There are few people we tend to remember from the Revolutionary War. There's George Washington, of course, and some of the other Founding Fathers -- Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams -- maybe Paul Revere and John Hancock, and that's about it.
But there is one man whose fame -- or, better, infamy -- rings through the
centuries without most of us knowing who he was and what he did. That man is Benedict Arnold, and, this being his birthday, we use the occasion to
examine the man and his legacy.
Arnold was born on January 14, 1741, in the colony of Connecticut. His father
was a well-to-do businessman, whose business acumen he inherited, carving out
a successful career of his own in the odd combination of
pharmacist/bookseller.
From his youth, he was interested in joining the military (he liked the
drummers), but it wasn't until 1775 that he actually joined, becoming a
captain in the Connecticut militia. He won promotions in the battles of Fort Ticonderoga
and Quebec. His business instincts never left him, though. Even as
he was appointed military commander of Philadelphia,
he was making plans on how to capitalize on his power, working out deals to
profit on the movement of war materiel through
the city, and running what amounted to a protection racket. Accused of wrongdoing, he demanded a court martial to
clear his name, but was denied, which left him bitter: "Having become a cripple in the service of my
country" (he'd been wounded in the left leg, leaving it two inches
shorter than the right), "I little expected to meet (such) ungrateful
returns."
His teenaged wife was a British sympathizer, and, through her circle of
friends, Arnold was soon selling information on American troop strength and
movements to the British. He soon got the court-martial he'd wanted, and somehow won acquittal.
That didn't stop him, though. He contrived a plan to have himself appointed
commander of West Point, and from there, for £20,000, he would surrender both the
fort and most of the defenses of the strategic Hudson Valley.
Unfortunately for Arnold, through a series of almost-comic coincidences, his
correspondence detailing the plan with British Major John Andre was discovered and decoded, and Arnold fled to Virginia,
becoming a general in the British Army. Following the end of the war and
American independence, he lived the rest of his life in England and Canada,
dying in 1801.
For all his military and business ability (which was ultimately trumped by
his own ego), his name has become -- like those of Judas Iscariot and Vidkun Quisling
-- shorthand for traitors and those who put their own interests above those
of their fellows and countrymen. In recent years, though, Judas has been
getting better press, and Quisling is pretty much forgotten, so that leaves
Arnold, Robert Irsay, and Art Modell as the poster boys for sell-outs.
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