Arnold resided in the spacious mansion that once belonged to William Penn, ** and there he lived in a style of luxury rivaled by no resident in Philadelphia. He kept a coach-and-four, servants in livery, and gave splendid banquets. Rather than retrench his expenses and live within his means, he chose to procure money by a system of fraud, and prostitution of his official power, *** which brought him into collision with the people, and with the president and Council of Pennsylvania. The latter preferred a series of charges against him, all implying a willful abuse of power and criminal acts. These were laid before Congress. A committee, to whom all such charges were referred, acquitted him of criminal designs. The whole subject was referred anew to a joint committee of Congress, and the Assembly and Council of Pennsylvania. After proceeding in their duties for a while, it was thought expedient to hand the whole matter over to Washington, to be submitted to a military tribunal. Four of the charges only were deemed cognizable by a court martial, and these were transmitted to Washington. Arnold had previously presented to Congress large claims against the government, on account of money which he alleged he had expended for the public service in Canada. A part of his claim was disallowed; and it was generally believed, that he attempted to cheat the government by false financial statements.
Arnold was greatly irritated by the course pursued by Congress and the Pennsylvania Assembly, and complained, probably not without cause (for party spirit was never more rife in the national Legislature than at that time), of injustice and partiality on the part of
* American Register, 1817, ii., 31.
** A view of this mansion, which is still standing, may be found on page 95, vol. ii.
*** Under pretense of supplying the wants of the army, Arnold forbade the shop-keepers to sell or buy; he then put goods at the disposal of his agents, and caused them to be sold at enormous profits, the greater proportion of which he put into his own purse. "At one moment he prostituted his authority to enrich his accomplices; at the next, squabbled with them about the division of the prey." His transactions in this way involved the enormous amount of one hundred and forty thousand dollars.
**** Benedict Arnold was born in Norwich, Connecticut, on the 2d of January, 1740. He was a descendant of Benedict Arnold, one of the early governors of Rhode Island. He was bred an apothecary, under the brothers Lathrop of Norwich, who were so much pleased with him as a young man of genius and enterprise, that they gave him two thousand dollars to commence business with. From 1763 to 1767, he combined the business of druggist and bookseller in New Haven. Being in command of a volunteer company there when the war broke out, he marched to Cambridge, and thenceforth his career is identified with some of the bravest exploits of the Revolution, until his defection in 1780. In preceding chapters his course and character have been incidentally noticed, and it is unnecessary to repeat them here. On going over to the enemy, he received the commission of brigadier general in the British army, together with the price of his treason. After the war he went to England, where he chiefly resided until his death. He was engaged in trade in St. John's, New Brunswick, from 1786 till 1793. He was fraudulent in his dealings, and became so unpopular, that in 1792 he was hung in effigy by a mob. He left St. John's for the West Indies in 1794, but, finding a French fleet there, and fearing a detention by them, the allies of America, he sailed for England. He died in Gloucester Place, London, June 14th, 1801, at the age of sixty-one. His wife died at the same place, on the 14th of June, 1804, aged forty-three. Arnold had three children by his first wife, and four by his second, all boys.
Arnold ordered to be tried by a Court Martial.—His Trial, Verdict, and Punishment.—Its Effects.
the former, in throwing aside the report of their own committee, by which he had been acquitted, and listening to the proposals of men who, he said, were moved by personal enmity, and had practiced unworthy artifices to cause delay. After the lapse of three months, the Council of Pennsylvania were not ready for the trial, and requested it to be put off, with the plea that they had not collected all their evidence. Arnold considered this a subterfuge, and plainly told all parties so. He was anxious to have the matter settled, for he was unemployed; for on the 18th of March, 1779, after the committee of Congress had reported on the charges preferred hy the Council of Pennsylvania, he had resigned his commission. He was vexed that Congress, instead of calling up and sanctioning the first report, should yield to the solicitations of his enemies for a military trial. *
The day fixed for the trial was the 1st of June; the place, Washington's head-quarters at Middlebrook. The movements of the British prevented the trial being held, and it was deferred until the 20th of December, (a) when the court assembled for the purpose, at Morristown. ** The trial commenced, and continued, with slight interruptions, until the 26th of January, (b) when the verdict was rendered. Arnold made an elaborate 1779 defense, in the course of which he magnified his services, asserted his entire innocence of the criminal charges made against him, cast reproach, by imputation, upon some1780 of the purest men in the army, and solemnly proclaimed his patriotic attachment to his country. "The boastfulness and malignity of these declarations," says Sparks, "are obvious enough; but their consummate hypocrisy can be understood only by knowing the fact that, at the moment they were uttered, he had been eight months in secret correspondence with the enemy, and was prepared, if not resolved, when the first opportunity should offer, to desert and destroy his country."