TREASON OF ARNOLD 299 it be proved that his beautiful loyalist wife, whom he had married in Philadelphia, had anything to do with his perfidy; but it is quite possible that she unconsciously influenced him to take this step. His correspondence with Clinton, under an assumed name, began early in the spring of 1780, and in midsummer he received, at his own urgent request, the command of the powerful fortress of West Point, the gateway of the Hudson Valley. This he determined to hand over to the enemy, together with the great valley for which Burgoyne had fought and lost. No doubt Arnold believed that the possession of the Hudson, with the foothold the British had gained in the South, would speedily terminate the war in their favor, and that he would be the hero of the hour. The midnight meeting. On a dark night in September, 1780, Benedict Arnold lay crouching beneath the trees on the bank of the Hudson a few miles below Stony Point, just outside the American lines. Presently the plash of oars from the dark, silent river broke the stillness, and a little boat bearing four men came to the shore. Two were ignorant oarsmen who knew not what they did, the third was the steersman, one Joshua Smith, who lived in the neighborhood, while the fourth was a young and handsome man who concealed beneath his great overcoat the brilliant uniform of a British officer. The young man, Major John André, adjutant general of the British army, was put ashore, and he and Arnold, who had long been secret correspondents, spent the night in the dense darkness beneath the trees. Here the plot to place West Point into British hands was consummated; and at the coming of dawn André did not return, as at first intended, to the English sloop of war, the Vulture, which was lying in the river waiting for him, but accompanied Arnold to the house of Smith, the steersman, a few miles away. Arnold returned to West Point, and André waited his opportunity to reach the Vulture; but shore batteries began firing on her, and Smith refused to venture out in his little boat. At length it was decided that André return to New York by land. It was a perilous journey, but the first part was made in safety. The lonely traveler was nearing Tarrytown and his hopes were rising, when suddenly three men with muskets sprang from the thicket, stood in his path, and ordered him to stop. One of the men wore a Hessian coat, and André, thinking them his countrymen, frankly informed them that he was a British officer. To his dismay he then discovered that the men were Americans and that Arrest of he was under arrest. No offers of money, threats, nor entreaties could move the men, and André was disarmed and searched; and beneath his feet, within the soles of his stockings, were found important papers in the handwriting of Arnold. The prisoner was taken up the river to Colonel Jameson, who, all unsuspicious of Arnold, decided to send André to him with an explanatory letter, while the papers found on André were sent to Washington, who had gone to Connecticut for a conference with Rochambeau. Before André under an escort had reached West Point, Jameson was persuaded to recall him. This was done, but the letter to Arnold was allowed to go on its way, and it was this letter that saved the traitor's life. Washington returned from Connecticut sooner than was expected. Near Fishkill he sat down to supper at an inn and chatted with the same Joshua Smith who had but the day before sent André down the river; and he sent to Arnold at the Robinson house near West Point, stating that he and his staff would be there for breakfast next morning. In the morning, however, Washington sent Alexander Hamilton and others of his staff to take breakfast with Arnold, while he stopped to examine some redoubts. Arnold was annoyed at the near approach of Washington, but his countenance remained unperturbed. As they sat at the table a messenger entered and handed Arnold a letter. It was the one sent by Colonel Jameson stating that a British officer had been caught with certain papers in his possession, which had been forwarded to Washington. Arnold showed little emotion; he quietly folded the paper and put it into his pocket without betraying to any of the company that there was anything wrong. He then rose and left the room, saying that he was suddenly called to West Point, but that he would soon be back to meet Washington. The quick eye of his wife detected something wrong, and she followed him. Going to their bedroom, he informed her that he was ruined and must fly for his life. She swooned and fell fainting in 1 The names of these men were John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wert. Paulding alone could read. Each was rewarded by Congress with a silver medal and an annual pension of $200, and the name of each was given to a county in Ohio. Mr. S. G. Fisher, in his "True History of the Revolution," asserts that these men were stragglers devoid of true patriotism, and that they held André only because they saw no way of his paying the large sum he offered for his release. André testified at the trial that the men searched him for the purpose of robbing him. The matter was fully discussed in Congress in 1817, when Paulding, then an aged man, was denied an increased pension for which he had applied. See Sargent's "Life of Major André," p. 462. his arms. EXECUTION OF ANDRÉ 301 He laid her across the bed, called a maid to care for her, kissed their sleeping babe, and a minute later was galloping toward the river.1 In a few hours he had boarded the British sloop of war, the Vulture, having protected himself from the American shore batteries with a white flag made of a handker- Escape of chief tied to a cane. The stupid blunder of Colonel Jameson had saved Arnold from the most ignominious death that can come to a soldier the death of the gallows. Arnold. "Arnold is a traitor, and has fled to the British! Whom can we trust now?" said Washington to his officers a few hours later, while the tears rolled down his cheeks. He soon recovered from his emotion and sent officers to intercept Arnold; but it was too late, and the following morning the traitor was safely landed in the city of New York. He received the price of his perfidy-six thousand pounds sterling and a command in the British army. André was duly tried by a court-martial of which General Greene was president, was convicted as a spy, and was sentenced to be hanged. Clinton exhausted every method in trying to save his brilliant young subordinate. It was intimated that in one way only could André be saved that he would be exchanged for Arnold. But this Clinton could not in honor consent to, and André was executed. Clinton had instructed André not to go within the Americans lines and not to carry compromising papers of any sort, but André disobeyed and did both, and the forfeit of his life was the penalty. His death was deplored on both sides of the Atlantic, but even British writers generally agree that the sentence was just and necessary. André died like a hero, calling on those about him to witness that he faced death without a tremor. physical courage, especially in a soldier; yet how meaningless and insipid the final request of André when compared with the dying words of Nathan Hale. WAR IN THE SOUTH Death of André. We admire The seat of war was transferred to the South late in the year 1778. Even before the battle of Lexington the strife had begun south of Mason and Dixon's line. There was Dunmore's War, and the battle at Moore's Creek, and the valiant defense of Fort Moultrie. But the foe soon departed and the Southland had rest for nearly three years, when he came again and made it the scene of the final conflict. 1 See the fuller account of Fiske (Vol. II, p. 216 sq.) from which a number of these incidents have been taken. See also Winsor, VI, p. 458 sq. For nearly four years the power of the British had been thrown against the great states of the North. They had destroyed much property and taken many lives; they had overrun vast tracts. But the game had been a losing one; a fine army had been sacrificed in the Hudson Valley, and now at the end of the four years the British commander had not possession of a single foot of territory except Manhattan Island and Newport. He therefore determined, while still holding New York as his base, to send his legions to the weaker communities of the South, to conquer Georgia, then the Carolinas, and perchance the Old Dominion, and to hold these until terms could. be made with their powerful neighbors to the North. The plan is supposed to have originated in the brain of Lord George Germain. In December, 1778, a force of thirty-five hundred British regulars under Colonel Campbell landed near Savannah, Georgia. The American force there, commanded by General Robert Surrender of Howe, was less than twelve hundred in number. The two forces met in battle; the Americans were routed, losing five hundred in prisoners, and the city of Savannah surrendered with its guns and stores. General Prevost soon arrived with British reënforcements from Florida, and he and Campbell pressed their advantage with vigor; they captured Augusta and other points, and within ten days proclaimed their conquest of the state of Georgia. General Benjamin Lincoln was now made commander in the South, instead of Howe. General Moultrie had just won a signal victory in defending Fort Royal, but the advantage was soon lost, for fifteen hundred men under General Ashe, who were sent by Lincoln against Augusta, suffered a crushing defeat at Briar Creek at the hands of the English. Prevost then crossed the Savannah River and began a march toward Charleston, spreading devastation in his trail; but his course was checked in a skirmish with Lincoln, and he turned back. The summer of 1779 passed, and the British as yet had no foothold north of Georgia. Savannah. Early in September D'Estaing arrived at the mouth of the Savannah from the West Indies with a powerful French fleet, and American hopes in the South rose with a bound. The first thought was to recapture Savannah, and the siege was begun on September 23. For three weeks, day and night, Lincoln's artillery from the shore joined with that of the French commander from the harbor. But Prevost gave no sign of surrendering the city, and D'Estaing proposed a combined assault. This was made with desperate valor SURRENDER OF CHARLESTON 303 on October 9, but it failed. The French and Americans lost heavily, and, saddest of all, the brave Pulaski was numbered with the slain. D'Estaing, fearing the October gales, sailed away, and the coast was clear for two months, when another fleet hove into view. This fleet was not that of a friend; it bore Sir Henry Clinton from New York and Earl Charles Cornwallis with eight thousand soldiers for the subjugation of the South. Clinton landed at Savannah, but his aim was to capture Charleston, the chief seaport of the South. Adding the force of Prevost to his own, he began the march overland to Charleston, which was now occupied by Lincoln with 7000 men. Clinton began engirdling the city about the 1st of April, 1780, and a week later the British fleet ran by Fort Moultrie and entered the harbor. Soon after this Lord Raw don arrived from New York with three thousand more troops, and the doom of the southern metropolis was sealed. Lincoln should have fled and saved his army, but he lacked the sagacity of a Washington or a Greene; he prepared for defense, while day by day the coil of the anaconda tightened about the doomed city. Lincoln surrendered, and Charleston, with its stores, its advantages, and the army that defended it, fell into the hands of the British commander.1 Fall of the The fall of Charleston was a sad blow to the patriot cause most disastrous event of the war, except the fall of Fort Washington 1 One regiment, not present at the surrender, was soon afterward captured by Colonel Banastre Tarleton. |