But poor André! what became of him? He was tried within a week by a court-martial of fourteen generals and condemned to death as a spy.
"We cannot save him," said the kindly old veteran, Baron Steuben. "Oh that we had the traitor who has dragged this gallant young officer to death, so that he might suffer in his stead!" André wrote a full and frank letter to Washington, urging that he was not really a spy. All Americans felt deep pity for him because of his youth, his virtues, his many accomplishments, his belief that he was serving his country, and because he had been the victim of a villain.
But Americans could not forget that the British, four years before, had captured a brave young American officer, Captain Nathan Hale, and hanged him as a spy without any manifestation of pity or sympathy.
The officer who commanded the escort that brought André across the Hudson to the main army was a college classmate of Hale. As the young officers rode along on horseback, mention was made of Hale's sad fate.
"Surely," said André, "you do not think his case and mine alike!"
"They are precisely alike," answered the officer, "and similar will be your fate."
Washington, who shed tears when he signed the death warrant, would gladly have saved André's life; but the stern rules of war and the good of the American cause left no room for mercy. His execution was put off one day, it is said, in hope that Arnold might be captured and made to suffer in his stead.
André bravely faced the awful event, and on the morning of the day of his death conversed freely and even cheerfully. He was disturbed only about the mode of his death; he begged to be shot as a soldier, and not hanged as a spy; but the grim custom and rules of war forbade.
On his Deathbed Arnold calls for his Old Uniform.