His fate has been the subject of several tragedies: by William Dunlap (1799); by W. W. Lord (1856); by George H. Calvert (1864), etc. W. G. Simms has examined the story as a subject for fiction in his Views and Reviews.
[1008] It passed to a second edition in 1871. A company orderly-book showing the disposition of troops at West Point on the discovery of the plot is in the Mass. Hist. Soc. (Proc., xix. 385).
[1009] Orig. ed., x. 395; final revision, v. 438, where, contrary to his custom, he retains a part of his note.
[1010] Isaac N. Arnold was of very remote kin to Benedict. He had access to the Shippen Papers, the papers owned by Arnold's descendants in England and in Canada, and used the letters of Arnold, his wife and sister, in the Department of State. His praise of Arnold's "patriotism" in the earlier years of the war, which he thought was evinced by his brilliant acts in the field, induced a paper by J. A. Stevens on "Arnold and his Apologist" (Mag. of Amer. Hist., March, 1880), who contended that there was "no evidence that the heart of Arnold ever beat with one patriotic thrill." The biographer, while condemning the treason, makes the best show which he can of the provocations which led Arnold to be false. He adds considerable that is new to Arnold's story. Mr. I. N. Arnold died in 1884, and addresses upon him before the Chicago Hist. Society were printed.
Lossing has written much on the subject of Arnold's treason: Field-Book, ii. ch. 6, 7, and 8; Harper's Monthly, iii., xxiii., and liii.; Two Spies (Hale and André), N. Y., 1886. Cf., on these two spies, Hull's Rev. Services.
Other American treatments of the subject are in the lives of Washington by Marshall (iv. 274) and Irving (iv. ch. 9-11); Greene's Greene (ii. 227); Leake's Lamb, ch. 19 and App. D; Reed's Reed, ii. 252 Hamilton's Hamilton, i. 262; Quincy's Shaw, 77; Dunlap's New York, ii. ch. 13; E. G. Holland's "Highland Treason", in his Essays; Winthrop Atwill's Treason of Arnold, Northampton, 1837; Niles's Register, xx.
[1011] There remained for a long time no doubt as to the unalloyed patriotism of the three men who captured André. Washington praised their resistance to bribes, and Congress gave them a medal (figured in Loubat's Medallic Hist. U. S., and in Lossing's Field-Book, ii. 205). Some of those who came in close contact with André after his capture, and heard his account of the arrest, were convinced that André felt that if he could have made any considerable sum certain to them they would have let him go. This belief, on their part, of these keepers of André did not come to public notice till, in 1817, John Paulding, one of the captors, and the leader of them, petitioned Congress for an additional pension. This gave occasion to Benj. Tallmadge, who had been André's chief-keeper, and who was then in Congress, to oppose the bill on the grounds of André's statements. The Journals of the House of Representatives show the debate, which is reprinted in Dawson's Papers, 127. A letter of Gen. Joshua King, also in André's confidence at the time, confirms Tallmadge's view, and there is also a similar statement by Bowman, one of André's guards (Sparks's Arnold; Notes and Queries, ix.; Niles's Register; Hist. Mag., i. 204, 293; iii. 229; Dawson's Papers, 45; Jones's N. Y. during the Rev., i. 733; Boston Sunday Herald, Sept. 14, 1879).
The captors did not want for friends. Judge Egbert Benson published a Vindication of the Captors of Maj. André, 1817 (cf. Analectic Mag., x. 307), which was reprinted in N. Y. in 1865, in two editions, with additional matter, one by Sabin, the other by Hoffman. John Paulding, the son of one of the captors, published a paper in their defence (Hist. Mag., i. 331). The three captors were then all living, and each made statements and affidavits respecting the event. These can be found, whole or in part, in Benson; in the Hist. Mag., ix. 177, xviii. 365; in Dawson's Papers, 119, 123, 182; in H. J. Raymond's Address (N. Y., 1853) at Tarrytown; in Cent. Celebrations of N. Y. (1879); in Sabin's Amer. Bibliopolist, 1869, p. 335; in Simms's Schoharie County, 646. Sargent thinks that Paulding (of whom there is a portrait in H. W. Smith's Andreana) was the one of the three that most firmly resisted André's bribes.
A monument was erected at Tarrytown in 1853, when Henry J. Raymond delivered an address; it was remodelled in 1883, and capped with a statue of a captor, when Chauncey M. Depew spoke in defence of the good names of the captors; and a Centennial Souvenir was prepared by Nathaniel C. Husted (N. Y., 1881). Monuments have been erected at the graves of the three captors: for Paulding's and Van Wart's, see Lossing's Field-Book, ii. 171, 192; for Williams's, erected at Old Fort Schoharie in 1876, when addresses were given by Daniel Knower and Grenville Tremain, see Centennial Celebrations of the State of N. Y. (Albany, 1879). For memorials of Williams, see Mag. of Amer. Hist., Feb., 1887, p. 168.
A letter of Maj. Henry Lee describing the capture is in the Penna. Mag. of Hist. (1880), iv. 61. Cf. Amer. Hist. Rec., Dec., 1873; Potter's Amer. Monthly, vii. 167; Bolton's Westchester, i. 213.