The War of Independence

by John Fiske

Benedict Arnold's treason, July-Sept., 1780.

This was a time when a man of bold and impulsive temperament, prone to cherish romantic schemes, smarting under an accumulation of injuries, and weak in moral principle, might easily take it into his head that the American cause was lost, and that he had better carve out a new career for himself, while wreaking vengeance on his enemies. Such seems to have been the case with Benedict Arnold. He had a great and well-earned reputation for skill and bravery. His military services up to the time of Burgoyne's surrender had been of priceless value, and he had always stood high in Washington's favour. But he had a genius for getting into quarrels, and there seem always to have been people who doubted his moral soundness. At the same time he had good reason to complain of the treatment which he received from Congress. The party hostile to Washington sometimes liked to strike at him in the persons of his favourite generals, and such admirable men as Greene and Morgan had to bear the brunt of this ill feeling. Early in 1777 five brigadier generals junior to Arnold in rank and vastly inferior to him in ability and reputation had been promoted over him to the grade of major-general. On this occasion he had shown an excellent spirit, and when sent by Washington to the aid of Schuyler, he had signified his willingness to serve under St. Clair and Lincoln, two of the juniors who had been raised above him. Arnold was a warm friend to Schuyler, and perhaps did not take enough pains to conceal his poor opinion of Gates. Other officers in the northern army let it plainly be seen that they placed more confidence in Arnold than in Gates, and the result was a bitter quarrel between the two generals, echoes of which were probably afterwards heard in Congress.

If Arnold's wound on the field of Saratoga had been a mortal wound, he would have been ranked, among the military heroes of the Revolution, next to Washington and Greene. Perhaps, however, in a far worse sense than is commonly conveyed by the term, it proved to be his death-wound, for it led to his being placed in command of Philadelphia. He was assigned to that position because his wounded leg made him unfit for active service. Congress had restored him to his relative rank, but now he soon got into trouble with the state government of Pennsylvania. It is not easy to determine how much ground there may have been for the charges brought against him early in 1779 by the state government. One of them concerned his personal honesty, the others were so trivial in character as to make the whole affair look somewhat like a case of persecution. They were twice investigated, once by a committee of Congress and once by a court-martial. On the serious charge, which affected his pecuniary integrity, he was acquitted; on two of the trivial charges, of imprudence in the use of some public wagons, and of carelessness in granting a pass for a ship, he was convicted and sentenced to be reprimanded. The language in which Washington couched the reprimand showed his feeling that Arnold was too harshly dealt with.

If the matter had stopped here, posterity would probably have shared Washington's feeling. But the government of Pennsylvania must have had stronger grounds for distrust of Arnold than it was able to put into the form of definite charges. Soon after his arrival in Philadelphia he fell in love with a beautiful Tory lady, to whom he was presently married. He was thus thrown much into the society of Tories and was no doubt influenced by their views. He had for some time considered himself ill-treated, and at first thought of leaving the service and settling upon a grant of land in western New York. Then, as the charges against him were pressed and his anger increased, he seems to have dallied with the notion of going over to the British. At length in the early summer of 1780, after the reprimand, his treasonable purpose seems to have taken definite shape. As General Monk in 1660 decided that the only way to restore peace in England was to desert the cause of the Commonwealth and bring back Charles II., so Arnold seems now to have thought that the cause of American independence was ruined, and that the best prospect for a career for himself lay in deserting it and helping to bring back the rule of George III. In this period of general depression, when even the unconquerable Washington said "I have almost ceased to hope," one staggering blow would be very likely to end the struggle. There could be no heavier blow than the loss of the Hudson river, and with baseness almost incredible Arnold asked for the command of West Point, with the intention of betraying it into the hands of Sir Henry Clinton. The depth of his villainy on this occasion makes it probable that there were good grounds for the suspicions with which some people had for a long time regarded him, although Washington, by putting him in command of the most important position in the country, showed that his own confidence in him was unabated. The successful execution of the plot seemed to call for a personal interview between Arnold and Clinton's adjutant-general, Major John André, who was entrusted with the negotiation. Such a secret interview was extremely difficult to bring about, but it was effected on the 21st of September, 1780. After a marvellous chapter of accidents, André was captured just before reaching the British lines. But for his hasty and quite unnecessary confession that he was a British officer, which led to his being searched, the plot would in all probability have been successful. The papers found on his person, which left no room for doubt as to the nature of the black scheme, were sent to Washington; the principal traitor, forewarned just in the nick of time, escaped to the British at New York; and Major André was condemned as a spy and hanged on the 2d of October.

Battle of King's Mountain, Oct. 7, 1780.

Only five days after the execution of André an event occurred at the South which greatly relieved the prevailing gloom of the situation. It was the first of a series of victories which were soon to show that the darkness of 1780 was the darkness that comes before dawn. After his victory at Camden, Lord Cornwallis found it necessary to give his army some rest from the intense August heat. In September he advanced into North Carolina, boasting that he would soon conquer all the states south of the Susquehanna river. But his line of march now lay far inland, and the British armies were never able to accomplish much except in the neighbourhood of their ships, where they could be reasonably sure of supplies. In traversing Mecklenburg county Cornwallis soon found himself in a very hostile and dangerous region, where there were no Tories to befriend him. One of his best partisan commanders, Major Ferguson, penetrated too far into the mountains. The backwoodsmen of Tennessee and Kentucky, the Carolinas, and western Virginia were aroused; and under their superb partisan leaders—Shelby, Sevier, Cleaveland, McDowell, Campbell, and Williams—gave chase to Ferguson, who took refuge upon what he deemed an impregnable position on the top of King's Mountain. On the 7th of October the backwoodsmen stormed the mountain, Ferguson was shot through the heart, 400 of his men were killed and wounded, and all the rest, 700 in number, surrendered at discretion. The Americans lost 28 killed and 60 wounded. There were some points in this battle, which remind one of the British defeat at Majuba Hill in southern Africa in 1881.

In the series of events which led to the surrender of Cornwallis, the battle of King's Mountain played a part similar to that played by the battle of Bennington in the series of events which led to the surrender of Burgoyne. It was the enemy's first serious disaster, and its immediate result was to check his progress until the Americans could muster strength enough to overthrow him. The events, however, were much more complicated in Cornwallis's case, and took much longer to unfold themselves. Burgoyne surrendered within nine anxious weeks after Bennington; Cornwallis maintained himself, sometimes with fair hopes of final victory, for a whole year after King's Mountain.

Greene takes command in South Carolina, Dec. 2, 1780.