American Men of Action

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

Gates had not been on the field. He had remained in his tent, ready to ride away in case of defeat. He had ordered all the baggage wagons loaded, ready to retreat, for he was by no means the kind of general who burns his bridges behind him. His jealousy of Arnold mounted to fever heat, but that hero, lying grievously wounded in his tent, was for the moment beyond reach of his envy.

Burgoyne attempted to retreat, but found it was too late. Surrounded and hemmed in on every side, he turned and turned for six days seeking vainly for some way out; but there was no escaping, the American army was growing in numbers and confidence daily, and his own supplies were running short. Pride and ambition yielded at last to stern necessity and he surrendered.

Gates, believing himself a second Alexander, became so inflated with conceit that he did not even send a report of the surrender to Washington, but communicated it direct to the Congress, over the head of his commander-in-chief. Weak and envious, he entered heart and soul into the plot to supplant Washington in supreme command; but his real incompetency was soon apparent, for, at the battle of Camden, making blunder after blunder, he sent his army to disastrous defeat, and was recalled by the Congress, his northern laurels, as had been predicted, changed to southern willows. So blundering had been his conduct of the only campaign that he had managed that his military career ended then and there, and the remainder of his life was spent upon his estate in Virginia.

No doubt his petty and ignoble spirit rejoiced at the downfall of the brilliant man who had won for him his victories over Burgoyne. Let us speak of him for a moment. In remembering Arnold the traitor, we are apt to forget Arnold the general. There is, of course, no excuse for treason, and yet Arnold had without doubt suffered grave injustice. He was by nature rash to recklessness, at home on the battlefield and delighting in danger, with a real genius for the management of a battle and a personality whose charm won him the absolute devotion of his men. But he was also proud and selfish, and these qualities caused his ruin.

Let us do him justice. Two days after the battle of Concord, he had marched into Cambridge at the head of a company of militia which he had collected at New Haven; it was he who suggested the expedition against Ticonderoga and who marched into the fortress side by side with Ethan Allen; it was he who led an expedition against Quebec, accomplishing one of the most remarkable marches in history, and, after a brilliant campaign, retreated only before overwhelming numbers; on Lake Champlain he engaged in a naval battle, one of the most desperate ever fought by an American fleet, which turned back a British invasion and delayed Burgoyne's advance for a year; while visiting his home at New Haven, a British force invaded Connecticut, and Arnold, raising a force of volunteers, drove them back to their ships and nearly captured them; then, rejoining the northern army, he rendered the most gallant service, turned Saint Leger back from Oriskany and won virtually unaided the two battles of Saratoga, which resulted in Burgoyne's surrender.

It will be seen from this that, to the end of 1777, no man in the American army had rendered his country more signal service. Indeed, there was none who even remotely approached Arnold in glory of achievement. But from the first he had been the victim of petty persecution, and of circumstances which kept from him the credit rightly due him; and a cabal against him in the Congress prevented his receiving his proper rank in the service. We have seen how Gates made no reference to him in reporting the brilliant victory at Saratoga; and the same thing had happened to him again and again. His close friendship with Washington caused the latter's enemies to do him all the harm they could, and Arnold, disgusted at his country's ingratitude, gradually drifted into Tory sentiments. He married the daughter of a Tory, associated largely with Tories during a winter at Philadelphia, and at last resolved to end the war, as he thought, in favor of England by delivering the line of the Hudson to the British. The result of this would be to divide the colonies in two and to render effective co-operation almost impossible.

So he sought and obtained command of West Point in order to carry out this purpose, began his preparations, and had all his plans laid, when the merest accident revealed the plot to Washington. Arnold escaped by fleeing to a British man-of-war in the river, and after a short service against his country, marked by a raid along the Virginia shore, he sailed for England, where his last years were spent in poverty and embittered by remorse. His last great act of treachery blotted out the brilliant achievements which had gone before, and his name lives only as that of the most infamous traitor in American history.

Of the great names which come down to us from the Revolution, the one which seems most admirable after that of Washington himself is that of Nathanael Greene, not so much because of his military skill, although that was of the highest order, as because of his pure patriotism, his lack of selfishness, and his utter devotion to the cause for which he fought. He was with Washington at Trenton, Princeton, and Monmouth, and did much to save the army of the battle of the Brandywine. After Gates's terrible defeat at Camden, he was put in command of the army of the South, and conducted the most brilliant campaign of the war, defeating the notorious Sir Guy Tarleton, and forcing Cornwallis north into Virginia, where he was to be entrapped at Yorktown, and ending the war which had devastated the South by capturing Charleston. After Washington, he was perhaps the greatest general the war produced; certainly he was the purest patriot, and his name should never be forgotten by a grateful country.

Linked forever with Greene in the annals of southern warfare, are three men—Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and "Light Horse Harry" Lee—three true knights and Christian gentlemen, worthy of all honor. The first of these, indeed, may fairly be called the Bayard of American history, the cavalier without fear and without reproach. Born in South Carolina in 1732, he had seen some service in the Cherokee war, and at once, upon news of the fight at Lexington, raised a regiment and played an important part in driving the British from Charleston in 1776—a victory so decisive that the southern states were freed from attack for over two years.

After the crushing defeat of Gates at Camden Marion's little band was the only patriot force in South Carolina, but he harassed the British so effectively that he soon became genuinely feared. No one ever knew where he would attack, for the swiftness of his movements seemed almost superhuman. No hardship disturbed him; he endured heat and cold with indifference; his food was of the simplest. Every school-boy knows the story of how, inviting a British officer to dinner, he sat down tranquilly before a log on which were a few baked potatoes, which formed the whole meal, and how the Englishman went away with the conviction that such a foe as that could never be conquered. No instance of rapacity or cruelty was ever charged against him, nor did he ever injure any woman or child.