God Save Benedict Arnold, page 15
Knowing little of the actual conditions under which soldiers lived and fought, Adams could not grasp how a military officer thought or operated. Yet he and his fellow delegates would supervise the war, forever peering over commanders’ shoulders. Most crucially, Congress would help decide what it meant to be a soldier, and particularly an officer, in the army of a republic. The result, as Benedict Arnold was about to find out, was dangerous confusion.
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ON MAY 12, two weeks after the attack on Danbury, Arnold arrived in Morristown, New Jersey, to rejoin the army following his leave. As Washington had suspected, the failure of Congress to restore Arnold’s seniority remained a bone stuck in his subordinate’s craw. Now he presented his commander with a new grievance: John Brown, the Yale-educated lawyer and longtime Arnold nemesis, had recently published a handbill listing thirteen “crimes” committed by Arnold.
Brown had been peddling these accusations for some time. When he approached Philip Schuyler about the matter, the northern commander considered bringing charges against Brown himself for “violent and ill-founded Complaints.” Schuyler passed the matter on to General Gates, who expressed his contempt for Brown by noting that “a man of honour in an exalted station” would “ever excite envy in the mean and undeserving.”
The charges stretched back to the original friction at Ticonderoga and included Arnold’s alleged libel against Brown. Arnold, Brown claimed, had failed to quell the smallpox epidemic in Quebec and mishandled the fleet on Lake Champlain. In lawyerly language, Brown falsely asserted that Arnold had “put to death by fire and sword” all the inhabitants of villages in Canada and had “made a treasonable attempt to make his escape … to the enemy” while serving at Ticonderoga in 1775. Brown was “ready to verify” all the accusations.
In the handbill, Brown declared of Arnold: “Money is this man’s God, and to get enough of it he would sacrifice his country.” Later, the course of Arnold’s life gave the warning an aura of prophecy, but the claim was simply another of Brown’s smears, its truth belied by the financial sacrifices that Arnold had already endured for the cause.
Arnold insisted to Washington that his name be cleared. He threatened to give Brown satisfaction, “more than he chooses,” implying a trip to the dueling ground. He wanted Congress to act on this slander and on his just claim for rank in accord with his seniority. Because he faced no immediate military emergencies, Washington allowed Arnold to go on to Philadelphia to plead his case. He handed him a letter of recommendation to the delegates.
“It is universally known,” Washington wrote, that Arnold had “always distinguished himself, as a judicious, brave officer, of great activity, enterprise, and perseverance.”
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WHILE THE CONTINENTAL Congress at times comprised as many as fifty-six delegates, only twenty showed up when the body reconvened in March 1777. With members continually coming and going, rarely did the head count surpass two dozen attendees.
Arnold found himself a celebrity in Philadelphia as he had been in Boston. Delegates were well aware of his achievements at Ticonderoga, Valcour Island, and now Ridgefield. John Adams praised “his vigilance, activity, and bravery in the late affair at Connecticut.” He wrote his wife that Arnold’s achievement was “sufficient to make his fortune for life,” and mused that congressional delegates might strike a medal in Arnold’s honor for his heroism during the raid—they never did.
Perhaps on Washington’s advice, Arnold was determined to approach the matter of his rank and reputation with as much tact as he could muster. He drafted a letter to the delegates concerning Brown’s slanders. Having made “every sacrifice of fortune, ease and domestic happiness to serve my country,” he found himself impeached “of a catalogue of crimes, which, if true, ought to subject me to disgrace, infamy.” He politely asked Congress to suggest a way by which the matter could be examined “and justice done to the innocent and injured,” meaning himself.
The delegates turned the matter over to the Board of War. In the meantime, they voted to award Arnold a new horse and saddle to compensate him for his “gallant conduct” at Ridgefield. For a man who, in the course of his business, bought and sold horses by the score, the gesture must have seemed paltry.
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WHILE HE WAS in Philadelphia, Arnold renewed his acquaintance with Philip Schuyler. Besides representing New York as a congressional delegate, Schuyler had traveled down in early April to be on hand for the examination of his handling of the 1776 campaign.
Like Arnold, Schuyler had his share of enemies and detractors. New Englanders in particular considered him a snobbish aristocrat and reluctant supporter of independence. They preferred the more radical Horatio Gates to lead the northern army. Gates took over the role while Schuyler was in Philadelphia. The verdict of the inquiry would determine whether or not Schuyler would return to command.
Rather than follow orders to remain at Fort Ticonderoga, Gates had moved his headquarters to Albany. He left General Arthur St. Clair to command the forces on Lake Champlain. The patriots knew that at any moment they could be confronted by the invasion that British general John Burgoyne was preparing in Canada. The appointment of St. Clair, a Pennsylvania politician before the war, annoyed Arnold, who had helped take and defend the fort. He was especially angered because St. Clair was one of the officers promoted over him in February.
Schuyler soon received good news: His lobbying skill induced five states to support him, while four voted against. Vindicated, he prepared to return to Albany and resume leadership of the northern army. Now it was Horatio Gates who faced a dilemma. The independent field command that he coveted had again slipped from his grasp. He could either subordinate himself as Schuyler’s assistant or resume his former staff position as adjutant to General Washington.
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JOHN ADAMS CONVENED the five-man Board of War on May 21, 1777, to take up Arnold’s complaint. They met in rented rooms two blocks up Market Street from the Pennsylvania statehouse, where Congress held its full sessions. Arnold made a convincing case for himself against the charge that he had mishandled public money during the Canadian invasion. He told the members he had begged Congress for a paymaster to oversee accounts, but they had never appointed one. He had passed on the bulk of the allocated money to divisional commanders—many of whom ended up imprisoned in Quebec. An important portion of his own records had been aboard the Royal Savage schooner of war when she was burned by the British at Valcour Island. Rather than pocket public funds, he said, he had advanced his own money and credit to meet needed expenses.
Arnold had the backing of Charles Carroll of Maryland, who had gone to Canada with Benjamin Franklin in 1775 as part of a commission to survey the situation there. Carroll had seen firsthand the chaos that made keeping strict accounts impossible, especially as the American venture collapsed into a frantic retreat.
Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, was not always an Arnold supporter, but the day before the hearing he wrote to Thomas Jefferson suggesting that the effort to “assassinate the Characters of the friends of America” was part of a disinformation campaign by loyalists or British agents. He mentioned “an audacious attempt of this kind against the brave General Arnold.”
The Board quickly decided that the evidence had “given entire satisfaction to this Board concerning the general’s character and conduct, so cruelly and groundlessly aspersed.” The verdict was satisfying to Arnold—all of Brown’s charges had again been repudiated. But once again, the question of restoring his seniority went unmentioned.
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ARNOLD REMINDED THE delegates that they had “deprived of his rank in the army a person who since the commencement of the present war, has strenuously endeavored to act the part of a faithful soldier.” To the harried representatives, he was just another disgruntled general.
From the beginning of the war, Congress had tried to hammer out a rational way of choosing officers. Radical patriots asserted that in a republic the men of a company or regiment should elect their own leaders. The idea seemed to work in the militia—it gave Arnold his initial rank as captain of the New Haven Foot Guard. But the drawbacks were obvious: Men might elect congenial rather than competent officers, and those officers might avoid imposing the harsh discipline required by war to gain favor.
During the first two years of the war, the system for naming and promoting officers was haphazard and arbitrary. Debating the need for reform in February 1777, Congress juggled three approaches. Promoting officers according to the line of seniority was a clear, sensible method, but it gave delegates little ability to reward achievement. A strict merit system would have pleased radical delegates, but it introduced arbitrary factors sure to create controversy. Determining rank according to how many troops a man’s home state contributed appealed to the politicians because it established a regional equity.
In the end, Congress declared “that in voting for general officers, a due regard shall be had to the line of succession, the merit of the persons proposed, and the quota of troops raised, and to be raised, by each State.” It was an ungainly compromise that threw the decisions back into the realm of prejudice and politics.
For example, John Adams said that a man’s qualification for promotion should depend on his “Morals, his Honour, and his Discretion.” Then again, he thought, Congress might consider his “Genius, Spirit, Reflection, Science, Literature, and Breeding.” Plus, he noted, the delegates could not “appoint Gentlemen whom they don’t know”—so connections, friendships, and patronage would be prerequisites.
In the minds of the officers, who lived in a world of violence tempered by honor, this was a schoolboy’s, or rather, a lawyer’s notion. During a wilderness march, where the lives of a thousand men depended on one man’s decisions and inspiration, that man had to have special qualities. When the chaos of a violent battle pushed men toward panic, only a gifted leader could find a path to victory. Those qualities were not easy to discern, especially for someone like Adams, whose nature was so antithetical to the bloody chaos in which the skills were required. Science, literature, and breeding didn’t mean much amidst cannon fire and hand-to-hand combat.
Behind the delegates’ tortuous thinking on the matter was their wariness of a standing army. For the more radical members, the threat of a permanent army that might seize power from the civil authority loomed larger than battlefield losses. History offered plenty of examples of armed men usurping elected leaders. Congress, which lacked both an executive arm and the power to tax, eyed the Continental Army, the only other national entity, with suspicion. When James Duane suggested Congress promote officers in consultation with their superiors, other delegates were outraged. Congress must not cede even that amount of power to the military.
Washington, who bent over backward to defend civilian control of the military, warned that the delegates were pushing the principle too far. Patriots need consider themselves as “one people, embarked in one Cause.” The continual suspicion and disregard that Congress directed at the military would backfire. “The jealousy which Congress unhappily entertain of the Army,” he said, was more appropriate to a mercenary army in peacetime than to a force of citizen-soldiers in the middle of a war.
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ARNOLD GAVE NO credence to the idea that officers of the Continental Army might attempt to overthrow Congress. What he knew was that the actions of the delegates were interfering with the ability of soldiers in the field to win the war. “I think it betrays want of judgment, and weakness,” he wrote, “to issue or deny promotions for trivial reasons.” If it kept up, no gentleman would agree to risk his reputation in the service.
Like many issues, this one was, for Arnold, personal. “Had I been content with barely doing my duty,” he argued, “I might have remained at ease and in safety, and not attracted the notice of the malicious, or envious.” He had instead sacrificed his fortune and his reputation for the cause. He declared that “I sensibly feel the unmerited injury my countrymen have done me.”
John Adams would not bend. “I have no fears from the resignation of officers if junior officers are preferred to them,” he said. “If they have virtue they will continue with us. If not, their resignation will not hurt us.”
The overworked congressman had too much else to contemplate. “I am wearied to death with the wrangles between military officers, high and low,” he wrote to his wife, Abigail. “They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay, like apes for nuts.”
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BY JULY, IT was clear that Congress had no intention of restoring Arnold’s seniority. He lost faith in politicians. They were hollow men, ignorant of the challenges that soldiers faced, of the code that sustained a man who was called to violent action.
His sentiments contained a suspicion that the entire Revolution had been turned on its head. While he faced the British in battle, enemies were attacking him from behind. The machinations of Brown and his ilk began to seem motivated by more than envy, the whims of Congress by more than caprice, and the injustice from his countrymen by outright malice.
When Congress had superseded him by the appointment of “a number of junior officers,” it had been “an implied impeachment of my character.” He was not leaving the service, he wrote, “from a spirit of resentment (though my feelings are deeply wounded), but from real conviction.”
He went on to declare, “Honor is a sacrifice no man ought to make.” He treasured it as a birthright. “As I received, so I wish to transmit it inviolate to posterity.” On July 11, he turned in his resignation as an officer in the Continental Army. In his view, his military career was over.
12
Or Die in the Attempt
The news arrived at Philadelphia on the very day that Benedict Arnold submitted his formal resignation to Congress—Fort Ticonderoga had fallen.
During the two years since Arnold and Ethan Allen had seized the fort on Lake Champlain, Ticonderoga had stood as a symbol of protection against invasion from Canada. The defenders there had been sorely tried in 1776, but Arnold’s delaying tactics and staunch resistance at Valcour Island had neutralized the threat. The bastion had gained a reputation as the “Gibraltar of the North.”
The notion of an impregnable fort was a dangerous myth. Poorly placed, never completely repaired after years of neglect, inadequately manned and supplied, Ticonderoga had become a vulnerable outpost. In June 1777, General John Burgoyne set out from Canada with an army of crack British regiments and German mercenaries. They were joined by some five hundred Native American allies. More Indians would arrive later—some of them walked from the upper Great Lakes region in the west. His men came south by boat along an undefended Lake Champlain and during the first days of July wrapped the fort in a deadly embrace.
On the night of July 5, General Arthur St. Clair ordered his soldiers to abandon Ticonderoga without firing a shot. St. Clair used good judgment—his force was outnumbered and the enemy were in the process of surrounding him. By retreating, he saved his men from a hopeless situation. But the defeat cratered morale in the northern army and terrified residents of the region north of Albany.
The fall of Ticonderoga, George Washington said, was “an event of chagrin and surprise, not apprehended nor within the compass of my reasoning.” Some suspected treason. General St. Clair and his superior, Philip Schuyler, were in league with the enemy. They were secret Tories. They had taken bribes. Others saw excess timidity. “I think we shall never be able to defend a post until we shoot a general,” John Adams opined.
The loss disheartened patriots and gave joy to the enemy. When the news reached London, King George was reported to have burst into his wife’s boudoir and announced to a naked Queen Charlotte, “I have beat them! I have beat all the Americans!”
Benedict Arnold was still in Philadelphia when the alarm sounded. On July 12, Congress received a request from General Washington. His words tart with irony, he suggested that “if General Arnold has settled his affairs, and can be spared from Philadelphia,” he should be returned immediately to the northern army. “He is active, judicious, and brave, and an officer in whom the militia will repose great confidence.” John Hancock passed on the compliment and told Arnold that the delegates “have directed you to repair immediately to headquarters to follow such orders as you may receive.”
The clouds of bureaucratic wrangling, pettiness, and insult suddenly parted and the bright sun that was the prospect of action burst into Arnold’s mind. On leaving, he took one more slap at the legislators in Philadelphia, asserting that “I shall be happy as a private citizen to render my country every service in my power.” He would serve, but would not subject himself to the whims of Congress. The delegates ignored the comment and left his status in the army murky.
From Philadelphia, Arnold made the hard two-day ride to Washington’s headquarters at Morristown. The commander asked him to waive “for the present, all disputes about rank.” Arnold agreed to accept orders from General St. Clair if necessary.
Washington wrote to General Schuyler that he was sending Arnold north to help organize patriot resistance to the British juggernaut. “From his activity and disposition for enterprise I flatter myself, his presence and assistance in that quarter, will be attended with happy consequences.”
Arnold finished his consultation at headquarters on the afternoon of July 18. He decided to head north immediately. Riding through the night, he covered nearly two hundred miles in four days, joining Schuyler on July 22. The beleaguered northern army was encamped at Fort Edward, the northern limit of navigation on the Hudson River halfway between Ticonderoga and Albany.
