This month, I am making another effort to highlight a historical character in my Yankee Doodle Spies novel, The North Spy. The character in question was one of a well, questionable character – Benedict Arnold.
A Tale of Two Men
The name Benedict Arnold is now synonymous with treachery and outright betrayal, and he remains the most tragic figure of the American War for Independence. However, the story of Benedict Arnold is really about two men. His brilliance, strong will, bravery, and creative energy for action, combined with an oversized ego, greed, a quick temper, and a tendency to take offense, led to problems. But this post will focus on his life, ending with the battles at Saratoga in 1777, the conclusion of The North Spy, the turning point of the American War for Independence, and the peak of Benedict Arnold’s career.
Promise and Poverty
Norwich, Connecticut, begins this story. Benedict Arnold was born there on January 14, 1754. His early life was challenging. Arnold’s father, Benedict Arnold III, was a successful businessman and a descendant of one of Rhode Island’s first governors. Arnold received an excellent early education and was on track to attend Yale and join his father’s mercantile business. However, his father became an alcoholic, leading to family troubles, with siblings passing away (he was the second of six children) and his father falling ill. Despite this, his mother, Hannah (née Waterman King), arranged for him to apprentice in her cousin’s apothecary and mercantile business.
Brief Service to the King
The French and Indian War gave the sixteen-year-old a chance to escape his usual routine. He joined a Connecticut regiment and marched to New York to help defend against the French. He was at Albany but then moved north to Lake George. However, after the French took Fort William Henry, the regiment went back south, and Arnold left the unit and the war.
Peace and Prosperity
Things turned around for him in civilian life. By 1762, he had his own pharmacy and bookshop. He proved shrewd and diligent in his business dealings and quickly prospered. Arnold made enough money to buy back the family property his father had lost. Then he resold it for a profit, using his cash to buy an interest in a trading company with three New England schooners operating in the West Indies. He had his sister Hannah move to Norwich to manage his shop so he could devote full time to the trade, sailing to Canada and the West Indies as a ship’s master. Arnold’s personal life improved during this period. He married Margaret Mansfield, daughter of the local sheriff, and they had three sons before she died in 1775.
Politics and Action
Although not a political polemicist, the Stamp and Sugar acts of the mid-1760s led him to join the Sons of Liberty and turn to smuggling to evade the unjust taxes. When the war broke out in April 1775, he raised his own militia company and marched to join the New England Army assembling outside Boston. He soon convinced the Committee of Safety to promote him to colonel so he could go to Fort Ticonderoga in New York to seize the critical fortress from the British. On the way, he learned that Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys were aiming for the same objective. The two strong personalities formed an uneasy alliance, and they quickly captured Ticonderoga and its sister fort at Crown Point.
Naval Raider
After Ticonderoga fell, Arnold’s shipmaster instincts took over. He commandeered a boat and headed north along Lake Champlain, where he raided the town of Saint Johns, Quebec. Believing the defenses in Canada were weak, Arnold proposed a Quebec expedition to General Washington. The commander-in-chief approved Arnold’s plan to lead a division north through the Maine wilderness to attack Quebec from the south.
Rabble in Arms
Only a leader with Arnold’s iron will and ruthless energy could conceive of, much less lead, 1,100 men through the vast and desolate wilderness enshrouded in the cold of late winter. Many did not make it. Read Kenneth Roberts’s 1933 novel, Rabble in Arms, for a detailed look at the journey. On November 7, 1775, about 700 half-starved and ragged survivors reached the Plains of Abraham outside the fortified city. Lacking artillery, Colonel Arnold’s men prepared for a siege. Luckily, another expedition through New York and Montreal, led by General Richard Montgomery, joined Arnold a month later.
Desperate Assault
With enlistments expiring the following month, Montgomery and Arnold quickly launched an attack. On December 31, they stormed the city in two columns amid blizzard conditions. Montgomery was hit by a blast of grapeshot from the defenders’ guns and later died. Arnold sustained a leg wound. This injury later caused him to walk with a limp. The wounded Arnold assumed overall command and continued the siege, now as a Brigadier General, a rank conferred by Congress before the failed assault.
Managing Failure
With spring, British reinforcements arrived, and British Governor General Guy Carleton began a series of attacks on the dwindling and undersupplied Americans. Arnold led a gallant retreat south, regrouping forces on the southern shores of Lake Champlain. When he learned Carleton was transshipping warships from the Saint Lawrence to the lake, he began a desperate effort to scrounge and assemble boats of all kinds to meet the naval threat that he knew was coming.
Admiral of the Lake
In a display of leadership and resourcefulness, Arnold assembled a small, diverse group of gunboats ready for Carleton’s October attack, which was the first step in a planned move to Albany aimed at splitting the colonies. The powerful British forces and desperate Americans clashed at Valcour Island from October 11-13. Carleton’s ships overwhelmed the Americans. Although he was close to capturing New York and achieving a complete victory, Arnold’s actions delayed Carleton’s schedule. Rather than risking supply problems late in the campaign season, he withdrew to the northern shores of the lake until spring, when he intended to finish the mission. He never got that chance. Benedict Arnold had saved the Cause.
British Counterstroke
By the following spring, General John Burgoyne had reached Quebec with reinforcements and orders, putting him in command of the 1777 campaign to finish Carleton’s unfinished work. After moving south and taking Crown Point, Fort Ticonderoga, and several other northern forts, Burgoyne’s forces—8,000 British and Germans, along with a few hundred Canadian and Indian allies—faced off against an American army gathering around Albany.
A New Command
With the fall of the northern forts in the summer, Major General Philip Schuyler was replaced by Major General Horatio Gates, a former British officer. Although the British had momentum, they were at the end of their supply line. More importantly, British and Indian actions along the way had inflamed both New Yorkers and New Englanders. Thousands of men left their farms and shops to face the threat. Gates’ army began constructing a series of entrenchments and breastworks about thirty miles north of Albany, waiting for the British attack. Gates had some highly experienced commanders leading the brigades: Enoch Poor, Ebenezer Learned, John Glover, John Nixon, John Patterson, and Daniel Morgan (who fought with Arnold at Quebec). Brigadier General Arnold commanded the “Left Wing” and was second in command.
Rhode Island Interlude
Earlier that year, Arnold commanded forces in Rhode Island, where he spent time visiting family and socializing in Boston. He was heading to Philadelphia to complain about being passed over for the rank of major general but had to detour to stop a British raid into his native Connecticut. Arnold was wounded a second time in the leg during the action. Congress later promoted him, but not with the original date of rank. Offended by the slight (more junior officers promoted ahead of him), Arnold resigned from the army once again.
Answering Washington’s Summons
But the British sweep down Lake Champlain, and the fall of Ticonderoga causes General Washington to reject his letter and send him to the Northern Department. Major General Arnold arrives just in time to lead a relief column along the Mohawk River to break up the British siege of Fort Stanwix (today’s Rome, NY). Although the British and Indian allies destroyed an earlier relief column at Oriskany, Arnold’s reputation, along with a clever ruse that makes his division appear larger, forces Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger’s forces to retreat back to Oswego.
Saratoga Battles
With the threat from the west eliminated, the Americans could turn their attention to the juggernaut moving south toward Albany. Two major actions took place north of Albany, sometimes referred to as “The Battle of Saratoga.”
Freeman’s Farm
With Shuyler relieved, Arnold found himself under a general he neither liked nor respected—Horatio Gates. Arnold did not try to hide his feelings, and soon they became mutual. Discord among top leaders is never a good situation in command but is quite common. The first action took place on September 19, 1777, at Freeman’s Farm. Whether because of or despite his discord, Arnold’s instincts kicked in, and he sprang into action without orders from Gates. Arnold gathered whatever forces he could to meet the threat to the army’s left wing. Morgan’s Rifles, along with American light infantry and militia regiments, stopped British General Simon Fraser’s elite corps.
Bemis Heights
But Gates was not impressed. After Freeman’s Farm, he and Arnold exchanged harsh words, and Gates relieved him of duties for exceeding his authority and insubordination. Arnold was confined to quarters when Burgoyne launched his second assault on the Americans on October 7. Informed of the attack, Arnold broke his confinement and rapidly took action. Once again, men eagerly rallied around him. He quickly led motivated regiments against the British in a brilliant counterattack that halted their advance and captured a key redoubt manned by elite German infantry. During the intense fighting, Arnold’s horse was shot out from under him. He sustained another leg injury. But his daring action set the stage for the first surrender of a British field army in decades.
Best on the Battlefield
Horatio Gates claimed the victory, but Arnold’s bravery under fire and leadership secured the win. General Washington regarded him as one of his top battlefield commanders and believed he had greater command responsibilities once he recovered from his wounds. However, Arnold’s gallantry at Saratoga was soon followed by more grievances, both perceived and real, leading to a series of events that would see him go from the nation’s greatest war hero to a figure filled with hated ignominy. A story we will explore in a future post.
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