The British retreat is commended in Baron von Ochs's Betrachtungen über die neuere Kriegskunst (Cassel, 1817). Cf. Lowell's Hessians, p. 209.
Respecting the Conway Cabal, the best gathering of the documentary evidence is in an appendix to Sparks's Washington.[955] Sparks's conclusion is that the plot never developed into "a clear and fixed purpose", and that no one section of the country more than another specially promoted it. Mahon (vi. 243) thinks that Sparks glides over too gently the participation of the New Englanders, who have been defended from the charge of participation by Austin in his Life of Elbridge Gerry (ch. 16). Gordon implicates Samuel Adams, and J. C. Hamilton is severe on the Adamses (Repub. U. S., i. ch. 13, 14). Mrs. Warren found no cause to connect Sam. Adams with the plot, and Wells (Sam. Adams, ii. ch. 46) naturally dismisses the charge. It is not to be denied that among the New England members of Congress there were strong partisans of Gates, and the action of Congress for good in military matters was impaired by an unsettled estimate of the wisdom of keeping Washington at the head of the army, though it did not always manifest itself in assertion (Greene's Greene, i. 287, 403, 411). Nothing could be worse than John Adams's proposition to have Congress annually elect the generals (Works, i. 263); and he was not chary of his disgust with what was called Washington's Fabian policy. Sullivan, in one of his oily, fussy letters to Washington (Corresp. of the Rev., ii. 366) finds expression of a purpose to revive the plot in William Tudor's massacre oration in Boston in March, 1779. The expressions of Charles Lee, that "a certain great man is most damnably deficient" (Moore's Treason of Lee, p. 68), like utterances of others, are rather indicative of ordinary revulsions of feeling under misfortunes than of a purpose of combination among the disaffected. Gates's refusal to reinforce Washington, and Hamilton's vain efforts to persuade him, naturally fall among the indicative signs;[956] and this apathy of Gates very likely conduced immediately to the loss of Fort Mifflin at the time it was abandoned (Wallace's Bradford, App. 12). The attempt to gain over Lafayette by the attractions of a command in invading Canada, can be followed in Sparks's Washington.[957]
A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE AUTHORITIES BY THE EDITOR.
Just when and by what act Arnold was put in treasonable correspondence with the British is not clearly established. Bancroft[958] says it was towards the end of February, 1779,[959] but he gives no authority.
ARNOLD.
After the medallion, engraved by Adam, of a picture by Du Simitière, painted in Philadelphia from life. The original is in Marbois' Complot d'Arnold et de Sir Henry Clinton (Paris, 1816), where it is inscribed "Le Général Arnold, déserté de l'armée des Etats Unis, le 25 Septbre, 1780." The copy of Marbois in the Brinley sale (no. 3,961) had also the sepia drawing from which the engraver worked. The Du Simitière head had already appeared in the European Magazine (1783), vol. iii. 83, and in his Thirteen Heads, etc.
A familiar profile likeness, looking to the right, was engraved by H. B. Hall for the illustrated edition of Irving's Washington, and is also to be found in H. W. Smith's Andreana. Another profile, similar, but facing to the left, is in Arnold's Arnold, and was etched by H. B. Hall in 1879. Cf. Harris and Allyn's Battle of Groton Heights.