Benedict Arnold

Drink took his father first and then the family money. Benedict Arnold III was arrested more than once for drunkenness and refused communion by his own church, and by the time his son was 14 there was no money for the schooling that was to have ended at Yale. Four of the boy's five siblings were already dead of yellow fever. His mother's relatives placed him with cousins who ran an apothecary and general store in Norwich, and he served them seven years. He set up on his own in New Haven at 21, bought three trading ships, ran cargo to the West Indies in open defiance of the Sugar and Stamp Acts, and by 1765 was 16,000 pounds in debt.

He was 34 when the shooting started, and for five years no field commander in the Continental Army was better. Fort Ticonderoga in 1775. A wilderness march on Quebec City that cost 500 of his 1,100 men before he reached the walls, and a ball that shattered his leg at the gate. Valcour Island, Ridgefield, Fort Stanwix, Saratoga, where the leg went again. Then Philadelphia, the profiteering charges, the court-martial, and the letters to Major John André. BriefHistory carries the treason itself and what it did to the country. This page is about the 21 years he lived afterward.

Nine months after the plot collapsed, Henry Clinton let him raid the Connecticut coast. On September 6, 1781, Arnold led more than 1,700 men against New London and burned most of it to the ground, some 500,000 dollars in damage. A detachment crossed the Thames and stormed Fort Griswold at Groton, where the Americans were killed after they had surrendered. Norwich, the town he was born in and where his mother lies buried, is a few miles up that same river. Nearly a quarter of his own force was killed or wounded, and Clinton said afterward that he could ill afford another victory like it. Arnold never commanded British troops in the field again.

The name went into the language within months. A 1794 schoolbook had Satan entering into the heart of Benedict. Somebody wrote the word traitor beside his birth record at the Norwich town hall, and every gravestone his family had there was destroyed except his mother's. He died in London on June 14, 1801, of dropsy. A clerical error in the parish register at St Mary's, Battersea, later moved his remains into an unmarked mass grave. At Saratoga the victory monument has four niches, three of them filled with generals and the fourth left pointedly empty. In the old cadet chapel at West Point, a plaque gives a rank and a date and no name.

Benedict Arnold's life against the full span of the corpus.

• New Haven trading partnership with Adam Babcock company
  Three ships and a West Indies trade, run in defiance of the Sugar and Stamp Acts 1764
• Expedition to Quebec mission
  Left Cambridge with 1,100 men. Three hundred turned back and 200 died on the way. 1775
• The Lake Champlain fleet mission
  Improvised and lost at Valcour Island, which bought time to prepare New York's defenses 1776
• Raid on Richmond mission
  Sixteen hundred British troops through Virginia, destroying supply houses, foundries and mills 1781
• Raid on New London and Groton mission
  The last action he commanded. Fort Griswold's garrison was killed after surrendering. 1781

• January 14, 1741 aged 0 Born at Norwich, Connecticut, the fourth in his family named for a colonial governor Only he and his sister Hannah survived childhood.
• 1755 aged ~14 Apprenticed to his mother's cousins, apothecaries in Norwich, for seven years His father's drinking had ended any prospect of Yale.
• February 22, 1767 aged 26 Marries Margaret Mansfield, the New Haven sheriff's daughter She died in June 1775 while he was at Fort Ticonderoga.
• December 31, 1775 aged 34 His leg is shattered in the failed assault on Quebec City His chaplain carried him to the makeshift hospital at the Hôtel Dieu.
• 1777 aged ~36 Wounded again in the leg at Saratoga, and out of combat for years
• April 8, 1779 aged 38 Marries Peggy Shippen in Philadelphia Her circle had kept up correspondence across the lines during the British occupation.
• January 26, 1780 aged 39 A court-martial clears him of all but two minor charges Washington published a formal rebuke of his conduct in April anyway.
• September 6, 1781 aged 40 Burns New London and takes Fort Griswold, a few miles from his birthplace Nearly a quarter of his own force was killed or wounded.
• June 14, 1801 aged 60 Dies in London of dropsy after four days of delirium Seven mourning coaches, four state carriages, and no military honors.

• George Washington 1732–1799
  First President of the United States and commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. trusted by
• Benjamin Franklin 1706–1790
  Polymath who invented the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among many other creations. condemned by
• Washington Irving 1783–1859
  Early American storyteller whose Sketch Book gave the country Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow. wrote about him
• Jefferson Davis 1808–1889
  President of the Confederacy whose defense of slavery and secession made him central to the Civil War and its memory. compared to him in 1861
• Aaron Burr 1756–1836
  Third vice president who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel and was later tried for treason. the next American tried for treason