God Save Benedict Arnold, page 9
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AFTER ARNOLD RECEIVED his wound at the barricade, the fight there continued. “Morgan now raised his voice, always terrible in the hour of battle,” an early biographer wrote, “and which was heard above the din of arms, ordering his riflemen to the front.”
With Morgan in the lead, the Virginia backwoodsmen swarmed over the barricade and took most of the defenders prisoner. Morgan went forward with a French-speaking interpreter and encountered another barrier three hundred yards ahead. It seemed lightly defended. If they broke through, the way would be open to mount the slope into the walled city above.
Morgan tried to hurry his men forward, but enemy resistance at the second barrier was too stiff for the patriot army to overcome without artillery support. Defenders fired their own cannon from over the barricade. The Americans took cover in doorways and buildings. Confronted with a high log wall and heavily outnumbered, “we found it impossible to force it,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Greene.
The fight filled the street with noise. Men from both sides climbed into the upper floors of the houses and shops to fire over the wall. Captain William Hendricks, leader of one of the Pennsylvania rifle companies, was struck in the left side of his chest and fell, mortally wounded. A fragment of grapeshot smashed into John Lamb’s cheek and eye. Left for dead, he lay unconscious and bleeding. A musket ball tore two fingers from the hand of Lieutenant Steele.
Inside the buildings, the fight came down to hand-to-hand combat and bayonet thrusts. The dense, wind-whipped snow continued. The cannon and musket blasts reverberated from the buildings. Men on both sides lacked uniforms, so that discerning friend from foe was difficult. The street turned into a chaotic killing zone.
The tepid light of dawn now began to illuminate the scene through the snowfall. “Betwixt every peal the awful voice of Morgan is heard,” a rifleman remembered. “He seems to be all soul; and moves as if he did not touch the earth.”
Pockets of musketmen were surrounded and forced to surrender. More and more of the troops, lacking ammunition and hope, gave up. Sometime between nine and ten in the morning, with the wind whitening the day, Morgan was left virtually alone and surrounded. As he saw men throwing down their weapons around him, he “stormed and raged,” shedding tears of angry frustration. He finally handed his sword to a French priest rather than surrender to British soldiers. The battle was over.
Morgan and the others were taken to an improvised prison. A British officer wrote home, “You can have no conception of the Kind of men composed their officers. Of those we took, one major was a blacksmith, another a hatter. Of their captains there was a butcher … a tanner, a shoemaker, a tavern keeper, etc. Yet they all pretended to be gentlemen.”
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DETAILS ABOUT THE fate of Richard Montgomery’s division did not reach Benedict Arnold for two days. Finally, he heard how the general’s force of New York soldiers had struggled along a path clogged with blocks of ice thrown up from the river. They reached two barriers guarding the Lower Town from the south. Unopposed, they chopped their way through one, then the other. About fifty yards in front, a dark house, apparently deserted, crowded the street.
Montgomery led a platoon toward the building while the rest of the men were still squeezing through the barricades. He drew his sword, tossed away the scabbard, and ordered the men to charge the building. Suddenly, bright bursts of flame erupted from the house. The men at the barricade saw the dark landscape suddenly illuminated, the swirling snow frozen in place by the flash. The detonation of a cannon echoed over the river.
Grapeshot tore into Montgomery’s head and both thighs, killing him before the sound of the blast reached his ears. Eleven other soldiers lay motionless in the snow, killed outright or mortally wounded.
Thirty nervous Canadians, led by two militia officers, had been waiting in the house, armed with muskets and four small cannon. They had allowed the American invaders to approach the darkened house until they were only yards away before unleashing the fatal barrage.
Command of the American battalion fell to Colonel Donald Campbell. A supply officer, he was not accustomed to battlefield responsibilities. Shocked by Montgomery’s fate, facing an unknown number of cannon and men with muskets, Campbell consulted with the other officers now gathered at the second barricade. Ignoring the fate of the five hundred men in Arnold’s detachment who depended on his mission’s success, fearful for his own life, he decided to retreat rather than fight.
American captain John MacPherson, one of those whose corpses the snow was already burying, had written a letter to be sent to his father if he was killed during the attack. “Orders are given for a general storm of Quebec this night,” he wrote. “I assure you that I experience no reluctance in this cause, to venture a life which I consider is only lent to be used when my country demands it.”
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STILL INCAPACITATED AND suffering unrelenting pain, Benedict Arnold now took over command of the entire American army at Quebec. On January 2, Major Meigs walked into the hospital. He related details about the assault on Sault au Matelot: The British had killed perhaps four dozen men and taken the rest prisoner, including Captain Lamb, who had lived through his ordeal but lost his left eye. British general Carleton had allowed Meigs, on parole, to fetch the personal belongings of the captured officers. Arnold gave Meigs hard currency from his own purse to pass on to the officers so that they could buy necessities for themselves and their men.
Arnold tried his best to salvage what he could from the situation. The day before, he had sent an express letter to General David Wooster at Montreal, now the highest-ranking officer with the northern army. He had not seen the older man since demanding the keys to the New Haven powder magazine on April 22.
Arnold informed Wooster of “the critical situation we are in” and said he was confident “you will give us all the assistance in your power.” He followed with a second letter two days later, detailing his losses: more than 80 men killed, 426 taken prisoner, barely 800 effective troops left. Many of those soldiers, he wrote, were “dejected, and anxious to get home.” His tone became more urgent: “For God’s sake order as many men down as you can possibly spare.” He also told Wooster that “your presence will be absolutely necessary” to take command of the army at Quebec. Arnold was determined to follow Washington’s instruction to remain subordinate to superior officers. Because Wooster chose not to come to Quebec, Arnold repeatedly urged Congress to send north “an experienced general” as soon as possible to take over.
Arnold moved from the hospital to the large house that Montgomery had commandeered as his headquarters. He was puzzled that General Carleton had not made any move to finish off the scant force now opposing him, either on the morning that the American attack collapsed or later. Arnold wrote to George Washington that “had the enemy improved their advantage, our affairs must have been entirely ruined.”
Sapped of men and ammunition, he ordered the lines strengthened at key points to continue a flimsy siege of the city. He sent out recruiters to induce more Canadians to join them.
A week after the attack, Arnold wrote a letter to his sister, Hannah. He gave a brief account of the debacle. He wrote that his wound had been “exceeding painful” but was beginning to ease. “Providence which has carried me through so many dangers is still my protection,” he concluded. “I am in the way of my duty and know no fear.”
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BEFORE THE NEWS of the disaster in Quebec had reached Congress, the delegates, thrilled by Montgomery’s success at St. Johns and Montreal, had promoted him to major general, the highest rank below that of Washington himself. At the same time, they had raised Benedict Arnold, already famous for his miraculous trek over the mountains, to brigadier general.
Regard for Montgomery soared even higher with the jarring news of his death. Congress voted to purchase an elaborate memorial to honor the first general to be martyred in the war.
The American patriots, wading ever deeper into all-out war with Britain, were hungry for heroes. Like Montgomery, Arnold became an exemplar to all good patriots. His startling appearance opposite Quebec in November, along with stories of the hardships he and his men had endured, had quickly filtered back to the United Colonies. Samuel Ward, a Rhode Island delegate to Congress, wrote to his wife that “Arnold’s March is considered here as the greatest Action done this War.”
One result of the Canadian campaign was an increased agitation for Congress to finally break the colonies’ ties with Britain. In February, patriot propagandist Thomas Paine published a tract with the ungainly title A Dialogue between the Ghost of General Montgomery Just Arrived from the Elysian Fields; and an American Delegate, in a Wood Near Philadelphia. In it, he reiterated the arguments for independence that he had set forth in his wildly popular screed, Common Sense, issued a month earlier. He depicted the revered martyr pleading with his fellow citizens to cast off the chains that shackled them to the mother country.
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THE BRUTAL, SNOWBOUND winter dragged on—each day brought the discouraged Americans closer to the time when the St. Lawrence would thaw and reinforcements from Britain would arrive in force.
George Washington sent six regiments north to beef up the Quebec army, but the American effort was facing severe headwinds. Getting men and supplies to Canada in the middle of winter, with lakes and rivers frozen solid, presented enormous difficulties. Smallpox, a painful, disfiguring disease that killed every tenth sufferer, ravaged the army with increasing virulence. By the beginning of March, the additional troops had rebuilt Arnold’s army to 2,500 men, but almost a third of them were laid low with smallpox.
As on his arduous march north, Arnold stared into the stern face of nature. January was cold enough to “split a stone.” Snowdrifts mounted almost to the tops of the city walls, slowing all movement. Men were struck down by fever, influenza, and frostbite. One sentry’s eyelids froze closed as he squinted into the iron wind. Hard currency ran out. Canadians could not be induced to join the struggle.
Arnold’s wound gradually healed. By March he could mount a horse and walk some distance, although the movement still tired him. On April 1, David Wooster finally arrived at Quebec to take over. Still leaning on a cane, Arnold gave him a tour of the American lines. Wooster viewed the situation with a lack of interest bordering on contempt, the reaction, perhaps, of a professional soldier to a man he considered a rank amateur at war. The next day, Arnold’s horse fell violently onto his injured leg, requiring another ten days of bed rest before he could ride off for his new assignment at Montreal.
A month went by with little improvement at Quebec. On May 1, Major General John Thomas, who had helped force the British out of Boston in March, arrived with another 1,200 troops to continue the hopeless siege. Three days later, the first British warships battered their way through the river ice to relieve Quebec. Town residents celebrated. The American army virtually collapsed. The prospects of Canada joining the rebellion vanished forever.
Part Two
A Fighting General—1776
Royal Savage schooner
(Naval History and Heritage Command)
7
On the Lake
During his boyhood, Benedict Arnold had fallen in love with the sea. Leaving from Norwich, he had sailed with his father down the East Coast and all the way to Caribbean trading ports with names like Barbados, Guadeloupe, and Curaçao. There he took in the aroma of steaming pepperpot and curried goat, listened to the lilt of the creole tongue, and witnessed the brutality inflicted on enslaved Africans, who worked under a scalding sun to produce sugar for English tea.
Such journeys filled his summers when he was at school, but ceased as his father’s business foundered under debt. After he began to learn the apothecary business as apprentice to the Lathrop brothers, he again had the chance to sail, this time as a supercargo, the person whom the shipper trusted to oversee the handling and sale of his goods.
Daniel Lathrop and his wife, Jerusha, who had lost all three of their boys to childhood illnesses, took a liking to Benedict. He lived with them in their elegant Norwich home, and the couple served as a model of kindness and refinement. Besides putting a great deal of trust in the capable boy, Daniel and his brother helped bankroll him when he established his own apothecary business in New Haven in 1763, at the age of twenty-two.
During the 1760s, Arnold and a partner acquired three ships. While maintaining a shop and warehouse, Arnold sought greater profits; he sailed to ports in the Caribbean, to London, and to Canada. By accompanying his cargos, he was able to take advantage of the most favorable terms in distant markets. He bought out his partner and continued to trade on his own. He sold barrel staves and horses in the West Indies, while buying molasses and rum for import.
Besides helping him amass a sizable, though unstable, fortune, ten years of international trading gave him wide exposure to life at sea and to life in general. The role of sea captain demanded many of the same skills as that of army officer. He had to be able to command the rough men who worked the ships and assert hard but measured discipline to extinguish any notion of mutiny. A captain learned to be decisive and to show no doubt. He had to plan his moves, provision his ships, keep an eye on every detail, and handle contingencies ranging from storms to pirates.
His time at sea left Arnold with a rough and sometimes brutal exterior. He never completely acquired the demeanor typical of a gentleman. Benjamin Rush, a distinguished physician and delegate to Congress, shared quarters with Arnold for three weeks when the former sea captain visited Philadelphia. Although Rush described his companion as “well made and his face handsome,” he admitted that Arnold’s conversation “was uninteresting and sometimes indelicate. His language was ungrammatical and his pronunciation vulgar.” A military officer said that Arnold “did not combine … any intellectual qualities with his physical prowess. Instead of engaging an interesting argument, he shouted and pounded the table.”
The role of a ship’s commander was an isolated one. He had to remain aloof from the half dozen or so men working his ship. He spent long periods without intimate conversation. All decisions and responsibility rested on his shoulders. Arnold had a penchant for such a life, although at times he was touched by loneliness.
He may have sought relief in casual encounters with women. Only hints of his sexual nature have filtered into the historical record—rumors of flirtations during his trips to the Caribbean and of encounters with French women while maintaining the siege in Quebec. He would later admit to partaking of “a tolerable share of the dissipated joys of life, as well as the scenes of sensual gratification incident to a man of nervous constitution.” At the same time, he said he preferred “the reciprocity of concern and mutual felicity existing between a lady of sensibility and a fond husband.”
His messages to Peggy when he was away at sea suggest that this sentiment was a sincere one. In spite of his aura of self-sufficiency, he wrote to her “with an aching and anxious heart,” and was distressed when she failed to respond. In a letter from 1774 he described himself to her as “under the greatest anxiety and suspense … not having heard the least syllable from you this last four months. I have wrote you almost every post.”
During the fraught years leading to the revolution, seamen had direct contact with the heavy hand of the government. It was on the waterfront that discontent with the British policies that taxed or restricted trade boiled over. Alongshore men formed the mobs that opposed the Stamp Act and other British impositions, and anti-government rioting most often broke out along the wharfs and docks. Arnold soaked up the rough-and-ready ideas of liberty prevalent among the seagoing fraternity and sided with the radicals who sought to push the Revolution forward most vigorously.
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IN THE SUMMER of 1776, Arnold’s experience as a sailor would prove an enormous asset for the patriot cause. Following the collapse of their effort to take Quebec in the spring of 1776, the army had retreated helter-skelter up the St. Lawrence River, the British at their heels. Arnold, commanding at Montreal, did what he could to stave off defeat. By the middle of June, it became clear the effort was futile.
“The junction of the Canadians with the colonies, an object which brought us into this country is now at an end,” Arnold wrote to General John Sullivan, now the ranking officer in Canada. “I am content to be the last man who quits this country, and fall, so that my country rise. But let us not fall together.”
On June 18, 1776, Arnold was indeed the last American patriot to depart from the ruins of St. Johns. With redcoats bearing down on him, he stepped into a bateau minutes before the arrival of British soldiers. When Lord Germain, the secretary of state for the colonies, heard of his narrow escape, he wrote to Governor Carleton, “I am sorry you did not get Arnold, for of all the Americans, he is the most enterprising and dangerous.”
Arnold now found himself back where his military adventure had begun, at Crown Point on Lake Champlain. Enemy armies were converging on the waterway that ran along the lake and the Hudson River to New York City. The British plan was to split the colonies, isolate rebellious New England, and end the war in a single fighting season. Radical patriots had wanted war—now the English armies were determined to give them war.
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ON JULY 7, Arnold joined other officers in a stifling headquarters room at Crown Point. Major General Philip Schuyler, in overall command of the northern army, directed the council of war. On his right hand sat Horatio Gates, the army’s field commander. At forty-nine, Gates had served as a staff officer in the British Army for nearly a quarter century. The son of a housemaid, he lacked the status needed to advance far in the military hierarchy. After some years as a major, he sold his commission and immigrated to America in 1769. He was both an ardent supporter of the patriot cause and an officer determined to get ahead in, and perhaps lead, the Continental Army.
