[General despondency] The maritime supremacy of England thus continued to stand in the way of any great enterprise; and for a whole year the gallant army of Rochambeau was kept idle in Rhode Island, impatient and chafing under the restraint. The splendid work it was destined to perform under Washington’s leadership lay hidden in the darkness of the future, and for the moment the gloom which had overspread the country was only deepened. Three years had passed since the victory of Saratoga, but the vast consequences which were already flowing from that event had not yet disclosed their meaning. Looking only at the surface of things, it might well be asked—and many did ask—whether that great victory had really done anything more than to prolong a struggle which was essentially vain and hopeless. Such themes formed the burden of discourse at gentlemen’s dinner-tables and in the back parlours of country inns, where stout yeomen reviewed the situation of affairs through clouds of tobacco smoke; and never, perhaps, were the Tories more jubilant or the Whigs more crestfallen than at the close of this doleful summer.
It was just at this moment that the country was startled by the sudden disclosure of a scheme of blackest treason. For the proper explanation of this affair, a whole chapter will be required.
[CHAPTER XIV]
BENEDICT ARNOLD
[Arnold put in command of Philadelphia June 18, 1778] To understand the proximate causes of Arnold’s treason, we must start from the summer of 1778, when Philadelphia was evacuated by the British. On that occasion, as General Arnold was incapacitated for active service by the wound he had received at Saratoga, Washington placed him in command of Philadelphia. This step brought Arnold into direct contact with Congress, toward which he bore a fierce grudge for the slights it had put upon him; and, moreover, the command was in itself a difficult one. The authority vested in the commandant was not clearly demarcated from that which belonged to the state government, so that occasions for dispute were sure to be forthcoming. While the British had held the city many of the inhabitants had given them active aid and encouragement, and there was now more or less property to be confiscated. By a resolve of Congress, all public stores belonging to the enemy were to be appropriated for the use of the army, and the commander-in-chief was directed to suspend the sale or transfer of goods until the general question of ownership should have been determined by a joint committee of Congress and of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania. It became Arnold’s duty to carry out this order, which not only wrought serious disturbance to business, but made the city a hornet’s nest of bickerings and complaints. The qualities needed for dealing successfully with such an affair as this were very different from the qualities which had distinguished Arnold in the field. The utmost delicacy of tact was required, and Arnold was blunt and self-willed, and deficient in tact. He was accordingly soon at loggerheads with the state government, and lost, besides, much of the personal popularity with which he started. Stories were whispered about to his discredit. It was charged against Arnold that the extravagance of his style of living was an offence against republican simplicity, and a scandal in view of the distressed condition of the country; that in order to obtain the means of meeting his heavy expenses he resorted to peculation and extortion; and that he showed too much favour to the Tories. These charges were doubtless not without some foundation. This era of paper money and failing credit was an era of ostentatious expenditure, not altogether unlike that which, in later days, preceded the financial break-down of 1873. People in the towns lived extravagantly, and in no other town was this more conspicuous than in Philadelphia; while perhaps no one in Philadelphia kept a finer stable of horses or gave more costly dinners than General Arnold. He ran in debt, and engaged in commercial speculations to remedy the evil; and, in view of the light afterward thrown upon his character, it is not unlikely that he may have sometimes availed himself of his high position to aid these speculations.
[Miss Margaret Shippen] The charge of favouring the Tories may find its explanation in a circumstance which possibly throws a side-light upon his lavish use of money. Miss Margaret Shippen, daughter of a gentleman of moderate Tory sympathies, who some years afterward became chief justice of Pennsylvania, was at that time the reigning belle of Philadelphia; and no sooner had the new commandant arrived at his post than he was taken captive by her piquant face and charming manner. The lady was scarcely twenty years old, while Arnold was a widower of thirty-five, with three sons; but his handsome face, his gallant bearing, and his splendid career outweighed these disadvantages, and in the autumn of 1778 he was betrothed to Miss Shippen, and thus entered into close relations with a prominent Tory family. In the moderate section of the Tory party, to which the Shippens belonged, there were many people who, while strongly opposed to the Declaration of Independence, would nevertheless have deemed it dishonourable to lend active aid to the enemy. [Views of the moderate Tories]In 1778, such people thought that Congress did wrong in making an alliance with France instead of accepting the liberal proposals of Lord North. The Declaration of Independence, they argued, would never have been made had it been supposed that the constitutional liberties of the American people could any otherwise be securely protected. Even Samuel Adams admitted this. In the war which had been undertaken in defence of these liberties, the affair of Saratoga had driven the British government to pledge itself to concede them once and forever. Then why not be magnanimous in the hour of triumph? Why not consider the victory of Saratoga as final, instead of subjecting the resources of the country to a terrible strain in the doubtful attempt to secure a result which, only three years before, even Washington himself had regarded as undesirable? Was it not unwise and unpatriotic to reject the overtures of our kinsmen, and cast in our lot with that Catholic and despotic power which had ever been our deadliest foe?
OLD LONDON COFFEE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA