Lossing has given us views of Arnold's birthplace in Norwich (Harper's Mag., xxiii. 722; Field-Book, ii. 36), and of his house in New Haven (Harper, xvii. 13; Field-Book, i. 421), and of his Willow (Harper, xxiv. 735).
BENEDICT ARNOLD.
From the Geschichte der Kriege in und ausser Europa, Eilfter Theil, Nürnberg, 1778.
Clinton, in Oct., 1780,[960] says it was eighteen months before, which would place it about April, 1779, and this is the period adopted by Sparks[961] and Sargent.[962] The latter writer thinks Arnold made the advances; the former believes them to have come from the British.[963] It has also been believed that the mutual recognition was effected in some way through a Lieutenant Hele, a British spy, who was in Philadelphia after Arnold took command. There might arise a suspicion that the understanding was induced through the Tory family of Miss Peggy Shippen, whom Arnold had married in April, 1779. There are stories of her maintaining correspondence with her British friends in New York, but we do not know of any letters remaining as proof of it, except one from André to that lady after her marriage to Arnold, and after the British correspondence with him under feigned names had begun, in which letter the gambolling Major André commiserated his fair friend of the previous winter on the difficulty she might experience in buying gewgaws in Philadelphia, and offering to find them for her in New York. Whether this language, like the commercial phrases in which Arnold was at this time conducting his correspondence under the name of "Gustavus" with one "John Anderson", a British merchant in that city, was likewise a blind is not probably to be discovered, and it might or might not involve a doubt as to the privity of Peggy Arnold in the rather lagging negotiations;[964] but the probability is that André wrote the letter in his own name in order that Arnold might, by the similarity of the handwriting, identify his pseudo Anderson; for by this time the nature of information which inured to the advantage of the British, and which Gustavus communicated to Anderson from time to time, had pretty well convinced Clinton that the person with whom he was dealing was high in rank, and probably near headquarters in Philadelphia.
ARNOLD.
From Murray's Impartial Hist. of the present War, ii. p. 48.