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 perfidy and outright treason, and he is the most tragic figure of the American War for Independence. But the story of Benedict Arnold is a tale of two men. His brilliance, iron will, courage, and creative flare for action, combined with an oversized ego, an avaricious streak, an easy-to-anger, and a quick-to-affront personality, led to trouble. But this post will focus on his life, culminating with the battles at Saratoga in 1777, the finale of The North Spy, the turning point of the American War for Independence, and the high water mark of Benedict Arnold’s career.
Promise and Poverty
Norwich, Connecticut, begins this tale. Benedict Arnold was born there on 14 January 1754. His early life did not go well. Arnold’s father, Benedict Arnold III, was a successful businessman and descendant of one of Rhode Island’s first governors. Arnold had an excellent early education and was headed for Yale and his father’s mercantile business. But his father became an alcoholic, and things deteriorated in the family, with siblings dying (he was the second of six) and his father ill. But his mother, Hannah (nee Waterman King), connected him with an apprenticeship 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 break away. He joined a Connecticut regiment and marched to New York to help fend off the French. He was at Albany but then went north to Lake George. However, after the French seizure of Fort William Henry, the regiment returned 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 plying 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 found that Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys were intent on the same objective. The two strong personalities struck an uneasy alliance, and they quickly captured Ticonderoga and its sister fort at Crown Point.
Naval Raider
After Ticonderoga fell, Arnold’s shipmaster instincts kicked in. He commandeered a boat and sailed north up Lake Champlain, where he raided the town of Saint Johns, Quebec. Sensing the defenses in Canada were weak, Arnold suggested a Quebec expedition to General Washington. The commander-in-chief approved Arnold’s plan to lead a division north through the Maine wilderness to strike the city of 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 look into the details of the journey. On 7 November 1775, some 700 half-starved and ragged survivors made it to the Plains of Abraham outside the fortified city. Lacking artillery, Colonel Arnold’s men settled in for a siege. Fortunately, 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 wasted no time launching an attack. On 31 December, they stormed the city in two columns in blizzard conditions. Montgomery was struck by a blast of grapeshot from the defenders’ guns and later died. Arnold suffered a leg wound. The first such injury would later present him with a limp. The wounded Arnold assumed overall command and maintained 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 transhipping 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 tour de force of leadership and resourcefulness, Arnold had a small motley squadron of gunboats ready for Carleton’s October attack, which was stage one in a planned move to Albany aimed at dividing the colonies. The mighty British and desperate Americans clashed at Valcour Island during 11- 13 October. Carelton’s ships smashed the Americans. Although New York and a total victory were at his feet, Arnold’s actions delayed Carleton’s timetable. Rather than risk a supply issue late in the campaign season, he withdrew to the lake’s northern shores until spring, when he planned to finish the job. He would never get the chance. Benedict Arnold had saved the Cause.
British Counterstroke
By the following spring, General John Burgoyne had arrived at Quebec with reinforcements and orders, placing him in command of the 1777 offensive to complete Carleton’s failed job. After sweeping south and seizing Crown Point, Fort Ticonderoga, and a series of northern forts, Burgoyne’s 8,000 British and Germans (with a few hundred Canadian and Indian allies) faced off against an American army assembling around Albany.
A New Command
With the fall of the northern forts in the summer, Major General Phillip Schuyler was relieved 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 New Yorkers and New Englanders alike. Thousands of men had left their farms and shops to confront the threat. Gates’ army began a series of entrenchments and breastworks about thirty miles north of Albany and waited for the British onslaught. Gates had some highly experienced commanders leading the brigades assembling: Enoch Poor, Ebeneezer 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 had commanded forces in Rhode Island, where he spent time at home visiting family and socializing in Boston. He was riding to Philadelphia to complain of being passed over for the rank of major general but had to detour to thwart a British raid into his native Connecticut. Arnold received a second leg wound in the action. Congress later promoted him but not with the earlier date of rank. Inflamed by the affront (more junior officers promoted over him), Arnold resigned from the army once more.
Answering Washinton’s Summons
But the British sweep down Lake Champlain, and the fall of Ticonderoga caused General Washington to refuse his letter and order him to the Northern Department. Major General Arnold arrived 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, combined with a clever ruse amplifying the size of his division, sent Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger’s forces in retreat back to Oswego.
Saratoga Battles
With the threat from the west gone, the Americans could focus on the juggernaut creeping south toward Albany. Two distinct major actions were fought north of Albany, sometimes called “The Battle of Saratoga.”
Freeman’s Farm
With Shuyler relieved, Arnold was under a general he neither liked nor respected – Horatio Gates. Arnold did not attempt to hide his feelings, and they soon became mutual. Animous among top leaders is never a good situation in command but one quite common. The first action occurred on 19 September 1777 at Freeman’s Farm, and whether because of or despite his animous, Arnold’s instincts kicked in, and he sprang into action without orders from Gates. Arnold gathered what forces he could to meet the threat to the army’s left wing. Morgan’s Rifles, plus 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 had more bad 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 7 October. Informed of the attack, Arnold broke his confinement and spurred into action. Once again, men eagerly gathered around him. He soon led inspired regiments against the British in a brilliant counterstroke that smashed their advance and took a key redoubt manned by elite German infantry. During the furious fighting, Arnold’s horse was shot from under him. He sustained another leg injury. But his bold action set the British up for the first surrender of a British field army in decades.
Best on the Battlefield
Horatio Gates claimed the victory, but Arnold’s courage under fire and leadership won the day. General Washington saw him as one of his best battlefield commanders and destined for more command responsibility once he recovered from his wounds. But Arnold’s gallantry at Saratoga would be followed by more grievances, perceived and actual, and a series of events that would take him from the pinnacle as the nation’s greatest war hero to the depths of hated ignominy. A tale we shall dive into in a future post.
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