I | INTRODUCTION |
Benedict
Arnold (1741-1801), American military leader, who distinguished himself
during the first phase of the American Revolution (1775-1783), but later
betrayed the American cause.
Arnold was born on January 14, 1741, in
Norwich, Connecticut. Both his parents were of long-established, well-respected
New England families. He was apprenticed to an apothecary in his youth. However,
he preferred the battlefield to a druggist's life and enlisted in the militia
during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). When his father died in 1761,
Arnold moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where he became a druggist, selling
potions and books. In 1764 he expanded his prosperous enterprises into shipping
and trade with Canada and the West Indies. Commercial success brought election
to a militia captaincy in 1775.
II | SERVICE IN THE CONTINENTAL ARMY |
As a militia colonel, Arnold joined with Ethan
Allen to take Fort Ticonderoga in New York from the British at the start of the
American Revolution in 1775. Military supplies from the fort helped George
Washington's ill-equipped American forces, who were besieging Boston. Later the
same year Arnold led a brave but unsuccessful assault on British Québec and was
promoted to brigadier general; enemy reinforcements subsequently forced his
retreat to Lake Champlain.
On the lake Arnold was defeated (1776) by a
British naval attack, but his delaying tactics thwarted an enemy drive to New
York City, which would have divided the colonies. His leadership in the Battle
of Ridgefield, Connecticut (April 1777), won him a belated promotion to the rank
of major general. During the crucial Saratoga campaigns in New York in the
summer and fall of 1777, his relief of Fort Stanwix and his courageous and
imaginative battlefield leadership contributed decisively to an American victory
(see Saratoga, Battles of).
III | TREASON |
After he became commander of Philadelphia in
1778, he met Margaret Shippen and married her the following year. The Arnolds
squandered money on an extravagant social life among the Loyalist families of
Philadelphia. Needing money, Arnold then began a 16-month treasonable
correspondence with the British commander in chief, Sir Henry Clinton. As
commandant of West Point, key to the Hudson River valley, Arnold agreed in 1780
to surrender the fort to the enemy in return for a royal commission in the
British army and a sum of money. The capture of Clinton's envoy, Major John
André, exposed the plot, and Arnold fled to the enemy.
Several factors stimulated Arnold's anger and
treachery. These included the promotion of junior officers over him; charges by
Pennsylvania authorities that he had violated military regulations, which
culminated in his court-martial; and the need for ready money to reimburse
wartime expenses and to pay for his Philadelphia extravagances. Arnold also
disliked the Franco-American alliance (he distrusted Roman Catholic France and
had not forgotten the French and Indian War).
IV | WORK FOR THE BRITISH |
As a brigadier general in the British army,
Arnold conducted raids in Virginia (1780) along the James River to Richmond and,
later, to Petersburg. In 1781, to divert a projected French and American attack
on British forces in the south, Arnold's marauding expeditions shifted to New
London, Connecticut, where he, in effect, raided former neighbors. There he
burned more than 150 buildings, and his troops massacred American militia at
Fort Griswold, near New London.
In December 1781 Arnold and his family sailed
to England, where he advised British officials on the conduct of the war. With
the Revolution's military conclusion (1781) and the ouster of his English
political supporters, the distrusted traitor was excluded from active military
service in the British army. His commercial enterprises proved unsuccessful, and
for his treason he received less than one-third the money he had sought. After
enduring years of British scorn, Arnold died in London, on June 14, 1801.
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