Before he became a traitor, Benedict Arnold was a hero of the Revolutionary War. When the fighting began at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Arnold was a militia captain and an ardent Patriot. In May 1775, he and Ethan Allen led the brigade that captured Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. In September he led 1,150 riflemen against Quebec, the capital of British Canada. Driving his men through the Maine wilderness, he overcame leaky boats, spoiled provisions, treacherous rivers, and near starvation to arrive at Quebec in November, with a force reduced to 650 men. For the next five years Arnold served the Patriot cause with honor, including a dangerous assault against the center of the British line at Saratoga, where he rewounded the leg which had been injured during the Quebec assault.
Yet for all his military talents Arnold lacked social skills. He was courageous, true, but he was also hot-tempered and thin-skinned. At Quebec some New England officers accused him of arrogance and tried to withdraw from his command. When questions arose about stores that had been plundered in Montreal, Arnold accused a fellow officer, Moses Hazen, of incompetence and inaction. The arguments between to the two were hot and heavy and Hazen eventually insisted on a court-martial to clear his name. The court took the brunt of Arnold's anger and demanded an apology which, Arnold refused. The task of ending the quarrel fell to General Horatio Gates who recognized Arnold's talents. Yet after his heroism at Saratoga, General Horatio Gates relieved Arnold of his command, partly for insubordination and partly because Gates had come to consider Arnold a "pompous little fellow."
Arnold was also given to extravagance. A widower, minor merchant and apothecary, he was a frequent guest at society functions in Philadelphia and did his best to entertain his young second wife with a lifestyle that was well beyond their means. Pressed for cash, Arnold entered into some shady business dealings, including authorizing the use of government supplies for his own personal needs. Those he had quarrelled with were quick to jump on this, and he was found guilty on two charges: using government wagons for his personal use and issuing a pass to a ship which he later invested in. "Having ... become a cripple in the service of my country, I little expected to meet [such] ungrateful returns," Arnold complained to his friend George Washington.
Burdened with debt and disgusted with congressional politics, Arnold decided to try his luck with Great Britain. He initiated correspondence with John André, a British major, promising to deliver West Point and its 3,000 defenders to British Commander Sir Henry Clinton for 20,000 pounds sterling (about $1 million today). Persuading Washington to place the fort under his command, Arnold moved in September 1780 to execute his plan. Unfortunately, it unravelled when Henri Andre, the go-between who had only to see it fail when André, was captured. As André was executed as a spy, Arnold received 6,000 pounds from the British government and appointment as a brigadier general in His Majesty's Army.
Arnold served George III with the same skill and daring he had shown in the Patriot cause. In 1781 he led devastating strikes on Patriot supply depots. In Virginia he looted Richmond and destroyed munitions and grain intended for the American army opposing Lord Cornwallis. In Connecticut he burned ships, warehouses, and much of the town of New London, a major port for Patriot privateers. But this was not enough to stave off the inevitable, and after the British surrender at Yorktown Arnold found that he had backed the wrong horse.
The fame and fortune that Benedict Arnold had expected never materialized. First he moved to England, where he found few opportunities for a man of questionable honor. Fleeing England for Canada, he and his family settled in New Brunswick, but even among Loyalists he was seen as a traitor who had betrayed his country for personal gain, not conviction. Still quarrelsome and overbearing, he became increasingly unpopular with his neighbors, until finally in 1791 they burned him in effigy in front of his house at King & Canterbury streets. Embittered and disgusted, he returned to England. Unable to gain a military command, and unable to turn a profit on his business ventures in the West Indies, he died in 1801 in obscurity.
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