Best in Battle

 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. 

Major General 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.

Benedict Arnold's Loyalty Oath

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.

Fort William Henry

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.

Schooner at Sea

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.

Arnold takes Ticonderoga

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.

Arnold's Expedition through Maine

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.

Storming Quebec in a Storm

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.

Governor General Guy Carleton

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.

Battle of Valcour Island

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. 

Saratoga Campaign would Decide the War

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.

Major General Phillip Schuyler

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. 

Major General Horatio Gates

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.

Oriskany

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.

Freeman's Farm

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.

Bemis Heights

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. 

Arnold Monument at Saratoga

 

Patriot Scoundrel Part 2

Patriot Schemer

Resignation from the Continental Army did not mean James Wilkinson's military career had ended. Like many of that era and throughout American history, Wilkinson dealt with failure and frustration by going west. In some ways, his resignation was the beginning of a new military career.

Go West, Young Man

After trading his Continental commission for a state commission, Wilkinson became a brigadier general in the Pennsylvania militia in 1782. The following year, he became a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly. But the canny Wilkinson realized the real potential of developing the new nation's western lands and, in 1784, moved to the Kentucky territory, which was still part of Virginia. Wilkinson immediately got involved in local politics and began advocating for the territory's three counties to separate from the Old Dominion.

Kentucky was claimed by Virginia

Wilkinson's first foray into international affairs occurred a few years later. In April 1787, he traveled to  New Orleans, the largest city and capital of the Spanish colony of Louisiana, and met with the Governor, Esteban Rodríguez Miró. The issue was one of the major concerns of Americans living west of the Appalachian Mountains – the hefty tariffs imposed for transiting goods down the Mississippis River. At the time, transporting goods east was economically prohibitive, slow, and physically challenging. This forced the settlers in Kentucky and other western territories to look west, a notion that would draw Wilkinson himself into the embrace of the new lands. The governor agreed to allow Kentucky to have a trading monopoly on the River. How Wilkinson convinced the governor is the genesis of the real controversy that swirled around James Wilkinson. How did this militia general and backwoods envoy of a primitive territory of gringos pull it off? 

Agent 13

Wilkinson saw the potential of the west linked to the Spanish, who controlled the continent's interior and the lower Mississippi River. It seems Wilkinson engaged in a quid pro quo with the Spanish, offering to represent their interests with the American settlers in the west. In August that year, he swore an affidavit of intent to become a Spanish citizen and swore allegiance to the "Most Catholic King of Spain." Before departing New Orleans for Charleston, SC, he wrote a sort of manifesto in code and cipher, explaining to the Spanish his ideas on "the political future of western settlers" and urging the admission of the western settlers (Kentuckians) as subjects of Spain.

Governor Esteban Rodriquez Miro

Kentucky Failure

When he returned to Kentucky in early 1788, Agent 13 began a covert campaign to move the sticks in the direction of Spain. He strenuously opposed the proposed US Constitution, the adoption of which would have led to statehood. At a Kentucky convention on the Constitution in November, he schmoozed and charmed many members and got himself named a committee chairman. The canny Wilkinson knew many westerners made joining the Union conditional upon the Union engaging Spain on Mississippi navigation rights. And there was a widespread belief the "easterners" would not go to bat for the over-mountain settlers. Fortunately, Wilkinson's proposal to link separation from Virginia to separation from the United States and a treaty with Spain failed.

Wilkinson cynically used the Constitutional debate 

to promote his scheme

A Desperate Gambit

Wilkinson pivoted from this failure with a new proposal to his Spanish masters. He requested a large tract of land along the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers (today's Vicksburg), a $7,000 pension for himself, and pensions for several prominent Kentuckians. But Madrid did not want complications with the new nation and ordered Miro to break off contact with Agent 13 regarding Kentucky and prohibited any pensions. But, perhaps hedging their bets, Wilkinson continued to receive secret funds.

Wilkinson sought  thousands of acres near today's Vicksburg

When the Bugle Calls

North of Kentucky, the Ohio Territory was in flames as the American settlers clashed with the native tribes in a series of savage Indian wars. In 1791, Brigadier General Wilkinson of the Kentucky Militia returned to the new US Army with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He rose to the rank of brigadier general. At the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, Wilkinson commanded the right wing of Major General Anthony Wayne's newly formed American Legion. The resounding victory broke the back of the Indian tribes and eventually forced the British to abandon their forts on America's northwest frontier. Within two years, Agent 13 was the senior officer in the US Army, but in 1798, Wilkinson was dispatched to the south. 

Serving with Mad Anthony Wayne 

at Fallen Timbers

Louisiana Days

By June 1800, he was again the Army's senior general and, in effect, commander in chief. How such a man could gain those heights is an interesting question. Regardless, he commanded during a critical period in the nation's past – the French Pseudo War, Barbary Pirates, and tensions with Britain. And ironically, the 1803 Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon Bonaparte (Spain had ceded the vast trans-Mississippi region to France)  took him back to Louisiana, where he eventually became governor of the vast territory he once conspired with Spain over. 

The Louisiana Purchase made America 

a continental power

Now dual-hatted as governor of the Louisiana Territory and commanding officer of the Army, Wilkinson got involved with Aaron Burr. Burr, the disgraced former Vice President and murderer of Alexander Hamilton, had made his way to New  Orleans with a vague scheme to seize Mexico from moribund Spain, which was under Napoleon's heel. They hoped to make the territory an independent nation, perhaps with Burr as its President. Wilkinson went so far as to send Zebulon M. Pike to scout the Southwest in preparation for a military venture.

Aaron Burr

Foiled Plot & A Double Cross

But the British government, which secretly backed Burr's plan, withdrew its support. Now nervous of a failed attempt that would backfire on him,  Wilkinson sent a dispatch to President Thomas Jefferson accusing Burr of treason. Burr went on the run but was arrested in Alabama on 19 February 1807 for treason and sent to Richmond, Virginia, for trial. Meanwhile, Wilkinson cut a deal with the Spanish to keep the border with Texas (part of Mexico) neutral while declaring martial law in New Orleans. The audit trail of events is murky, and the details are unprovable, with one side betraying the other (Wilkinson seemingly double-crossing everyone). Burr was acquitted at a treason trial presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall in Richmond, Virginia. The Burr trial did set the legal precedent for future treason trials.

Chief Justice John Marshall

In 1810, Wilkinson took a second wife, Celestine Laveau. Governor Wilkinson got caught up in several other scandals and faced another court-martial in 1811 but was acquitted.

War with Britain, Again

In 1812, the long-simmering tensions with Great Britain broke into open warfare. In the fall of 1813, newly promoted Major General James Wilkinson took command of the American Northern Army and planned an invasion of Canada. Wilkinson launched a campaign to capture the British naval base at Kingston, sail up the St. Lawrence River, and attack Montreal. This provided a chance for Wilkinson to prove his mettle on the field of battle.

Battle of Chrysler's Farm ended Wilkinson's military career

Poor coordination and even poorer weather hampered his two-pronged movement, and soon Wilkinson's main column was on its own. Several engagements pushed the Americans back, and a final battle occurred at Chrysler's Farm. The British-Canadian forces soundly beat the Americans in a five-hour fight under snowy conditions. 

Final Court Martial

Wilkinson's invasion had left his base vulnerable to attack. As a result, British and Canadian forces captured Fort George and Fort Niagara in December. His final campaign was over. He faced a court martial for his actions – this time convicted. The patriot scoundrel's conviction finally brought his long and sketchy military career to a dishonorable end.

Major General Wilkinson's career ended

with a final court-martial 

Last Post and Scheme

But resilient as ever, Wilkinson wrangled an appointment as America's Envoy to Mexico during the struggle for Independence against Spain. When Mexico won in 1821, Wilkinson leveraged his position to request a land grant in Texas. It was a long wait for the new Mexican government's approval, and the 68-year-old Wilkinson died in Mexico City on 28 December 1825 and was buried there in a vault under Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel - the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel.

The American scoundrel ended his  life in a foreign capital

Agent 13's Legacy

During his life, many suspected the murky Wilkinson connection to the Spanish. But nothing could be proven. When surveying Missippi's boundary, American cartographer Andrew Ellicot reported his suspicions to President Thomas Jefferson but was rebuffed. One wonders whether Wilkinson was an American double agent, or perhaps the Americans thought he was their double agent. Regardless, James Wilkinson was a proven schemer, mover, and shaker who managed to put himself at the center or, better still, in the shadows of some of the most dramatic touch points in America's early years.

An agent's tools of the trade: the cipher wheel