So we are now post midterm.
We've gotten past the midterm, which is excellent.
And what I want--the lecture I'm going to give today is
actually titled "Heroes and Villains,"
and I'm going to explain what that means in just a few
minutes.
I'm going to segue, so I'm just touching on one or
two of the things that I talked about at the end of the last
lecture, segueing right in to this
lecture.
And hopefully you remember that right before the midterm,
the last lecture I gave, I was talking about the process
of organizing a war.
And I talked about some of the problems that the Continental
Congress had in dealing with the Continental Army,
and I at least referred to some of the ways in which these
problems hinted at larger problems with unity between the
newly created American states.
So for example, I talked about regionalism,
and I talked about some of the ways in which regionalism
complicated the task of organizing the Continental Army,
for example things like considering how to balance
positions of military command between Northerners and
Southerners, or getting units from one
region of the country to deal with units from another region
of the country, or getting soldiers from
different regions as well as individual soldiers to agree to
sacrifice for the common good throughout the entire
confederation of states instead of thinking about their own
state or their own locality above all else.
And I also talked about a related problem,
and I called that the problem of localism,
and I talked about how a localized view of the world,
or certainly a localized view of the new states,
worked against centralized control.
So localities of all sorts had difficulty surrendering local
control to some kind of a central organization like the
Continental Congress, which obviously had to equip
the army, and thus that raised all kinds
of other complications and problems.
Each state wanted to maintain control, for example,
of its own militia.
And then finally, at the very end of the lecture
I mentioned that many people who would end up being strong
nationalists in the 1780s and in the 1790s--
people who were going to end up being at the forefront of the
movement to strengthen the Articles of Confederation--
many of these people gained their political beliefs and the
need for some kind of a stronger centralized national government
from their experiences during the Revolution,
from their experiences with what often felt like what
Alexander Hamilton called an imbecilic centralized
government.
That was his word that he applied to the Continental
Congress, "imbecilic."
So basically, looking at the army and then
looking at Congress, we see regionalism and localism
both working against centralized control and coordination.
We see a lack of precedent for centralized governance of this
kind, which led to some confusion.
And certainly that made it possible for any important
decision that had to do with centralized power having
seemingly enough importance to make it earth-shaking--
and thus seemingly trivial things ended up seeming to have
huge importance because they might set a precedent,
again all of this working against effectiveness.
So all of these things complicated the creation not
just of a Continental Army, but also of first,
colonial unity, and then American unity and--
as we're going to see in weeks to come--
ultimately constitutional unity.
And we're going to see this sort of concern and confusion
and these complications of centralized power coming up
again and again this semester, particularly at the beginning
of April when we begin to talk about the Articles of
Confederation and people really debating about what's the best
form of government for these new states to unite under.
So these ideas--things like regionalism and things like
localism and how they complicated the army,
and also centralized power--those things are actually
going to come up in today's lecture which,
as I said, I titled "Heroes and Villains."
And what I'm really going to be doing in today's lecture--It's a
different kind of lecture from ones that I've given before.
Happily for you, it's a lecture that will
probably require you to take less notes than you typically
take in lecture for this course, because what I'm going to do is
kind of use a case study to look up close at just a handful of
people and a series of events as a way of exploring some of the
ideas that we've been talking about generally--
ideas about the Congress, ideas about the army,
and how they actually played out in a few individual lives.
So what we're going to see in the course of today's lecture,
which in a way is one big story, is some of the
complications inherent in how the Continental Congress handled
the Continental Army.
We're going to see a very specific example of that.
We're going to see regionalism making trouble in the
Continental Army.
We're going to see how serving in the army affected--in the
case of today's lecture--several people's lives in a really
direct way.
And then on a broader scale, by looking at this one story--
which is intertwined with the actions of the Continental Army
and what it meant to this handful of lives--
we're also going to see some broader truths about American
society at the time.
So we're going to see for example how the army was an
outlet for personal ambition, how people maybe tried to use
service in the army as a way to promote themselves,
something that I've mentioned before.
We're going to see how living at a time of war opened paths
for people that might not otherwise have existed.
We're going to see the sometimes slippery status of
women during a time of war, and we're going to see how many
Americans still revered some British cultural ideals even in
the midst of war against Britain.
And the story that I'm going to use today,
the sort of case study that's going to help us delve into all
of these things, is the story of Benedict
Arnold, Peggy Shippen Arnold, and John Andre.
All of these people--All three of these people,
in one way or another, attempted to use the war and
its armies to make, or I guess maybe more
accurately to unmake, themselves and their
reputations.
In one way or another, all of them were trying to
better themselves through the opportunities of warfare.
Now before we launch into that case study,
I just want to talk for a moment about why warfare created
such opportunities for potentially raising a person's
social status, and thus why some people were
actually eager for war.
Now in some of the early lectures for this course,
I discussed social status in the colonies and I talked a
little bit about how society in the colonies,
while it certainly did have an elite sort of gentlemanly rank
of people, that overall American society
tended to be more middling than English society,
which did have an entrenched aristocratic class.
In America, if you wanted to have gentlemanly status--
and in a sense it was more difficult to be born into it in
the way that you could have in a European nation--
there were actually a limited number of pathways that were
open to you to achieve that kind of a status.
Basically, there were a handful of professions that were assumed
in this period to be gentlemanly.
These included medicine, the law, the ministry,
the church, perhaps being a merchant that was wealthy enough
that you didn't seem to be grubbing for money--
that you seemed to be living happily off of your vast sums of
money, maybe someone who owned a
really sizable plantation, or serving as an officer in an
army.
And I was sort of unsure what to do with college professors,
near and dear to my heart.
I decided I would not officially put them on the list,
although many college professors in this period would
have been in the clergy, certainly some of them would
have been lawyers, so I think they would have
generally fallen into the gentlemanly ranks,
but I'm being unbiased here so I'm leaving college professors
over here somewhere.
Okay.
So of all of those positions that I've just named,
being a military officer, serving as an officer during--
in an army but particularly during a time of war,
offered the greatest chance for instant glory,
instant status, instant rank through bravery
and displays of valor on the battlefield.
For the very ambitious or for people who had a problematic
social rank for one reason or another,
a war could be a great opportunity for you to improve
your place in the world, particularly in a place like
America.
And one extreme example of this is actually Alexander Hamilton,
who was born illegitimate in the West Indies--
and it's really clear from the absolute first letter of his
that we know of, which was written when he was
fourteen years old, that he absolutely thought that
his only ticket off of the island of St.
Croix was through military glory in a war.
That was really the way that he saw that he was going to make
something of himself, get himself off of St.
Croix, earn a name, get status, get reputation,
and start the process of making something of himself in the
world.
So as he says in this letter, and it's written when he's
fourteen, "my Ambition is prevalent....
I wish there was a War."
Okay.
[laughs] As a historian,
you're so happy-- again, I said this before--when
your historical subjects say the thing you want them to say that
you can then quote forever after.
'Hi.
I am ambitious and I want a war so I can promote myself.'
Thank you, Alexander Hamilton, very much.
Okay.
Now in a sense Hamilton was extreme,
because he was very underprivileged,
he was extremely ambitious and very determined,
but in a sense his entire generation of young men saw the
Revolution as a chance for glory,
status, rank, self-promotion.
And I talked about a similar idea last week when I mentioned
that there were a number of Europeans who came to America
during the Revolution, sometimes because they figured
that they could probably impress Americans,
or certainly impress the Continental Congress with their
experience in formal European warfare,
and then they could get a position as an officer easier
than they might have been able to obtain it or purchase it back
home, and--so that there were a
number of Europeans coming to this country for that purpose.
And I mentioned at the time that actually Hamilton,
trying to do something really similar,
said that watching these Europeans come and get promoted
by the Congress above his head gave him what he called
"pigmy-feelings," made him feel really puny,
really small in comparison with these sort of grand Europeans
coming and sort of getting everything that he wanted and he
wasn't getting because he was just a puny,
little American.
So in a sense, in a world where there were a
limited number of pathways to gentlemanly status,
serving as an officer during a time of war could be kind of an
escalator of rank, offering the chance to get
ahead at a rapid pace.
So being an officer in the Continental Army could have
seemed particularly attractive to highly ambitious men who were
looking for some kind of a big chance,
and Benedict Arnold was one of those men.
Now I think when most Americans think about the American
Revolution--And I remember I started out this course sort of
talking about the same idea.
I assumed that maybe people know Washington led the army,
that Paul Revere rode around on a horse saying something about
the British, that Jefferson had something to
do with the Declaration of Independence,
and I'll add to that list, most people know Benedict
Arnold was a traitor.
They don't know why, they don't know how,
but you assume the name Benedict Arnold goes along with
the word "traitor."
John Adams was pretty much right on the money when he
predicted how future generations were going to see the American
Revolution, and it's right in line with
what I just said.
And he actually wrote in 1790 to Benjamin Rush,
"The History of our Revolution will be one continued
lie from one end to the other.
The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin's
electrical Rod smote the Earth and out sprung General
Washington.
[laughter] That Franklin electrified him
with his Rod-- [laughs]
and henceforth these two conducted all the Policy,
Negotiations, Legislatures and War."
Okay.
So Adams is actually probably coming pretty close to reality.
People are going to look back and they're going to say,
'Yeah, yeah.
Franklin, Washington, and the war.
That was the Revolution.'
Now I always--I knew that quote.
I've known it for a long time.
I love that quote, which is why I found a reason
to sort of wind it into today's lecture,
but when I went back to look it up today,
for the first time I actually read the whole letter that it
comes from.
And I found another sentence which I actually hadn't focused
on before, and it made me so happy that I
offer it to you, even though it isn't directly
related to the point I'm making, but I kind of couldn't believe
he wrote it in his letter.
So he offers that quote and then he adds and says,
"If this Letter should be preserved and read an hundred
years hence--".
Okay.
First of all, I love the fact that that comes
up in his mind.
Well, a hundred years from now when people are reading my
letter, "if this letter should be
preserved and read an hundred years hence,
the Reader will say, 'the envy of this John Adams
could not bear to think of the Truth!'"
So in other words, a hundred years from now if
people read this letter they're going to say,
'Yeah.
Well, the fact is Adams knew he wouldn't be remembered.
He doesn't deserve to be remembered anyway.'
So it's like first there's the letter where he's like:
'oh, no one's going to know the
truth about the Revolution and they're never going to give me
any credit.
[laughter] I love the weird self-awareness
of John Adams.
I just--I couldn't believe that he added that into the letter.
So anyway, I think he certainly knew what he was talking about
when he talked about the weird, general sort of hero-way in
which people were going to be thinking about the American
Revolution.
So many Americans know certainly Benedict Arnold equals
traitor.
Obviously, it's--I'm going to be talking about it today--
his story is a lot more complex than that,
and it's mixed in with these other two stories,
that of Peggy Shippen, who eventually becomes his
wife, and John Andre who is a young
British officer.
Now Arnold started out life in many ways a sort of typical
member of a modest, respectable family,
and at the opening of the American Revolution he was a
book-seller and a pharmacist, or what they would have called
a druggist, in New Haven, Connecticut.
So he's a local boy, Benedict Arnold.
He was struggling to better himself.
How many of you knew actually that Benedict Arnold was a local
guy?
A couple people did.
That was another one of those things that--I never know when I
say something about New Haven.
Is it like, 'We all know this about New Haven,
Professor Freeman.
You are the clueless person.'
[laughter] So anyway, he was a local boy.
So book-seller, druggist, New Haven local boy
struggling to better himself, and part of the way in which
he's struggling to better himself is to certainly display
himself to the world as someone who's really up and coming.
So among the things that he was doing was,
he apparently was building an enormous mansion for himself on
Water Street, wearing very expensive
clothing, taking big risks in business to try and get himself
ahead quickly.
He was also a captain in the local New Haven militia and so
he was really active drilling at the opening of the war.
Now when gunplay broke out at Lexington and Concord,
the New Haven town meeting apparently decided that they
wanted to maintain neutrality, which in and of itself was kind
of interesting.
Right?
'Uh oh.
Something bad's happening.
I think for now we want to be neutral.'
Connecticut's always a very conservative place so this is
yet another conservative moment in Connecticut's history.
So they form a committee--The town meeting forms a committee
to preserve neutrality in New Haven.
Arnold was not really excited about this concept of
neutrality, so apparently he stormed in to
this neutrality committee, demanded the keys to the
ammunition shed, and when his superior in the
Connecticut militia told him the town had legally voted for
neutrality, Arnold threatened to break down
the ammunition shed door with his men if they didn't hand over
the keys so he could get ammunition and take his men and
do something.
And the committee released the keys and Arnold took them and
armed his men, and ultimately he and his
militia unit joined the Continental Army in
Massachusetts.
So this is someone who clearly is eager to fight.
Right?
He sort of forced his way in.
So he ends up in Massachusetts with his men.
He's soon promoted to be a colonel by the Massachusetts
Committee of Safety, which assigned him to be part
of a group that was going to go help capture Fort Ticonderoga
and he was-- Arnold was part of that
successful effort in May of 1775.
And by October of 1776, he was a brigadier general.
Now at this point the very hierarchical system of military
rank that Arnold was using to try and raise himself in the
world began to work against him, because a number of his equals
were promoted to major general, but Arnold wasn't.
And as I'm going to explain in a moment,
the reason why he didn't get a promotion has more to do with
things like regionalism and fear of centralized authority than it
actually does have anything to do with Arnold specifically.
So basically, many of the more radical
members of the Continental Congress at this time were
afraid that if everyone was promoted in the Continental Army
just according to seniority of rank that the army would get
detached from the legislature and then it would be seniority
and not Congress that would be determining promotions,
so Congress might end up being powerless over the army.
And so the result that they feared would be maybe a military
dictatorship, an aristocracy based on high
military rank-- that somehow or other,
if the army had control of promotion everything was going
to spin out of control and Congress would have no power.
So, afraid of this, Congress debated and ultimately
decided that officers should be appointed not just according to
seniority, but almost more important,
on the basis of balancing out the numbers of officers from
different states.
Okay.
So they figure we're going to have regional balance.
We're going to maintain control of the promotion process and
maintain regional balance in the numbers of officers.
So essentially in the interest of preserving a national
confederation of some kind, regional balance in the
military was given priority.
As Washington--George Washington explained to Arnold
when Arnold was denied his promotion,
"as Connecticut had already two major-generals,
it was their full share."
Okay.
That's got to be really sour grapes, like 'What?
[laughs] Connecticut doesn't deserve any
more major generals so I don't get a promotion?'
"I confess this is a strange mode of reasoning;
but it may serve to show you, that the promotion,
that was due to your seniority, was not overlooked for want of
merit in you."
So he's trying to make Arnold feel better.
'Well, you actually--I know you deserved it but I'm sorry.
You really can't have it, because Connecticut doesn't get
any more for a while.'
Okay.
Arnold did not get his promotion, did not get it for
want of merit.
This did not make him happy.
Washington's trying to explain that there are larger principles
at play, principles that show how
fearful people were of centralized power in any form,
and in this case they're afraid of some kind of powerful
standing army, and they're using regional
balance as a priority to sort of balance out fears of centralized
power wherever they're afraid it's going to crop up.
As one congressman wrote at the time,
Arnold's promotion was blocked because it raised,
quote, "a question of monarchical or republican
principles at a most crucial time."
So you could see even this one guy's promotion is being tied
into these much larger fears and ideas.
Congress felt compelled to establish its promotion policy
based on fears of an independent standing army that might take
power for itself.
They're trying to keep control of military promotion--
so here you see fear of a standing army,
fear of centralized power and regionalism all stirred up and
all at play in full force.
Now luckily for Arnold at this point, there was a military
action in Connecticut.
Arnold proved himself militarily--yet again he ends up
getting promoted to major general--
but now his rank is beneath those who had been his equals
before.
Right?
They had been promoted ahead of him so they still have seniority
over him.
Arnold really wants equal rank, equal seniority with the men he
had formerly been equal to.
He also felt that Congress owed him money because he had been
using his personal funds to supply his troops,
and obviously he's already living well beyond his means,
so this question of whether or not he's actually owed money by
Congress and whether or not Congress is actually going to
pay him back-- for him, that's a serious
question.
The more that Arnold demanded that he be promoted to the level
of his former equals, the stronger Congress dug in
its heels and refused to comply, so that the whole idea clearly
is becoming now a matter of principle in which the honor and
authority of the Continental Congress is at stake now in
addition to whatever larger issues are at play.
And this might sound a little familiar if you think back to
some of the logic deployed by the British Parliament as
problems were growing out of questions of taxation.
In addition to all of the larger problems and concerns
mixed up in that question, part of what was at play was
that Parliament ultimately, at some point down the road of
that controversy, didn't want to lose face by
seeming to surrender the issue to its colonies.
So the honor of Parliament is involved in that issue,
here the honor of the Continental Congress.
They feel like that's at issue and they can't just back down
because Arnold is being really persistent about what he wants.
As South Carolina Congressman Henry Laurens put it at the
time, his colleagues' behavior in
Congress was, quote, "disgusting."
Arnold was refused "not because he was deficient in
merit or that his demand was not well founded but because he
asked for it & that granting at such
insistence would be derogatory to the honour of Congress."
Now that's Laurens' point of view.
Another congressman with different politics and another
point of view came up with a whole different way of looking
at this whole controversy-- drew very different
conclusions--and said that denying Arnold his promotion was
a triumph of republican principles.
Military rank would stay in control of the legislature;
the army wouldn't become independent and aristocratic.
So you can see even again something that is seemingly not
that important, which is the promotion of one
guy, stirs up all of these larger issues for all kinds of
people in different ways.
People aren't even united about what it means.
Now it was at roughly this moment--
when Arnold is frustrated--he wants promotion--
he doesn't see a way to get it--he keeps getting turned
down-- he feels like he's owed money
in some way-- he just feels basically stymied
in every way-- his reputation now he also
feels is being attacked simply because he's asking for
promotion-- this is roughly the time when
he met Peggy Shippen, who was the daughter of a
wealthy merchant in Philadelphia.
Now the Shippens, along with any number of
Philadelphia's other sort of best families,
mingled freely with British officers when the British were
in occupation of Philadelphia-- when the British were not
there, mingled freely with American officers.
When the British had possession of Philadelphia apparently there
were elaborate dances and great sorts of theatrical productions.
It was a grand social scene when the British were there.
When the British were not there, Americans also had
entertainments.
They weren't quite as extravagant, but still enough to
encourage the participation of all of the best families of
Philadelphia.
Peggy Shippen was certainly in the midst of all of this
socializing, enjoying whatever socializing
was going on with whatever group,
and apparently she was very popular.
She was sort of the literal belle of the ball,
one of the more attractive and noteworthy young women in
Philadelphia's social scene at that time.
Now this suggests a few things about Peggy Shippen,
one or two of which are significant for our story here.
For one obvious thing, it suggests that she certainly
was dressed at the height of fashion,
that she was skilled at flirtation,
that she was aggressive in social circles,
but what that adds up to as far as our story is concerned,
is that she was displaying ambition on one of the few
stages where women could display open ambition,
and that's social events, social functions,
in a sense the private world.
But certainly on the social stage,
that's a place where women could successfully display and
exercise ambition, and it certainly suggests that
Peggy Shippen was perfectly comfortable doing that on the
social scene of Philadelphia.
So Peggy married Benedict Arnold in April of 1779.
He already was someone who was spending extravagantly.
This just encouraged him to increase his spending,
because now he had a wife to spend on, in addition to
whatever he was spending on himself.
And it was shortly after his marriage,
when he still remained frustrated in his military
hopes, his expenses are rising and
rising all the time, this is the moment where he
began to ponder the possibility of aiding the British.
And apparently in his mind he justified his actions by
assuming the British were inevitably going to win anyway,
that the British--that the likelihood that the colonies
were going to be victorious against the empire,
in his mind, is unlikely.
So given that the British are inevitably going to win,
his helping them win the war is going to end bloodshed as
quickly as possible, so he's doing a good thing by
somehow helping the British.
Now clearly that's a sort of self-serving way of looking at
it.
He has other motives too, but that was part of his logic.
So in May of 1779, he and Peggy decided to ask a
local man in Philadelphia who they knew had Loyalist
sympathies and who was a poet to act as a go-between with the
British so they could at least open a conversation with them.
And this man, whose name was Joseph
Stansbury, later described Arnold's invitation.
He described what Arnold said to him at this moment:
"General Arnold sent for me and,
after some general conversation,
opened his political sentiments respecting the war carrying on
between Great Britain and America,
declaring his abhorrence of a separation of the latter from
the former as a measure that would be ruinous to both.
General Arnold then communicated to me,
under a solemn obligation of secrecy,
his intention of offering his services to the
Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in any way that
would most effectually restore the former government and
destroy the [then] usurped authority of Congress,
either by immediately joining the British Army or cooperating
on some concerted plan with Sir Henry Clinton"--
(who is the British commander in chief).
Yeah.
That's quite some conversation there.
Now the person who ultimately ended up facilitating
communication between Arnold and Sir Henry Clinton was a young
British officer named Major John Andre,
who was a sort of favorite of Henry Clinton,
was sort of his right-hand man.
Apparently, Peggy Shippen knew him.
They had met when the British had been in Philadelphia,
and in fact they'd been a little bit flirtatious when the
British were in Philadelphia, so they knew each other.
To most people who knew Andre--and as we're going to see
later on in this story, particularly to
Americans--Andre was the very ideal of a gentleman.
He was charming.
He was well educated.
He wrote poetry.
He wrote plays.
He was flirtatious.
He drew portraits to amuse the ladies and his fellow officers.
He's supposedly very good-looking.
So basically in a sense, Andre is sort of this
gentlemanly ideal, and then he's also this gallant
soldier, so you add it all up and it's
just a package of sort of "ideal gentleman."
Like Arnold, Andre had used the army as a
way to better his station, although his station was
already somewhat elevated.
So Andre's father was a wealthy merchant.
Andre thought that trade was a little bit disreputable so he
decided that the army was a better way for him to advance
himself, exercise his ambition,
and achieve fame and glory, again not that unlike Arnold.
So Andre ends up being at the center of Arnold's plans with
the British, and basically the plan was the
Arnolds would send messages to the British,
but they would be written by Peggy Arnold and then sent to
Andre through Joseph Stansbury who would pick up the letters
and deliver them, crossing back and forth between
American and British lines, and then Andre could go on and
speak to Henry Clinton himself.
Now Stansbury, hoping to make things a little
less risky for himself, got another poet that he knew
behind British lines to carry the messages from his hand to
Andre's hand.
So Benedict Arnold's negotiations with the British
would be written out by Peggy; she'd give her letters to
Stansbury; Stansbury would give them to
another poet; the poet would give them to
Andre; Andre would take them to
Clinton.
Okay.
That's a long chain of people, but what's really interesting
about that chain of people is that when you think of the
pieces and the assumptions underlying the pieces,
it revealed a lot about society and some of its assumptions at
the time.
It was actually Andre who suggested that the letters
should at least seem to be written by Peggy Arnold and
addressed to Andre, because Andre knew that
something written by a woman would never be assumed to have
anything to do with politics or war.
A letter from a woman is going to assume to be private and
personal.
Women were basically a nonentity in public life,
they didn't exist as public figures,
so, as Andre explained in a note to the Arnolds,
"The Lady," meaning Peggy,
"might write to me...
This will come by a flag of truce, every messenger remaining
ignorant of what they are charged with."
These will seem like private letters.
They can kind of write in code.
It'll come from a woman.
No one will know what they are, and under a flag of truce,
messengers will help deliver these messages and no one will
know what they are, because they're written by a
woman.
So their letters to each other could seem to talk about things
like parties and dances and what Andre termed "other
nonsense."
Right?
They can pretend to be talking about whatever they're talking
about but they're going to actually send coded messages.
And these letters would be passed through both the American
and British lines because they would supposedly have nothing to
do with the war, because they were from or to a
woman.
Okay.
So part of this whole plan of espionage is built around the
simple fact that women were invisible in public life,
so they were very useful agents of espionage.
It's also interesting to note that both the Arnolds' chosen
messenger, Stansbury, and
Stanbury--Stansbury's chosen messenger to Andre,
both of them were poets, and in a sense poets were also
people who would not necessarily be assumed to be centrally
involved with fighting a war.
It could have been quite natural for American and British
men of letters to chat, to meet, to correspond.
Cultural bonds--for example an interest in the art of poetry--
could easily cross political boundaries,
and Andre himself was a poet of sorts,
so that too showed something interesting about society at the
time: this assumption that common cultural bonds between
American and British men of letters and literature could be
assumed to be above politics and war,
above national bonds enough that it might help them pass
back and forth between American and British lines.
Okay.
So using this whole string of people,
this string of poets, Arnold and the British
negotiated for a time and then stopped because the British
would not promise to give Arnold the huge sum of money that he
demanded for his services.
A year later in 1780, negotiations began again,
this time focused on a specific demand by the British.
The British specifically asked Arnold for his help in getting
control of West Point, and Arnold felt that he could
probably get command of West Point and then find a way to
deliver it to the British.
And in exchange for this mission Arnold wanted 30,000
pounds sterling, which is a vast sum of money at
this time.
I think--sterling to dollar I can't translate,
but just to give you a sense--I believe that when the government
gets under way, George Washington is making a
salary of $25,000 a year and that's a big blob of money.
I think Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury were
making $5,000 a year maybe.
So 30,000 pounds sterling is a lot of money.
Plus, he wanted payment of all of his debts.
So he's not being modest.
But General Clinton--communicating through
Andre--refused to commit any money to Arnold until Arnold had
actually accomplished something.
Right?
He doesn't at this point even have command of West Point.
So at this point with their plan almost foiled,
things go perhaps one step worse when George Washington
asks to see Arnold and tries to reward him.
Right? He still feels bad.
The guy didn't get the promotion he wanted.
Washington says he's going to try to reward him by giving him
a better command than West Point.
Right?
West Point's not really in the center of the fighting.
Washington basically says, 'You don't really want West
Point.
I'll give you something better than West Point,' and,
as Washington later recorded, Arnold had a strange reaction
to this offer.
Quote: "Upon this information his countenance
changed and he appeared to be quite fallen;
and, instead of thanking me, or expressing any pleasure at
the appointment, never opened his mouth"--
okay, because he--Arnold's like, 'uh oh,
[laughs] this is not what I expected.'
Right?
Peggy Arnold when informed in Philadelphia that Arnold had
been promised a better command than West Point apparently burst
into hysterics and then after regaining herself said she was
sobbing because of the danger that this put her husband in.
Okay.
She's really sobbing because their plan is about to be
foiled, but her explanation again sort
of took advantage of stereotypes about women,
in this case capitalizing on the assumption that women were
not involved in such things as military commands;
they would just be worried about their husbands' welfare.
So that's the excuse she comes up with,
and we're going to see her deploy this really successfully
in just a few minutes at the sort of penultimate moment of
crisis in this whole controversy.
Ultimately, that offer of another command for Arnold fell
through and he was given command of West Point.
And through that whole chain of letter exchanges it was quickly
established that Arnold and Andre and Clinton were now ready
to actually do business.
But now at this crucial point someone had to speak with Arnold
in person to make final arrangements.
And here we get yet another example of how important it was
for young men to gain status in the army--
and actually young men of all kinds to gain status in the
army-- and how useful the army could
be for promoting your own status and reputation,
even for people who already had some social status--
because in this case Andre's commander in chief and friend,
General Clinton, said the mission was too
dangerous for his favorite right-hand man.
Right?
He says to Andre, 'This is not for you.
This is too dangerous,' but Andre actually insisted on being
the communicator between Clinton and Arnold because he really
desperately wanted a chance to earn a promotion and he really
thought that this moment of potential glory could be it,
could be his big chance.
So Andre and Arnold met; they talked.
Throughout his trip to meet with Arnold and during the
visit, Andre claimed to be a merchant
named John Anderson-- right?--and he wore this sort
of cloak, but it's important to note that
underneath his cloak he had on his British uniform.
And this was important because if he was captured in his
official uniform, he would be a prisoner of war
and thus protected, even possibly traded back to
the British in exchange for a high-ranking American prisoner,
but if he was in plain clothes he would be a lowly spy,
and a spy had only one fate waiting for him and that was
death by hanging.
So he's cloaked but he does have on his British uniform.
Okay.
Complications naturally arose when a friend of Arnold's saw
Andre with the cloak off.
Right?
So the friend of Arnold says, 'Wow.
You're chatting with a British officer.
[laughter] What does that mean?'
Okay.
So forced to come up with some kind of an explanation--you
could imagine that moment; that's a big sort of "uh
oh, [laughs]
I'm chatting with a British officer"--
Arnold said that Andre was a merchant who had put on a
British uniform to sneak through British lines.
Right?
Quick thinking on Arnold's part, but Arnold's friend said:
'Oh, okay.
Well, given that'--he says to Andre--
'You'd be much safer now just to dress in plain clothes,
because now that you're past British lines you shouldn't be
wearing a British uniform.'
Okay.
There's not a lot that Andre can say to that logic so he puts
on plain clothes.
He's carrying papers from Arnold about their plot and
shoves them into his boot, and Andre then set off to head
back to General Clinton, had just about made his way
back to British-claimed territory when he was stopped by
three men who questioned him, searched his clothing,
and eventually found the papers in his boot.
And the three men brought Andre to American authorities.
Now, even now Andre thought that maybe he could claim to be
a secret agent in Arnold's service.
Right?
He's--Actually, he's wearing plain clothes and
he has papers from Arnold, so he's thinking:
'well, there's not actually anything to link me with the
British at this moment.
I could just be a lowly spy doing something for Arnold so
maybe I'm still okay.'
However, the officer who he was taken to became suspicious when
Andre was given clean clothes, and the ribbon that he removed
from his hair was dusted with powder.
Okay, the sneaky powder.
What that meant was that he clearly was a gentleman who
powdered his hair.
He was not a lowly spy.
So whoever this observant person was,
he saw the ribbon, he saw that it was dusted with
powder, and he thought:
'I don't think you're some pseudo lowly spy person.
I think you must be someone more important.
Something fishy is going on here.'
So now, this American officer sent the captured papers on to
George Washington.
Washington, as luck would have it, was on his way to West Point
to meet with Benedict Arnold.
[laughter] Right?
Talk about your sort of lucky strike.
Right?
So he's riding off, heading to West Point to meet
with Arnold as a friend, see how West Point is going,
and now this letter from Andre is winging its way to Arnold's
headquarters at West Point.
When it became obvious that he was now being really held
suspect, Andre confessed who he was,
and he did so at this early point so that he could reveal
that he wasn't a lowly spy but actually was a gentleman and an
officer who had been caught.
And to him this really made a difference.
As he explained to Washington, he wasn't revealing his true
identity for his own safety and security.
As he put it, he wasn't trying to
"rescue himself from an imputation of having assumed a
mean character for treacherous purposes or
self-interest"-- so he says, 'I'm not revealing
this because I'm hoping to plead for my life.'
Rather, he was revealing his true identity,
quote, "to vindicate my fame" from any suspicion
that he was a lowly spy.
So basically he's revealing who he is because he wants to be
recognized as an officer and a gentleman.
And that letter--also sent on to the headquarters at West
Point to wait for Washington when he arrives at West Point.
Boy, Washington's going to have fun when he arrives at West
Point.
Washington has not yet gotten to Arnold's house.
He sent two of his aides ahead to prepare for his arrival.
They were actually eating breakfast with Benedict Arnold
when letters began to arrive at headquarters.
Realizing that something bad was unfolding as one after
another sort of dispatch came in with these frantic letters that
had to get to Washington, Arnold ran upstairs.
Washington--Washington's aides later said he looked oddly
agitated.
He told Peggy that they'd been caught.
He ran downstairs.
He told Washington that--and his aides actually,
not Washington.
He's not there yet--he told Washington's aides that he had
to go prepare for a reception for Washington,
and fled on horseback.
"Poof," he's gone.
And eventually he was taken aboard a British ship in the
harbor.
Washington arrived shortly after this moment,
reads all of these letters and messages that are waiting for
him, and at this moment Peggy,
who now knows that things are really exploding and she's in
big trouble, erupts into hysterics,
entirely flustering all of the men present--
because she's at this point surrounded by men--
right?--her husband's aides, George Washington,
George Washington's aides.
She erupts into hysterics and one of Arnold's aides said,
"I heard a shriek to me and sprang from my bed,
ran upstairs, and there met the miserable
lady, raving, distracted ...
with her hair disheveled and flowing about her neck.
Her morning gown, with few other clothes,
[laughter] remained on her,
too few to be seen by a gentleman of the family,
much less by many strangers."
Okay, the semi-nude Peggy Arnold.
"She seized me by the hand with this, to me distressing,
address, and a wild look, 'Colonel ...
have you ordered my child to be killed?'"
Okay.
Peggy raving, 'You're going to kill my baby.'
She raved apparently for several days.
Generally speaking, she could have sincerely been
distressed.
Right?
Her husband just ran off, things are in trouble,
Washington's there, the jig is up,
people know about the plot.
Her seeming insanity, raving about a murdered baby,
maybe not so sincere, and Washington's aides were
entirely sucked in to her distress.
As Alexander Hamilton put it, and he was really sucked right
in there, "one moment she raved;
another she melted into tears...
in a manner that would have pierced insensibility itself....
It was the most affecting scene I ever was witness to"
[laughter]--that's on the part of Hamilton.
Okay.
So here again is Peggy using prevailing assumptions about
women to her advantage.
She's raving.
She's hysterical.
She's talking about her baby.
She's not wearing very much clothing, [laughter]
apparently.
There were many reasons for the men who were present not to
suspect that she's actually involved in the treasonous plot.
So Arnold is fleeing to a British ship,
Andre is an American prisoner, and Peggy is being doted on by
half a dozen American officers.
[laughter] By prolonging her hysteria,
she was playing on what she knew would be their sense of
gallantry to help her, and their emotional response to
a distraught woman who's sobbing and semi-nude.
So eventually she went home to her family in Philadelphia.
Andre's fate was still up for grabs.
He assumed that a gentleman and officer of his rank would never
be accused of being a lowly spy and he would be exchanged for an
equivalent American officer.
But this was not to be.
But interestingly, while he was in captivity,
Andre became much more than a British spy to the American
officers who were holding him prisoner,
because during his captivity Washington and his aides spent a
lot of time with him and came to consider him as the very model
of what a gentleman and an officer should be.
All of Washington's aides literally wanted to be Andre.
Some of them actually said that in writing: 'I wish I were
Andre.
[laughter] He's so gallant.
He's so brave.
He's so--' Yeah.
So Andre really is this ideal.
He's handsome.
He's aristocratically genteel.
He's stoic in the face of imminent death.
He's willingly sacrificing his life for his country,
even if that country is England and not America.
Even Washington was taken with Andre and called him a gallant
and accomplished officer.
Despite such respect for Andre, his request to be shot as an
officer and a gentleman rather than hanged as a spy was denied.
Washington couldn't grant that request without raising doubts
about Andre's guilt as a spy.
So October 1,1780, was named as the day of Andre's
execution.
On that day Andre dressed with extreme care.
He went out of his way to show his calm fortitude and his
gentility and his dignity in the face of death.
He was a true British officer to the last,
because apparently as he walked to the scaffold he said,
quote, "I am very much surprised to find your troops
under such good discipline."
[laughter] Can you imagine?
'I'm about to die.
My, you Americans are quite disciplined, aren't you?'
[laughter] Thank you, John Andre.
"And your music is excellent,"
he added.
[laughter] Thank you very much.
He was supposedly taken aback for a moment when he saw the
gallows, because up until that moment he really had been
expecting a firing squad.
He asked if he had to die in this manner.
Told he would, he replied in a loud voice,
which was remembered later by lots of people in their diaries
and in letters, "I am reconciled to my
fate but not to the mode."
Right?
So the audience was like: 'oh, this is moving.'
[laughter] When asked if he had last words
he said, "I have nothing more to
say, gentleman"--boy,
you better practice last words in this age--
"I have nothing more to say, gentleman,
but this: you all bear me witness that I meet my fate as a
brave man."
At this, the crowd began to sob, [laughter]
and then the trapdoor was released and that was the end of
Major John Andre.
Now his death inspired engravings, songs,
poems, plays for years afterward.
To many Americans, he remained a sort of ideal
gentleman and officer, this noble and sensitive youth,
this sort of romantic hero.
He was beloved by young American officers who thought he
was this superior, genteel, sophisticated,
cultured individual in a way that they didn't necessarily
consider themselves to be.
He somehow seemed better than them, and to many this was
inextricably tied up with the fact that he was a British
gentleman, the best of that breed.
The extreme adoration of Andre in America shows how Americans
still suffered from a little bit of an inferiority complex in
relation to the British who still represented--
at least partly in their mind--the height of culture and
sophistication.
Even now, in a time of war, they're responding to Andre in
this way.
Peggy eventually joined her husband in England,
successfully playing her cards as a woman throughout to protect
herself from the hatred that certainly was shown to her
husband.
And Arnold of all of them was really cursed forever,
eternally hated largely of course because of his treason,
his betrayal of the American cause,
but partly in a sense also because in some ways his actions
were understandable to some people in America.
He was someone who was ambitious and tried to raise his
status.
He was someone who spent too much money, took too many risks
to advance himself.
He was someone who was seduced by all that the British had to
offer.
In a sense, he was a kind of everyman gone wrong,
an example of the worst that was possible in this new
somewhat more egalitarian American world.
So part of the reason why Americans hated Arnold with such
passion is that partly they understood that in some ways,
Arnold was them.
Wow. That was just in time.
Okay.
That is the end of today's lecture.
We move on in the coming weeks to war,
to Washington, to sort of looking at how
things are playing out on the battlefield,
and then we will work our way towards Articles of
Confederation and an actual Constitution by the end of the
semester.
We will make it there.
See you on Thursday.