 1777, Arnold foiled the movement from the west by capturing Fort Stanwix in the Mohawk Valley, barely firing a shot.

By this time, General Horatio Gates commanded the American forces along the Hudson River. After Arnold returned from Fort Stanwix to link his forces with those of Gates, he quarreled with General Gates and was relieved of his leadership position. Although he was technically not in command, he led his forces into battle at the Second Battle of Saratoga and helped win one of the most strategic victories of the American Revolution. In the battle he suffered a wound to the same leg that had been injured at Quebec. Congress restored to him the seniority that he had lost when the five major generals were moved ahead of him.

In June of 1778, he took command of the city of Philadelphia and began living there a lifestyle that demanded more than his trifling salary as an officer could support. In April of 1779, he married a Philadelphia socialite, Peggy Shippen. Her associations with leading Loyalists may have been a factor in Arnold’s treason. Arnold was again distressed by renewed charges against him by enemies in Congress. He demanded a court-martial, which vindicated him of all the significant charges. He was infuriated, however, by Washington’s gentle rebuke of him for minor offenses. Meanwhile, he began corresponding with the British commander in chief Henry Clinton and offered to provide military secrets in exchange for money.

In July, 1780, Arnold became commander of the fort at West Point. He arranged to betray that vital fort to Clinton for œ20,000. Clinton sent Major John André to discuss plans for seizure of the fort. After the meeting with Arnold, André, returning to the British ship the Vulture on the Hudson River, was captured by American soldiers, and his papers were found in a stocking. Because he had donned civilian clothes for his mission he was executed as a spy. News of the capture led Arnold to flee to the waiting British vessel. He then entered the British army as a brigadier general and led forces in both Virginia and his native Connecticut. He spent his remaining ten years in England and Canada. He died an embittered and maligned man on June 14, 1801.

Significance

Benedict Arnold’s life is a study in contrast. Through two-thirds of his life he received adoration and admiration from American patriots. He was one of the bravest and most skilled of American military leaders. His military genius may have surpassed that of Washington. His character lacked, however, one of the most important virtues of his commander in chief: the patience and the willingness to endure in a noble cause even when appreciation and respect are at low ebb. Although Arnold’s name has become a byword for treachery, one should not forget his years of valiant service in the struggle for independence. At the same time, none of his heroic acts can erase the memory of his treachery in the West Point conspiracy. Even the British people refused him the respect he sought in his later years.

Arnold hoped that the British would give him a proper command for a general of his abilities, but they used him in only two minor ventures in the American Revolution. He led a force in Virginia that burned Richmond, and he later made a foray into Connecticut, dismaying his former neighbors by an assault on New London. Back in England, he hoped to be given a position in the struggle on the Continent against the French Revolution. The British were suspicious of the former traitor, however, and the earl of Louderdale warned the House of Lords, in a speech, that Arnold was the very symbol of treachery. Arnold thereby had one last opportunity for battle. He challenged the earl to a duel. In the contest, Arnold missed and the earl refused to fire. Arnold’s business ventures followed the same unfortunate pattern as his military career, and in death he left behind an impoverished wife and family.

Bibliography

Arnold, Isaac N. The Life of Benedict Arnold: His Patriotism and His Treason. Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1880. The author, a distant relative of Arnold, requests “one drop of pity” for the man who would have been canonized in American history if he had fallen on the battlefield at Saratoga. Although an older biography, it remains one of the better ones.

Flexner, James Thomas. The Traitor and the Spy: Benedict Arnold and John André. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975. Literary style and scholarly research are both present in this exciting account of Arnold and John André, his comrade in the West Point plot. Contains illustrations, footnotes, and a useful bibliography.

Martin, James Kirby. Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered. New York: New York University Press, 1997. A biography focusing on Arnold’s military career through 1778. Martin bases his research upon accounts by Arnold’s soldiers, papers by other war commanders, and official congressional records. He views Arnold not as a traitor but as a victim of the American Revolution and its politics.

Randall, Wallace Sterne. Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor. New York: Morrow, 1990. Focuses on the complex character of Arnold to explain why he offered his services to the British in 1779. Provides new information on the role of Arnold’s wife, Peggy Shippen, in the betrayal.

Van Doren, Carl. Secret History of the American Revolution. New York: Viking Press, 1941. A general history of treason during the revolution. Van Doren does not view Arnold as a disillusioned hero who was sincerely converted to the Loyalist cause, but as an unscrupulous traitor. The most valuable part of the book is an appendix that reproduces sixty-eight letters dealing with the affairs of Arnold and André.

Wallace, Willard M. Traitorous Hero: The Life and Fortunes of Benedict Arnold. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954. An objective biography, in which Wallace concludes that Arnold was the most talented battlefield commander to fight in the revolution.

Wilson, Barry K. Benedict Arnold: A Traitor in Our Midst. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001. Explores Arnold’s role in Canadian history. Includes his tour of rural Quebec as a Yankee trader in the 1760’s and 1770’s, his business enterprises in New Brunswick, and his military maneuvers in Quebec during the revolution.