Being George Washington (15 page)

André offered them a healthy bribe to transport him safely to the British lines. They could, he assured them, have whatever they wanted: gold, his horse and saddle, even dry goods from Manhattan.

“No,” Paulding answered, “if you would give us ten thousand guineas, you should not stir a step.”

Major John André was no longer dealing with Benedict Arnold. He was now dealing with Americans. And they were not for sale.

September 23, 1780

North Castle, New York

“What should we do with him, Colonel?” John Paulding asked Lieutenant Colonel John Jameson, commander of the nearest rebel post. Jameson looked like the very model of an officer of the Second Regiment of Light Dragoons that he was—a full six feet in height, blue-eyed, fair-complexioned, and with jet-black hair—but his demeanor was far different; he acted like a bureaucrat.

The documents from André’s boot were highly suspicious—and worse, Jameson recognized that they were in Arnold’s own handwriting. Yet Arnold was technically Jameson’s superior. It was an impossible situation.

Jameson eventually decided to do what all good bureaucrats do: he hedged his bet. He sent a messenger, Lieutenant Joshua Allen, to Major General Arnold informing him of André’s capture. But by separate messenger, Jameson also forwarded the sheaf of highly incriminating documents found in André’s boot to a different general: George Washington.

September 25, 1780

Beverley Robinson House

Benedict Arnold’s Headquarters

Garrison, New York

George Washington, a master surveyor in his youth, seemed lost.

“Mon Général!”
the Marquis de Lafayette exclaimed, “This is not the road to the home of General Arnold.” Washington clearly heard him but kept his horse pointed in the same direction.

Billy Lee suppressed a small smile. He understood that Washington knew exactly what he was doing. But now Alexander Hamilton also chimed in, reminding Washington that General and Mrs. Arnold were not only expecting their party, but also preparing a breakfast for them. They should not be late.

“Ah,” Washington sighed, “you young men are all in love with Mrs. Arnold! I see you are eager to be with her as soon as possible. Go and breakfast with her then, and tell her not to wait for me; I must ride down and examine the redoubts on this side of the river, but I will be with her shortly.”

Two hours later the breakfast was in full swing, but it did not include the gray-eyed Peggy Arnold, who was too busy feeding their new infant son upstairs to be bothered with entertaining guests.

The clattering of hooves interrupted their meal. The noise, however, did not foreshadow the arrival of Washington, Henry Knox, and Lafayette, but instead that of Lieutenant Joshua Allen, the courier dispatched from North Castle by Lieutenant Colonel Jameson.

Lieutenant Allen entered the home drenched and mud-splattered and handed Arnold a sealed packet, which the major general promptly ripped open. As he read the words that Jameson had written inside his eyes began to grow wide:

Sir:

I have sent Lieutenant Allen with a certain John Anderson from New York. He had a pass signed with your name. He had a parcel of papers
taken from under his stockings, which I think of a very dangerous tendency. The papers I have sent to General Washington.

Arnold looked around for this “John Anderson.” Had he really come with Lieutenant Allen? It made no sense—but Arnold was not about to interrogate Allen in front of his guests. His heart pounding, he excused himself and fled upstairs to Peggy.

“We’re ruined, Peggy!” Arnold shouted mournfully. He really didn’t have to say any more. She knew what their plot was and what he meant by being ruined: the hangman’s noose for her husband and perhaps for her as well.

“What will we do, Benedict?”

“I must flee—now! There is no time. There’s no way to talk my way out of this! They’ve got my papers. They’ve captured André.”

Peggy Arnold blanched. Her knees wobbled.

“You play dumb!” Arnold ordered her. “Play more than dumb, play the madwoman! And play on Washington’s sympathies! He has a great heart. I will do what I can for you!”

Arnold momentarily paused to reflect on the decency and honor of the man he had betrayed and manipulated. But that feeling passed in an instant. The only reflection he was seeing at that moment was his own—heading straight for the gallows.

Downstairs, Billy Lee rapped upon the front door to inform Arnold’s aide-de-camp, Major David Franks, that George Washington would soon be approaching. It was now Franks’s turn to hustle upstairs.

Arnold kissed his son, not knowing if he would ever see him again. He grabbed two guns for his safety and headed downstairs faster than anyone knew possible.

“I have to attend to some matters at West Point—to prepare for the general’s inspection,” he lied to his guests, jumping on his horse, whipping the steed furiously, and galloping down a steep, winding, and dangerous shortcut to reach his waiting barge.

He lied to Franks and Hamilton and Billy Lee, and he also lied to his barge’s crew, grandly promising them two gallons of rum if they could
row him downriver to Stony Point and back home so that he might be there in time to greet General Washington on his arrival. The crew, of course, had no idea that Arnold would not be coming back.

Standing on the barge’s stern and waving his sword furiously, Benedict Arnold appeared for all the world like a hero heading toward battle instead of what he really was: the greatest traitor of his time.

September 25, 1780

West Point, New York

“It’s all quite peculiar,” George Washington said to himself, kicking at the rotted lumber he found at West Point and seeing it splinter and fall to the ground. Everything he saw seemed amiss: cannon in the wrong place, troops stationed at too great a distance to withstand an attack from Henry Clinton, construction so slapdash that a spray of grapeshot could topple it.

This was not the West Point he knew—this was no “Gibraltar of America.”

Washington turned to address the superior officer present, Colonel John Lamb. At the Battle of Quebec, Lamb had been horribly wounded and a large green patch now covered his missing left eye. When Lamb became upset, it seemed that his scars assumed a particularly ugly hue.

“All quite peculiar, Colonel Lamb, don’t you think?” he asked. “Are you sure General Arnold is not here? Are you
positive
he provided you with no word of my arrival today?”

“As I informed you previously, General Washington,” replied Lamb impatiently. He was getting tired of being asked the same questions over and over again. “I received no word of anything. I have seen neither hide nor hair whatsoever of Major General Arnold!”

The scars upon Colonel Lamb’s face were assuming a particularly reddish, purplish cast, revealing his agitation.

General Washington’s face revealed nothing of the sort. In fact, it revealed nothing at all. But inside, he churned with the fear that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

September 25, 1780

Beverley Robinson House

Garrison, New York

George Washington stood bare-chested, alone in his room.

When he’d arrived at the house he’d been greeted with word that Benedict Arnold had left and not returned, and that, perhaps more ominously, Peggy Arnold had become hysterical since her husband’s abrupt departure.

But if Washington were to untangle this maddening puzzle of vanished generals, frenzied women, and woefully deficient fortifications, he would first need to freshen up.

Alexander Hamilton wrapped on his door.

“General? I have a packet for you from Colonel Jameson downriver. I took the liberty of opening it to determine if it would require your personal attention. I can assure you that it does.”

Can’t I even be let alone to wash? Washington fumed to himself. Then, a flash of inspiration—or rather, fear—exploded within him. Hamilton’s expression was strange, almost sickly. Might this message be connected to all that seemed so inexplicably wrong today?

He examined the documents Hamilton handed to him. He hastily unfolded the maps. They were official maps of West Point. He feverishly scanned the rest of the documents. Details of West Point’s fortifications, strengths, weaknesses—and all of it in Benedict Arnold’s handwriting!

All at once it finally came together: Benedict Arnold was a traitor.

Shaken, personally betrayed, barely able to compose himself, Washington threw on his shirt, waistcoat, and coat. He yelled for Knox and Lafayette. As they entered his room, they heard their commander, his heart and spirit broken, weep as they had never heard him before:

“I ask you men,” he said through bleary eyes, “whom can we trust now?”

George Washington blamed himself.

Had he placed too much trust in Benedict Arnold? Had he ignored the warning signals provided by Arnold’s increasingly suspicious
behavior? Yes, in hindsight, he had—that was now easy to admit. He should have seen it, but Arnold had been a patriot, one of the boldest and bravest he had known.

Washington might have wallowed in self-doubt, perhaps, even in self-pity. He had been betrayed by Arnold. He had been wronged. It was a bitter pill for any man to swallow, but for Washington, so scrupulous concerning his reputation, so trusted by his nation, it was more than just bitter, it was nearly poison.

Even as he had cried out in pain, “Whom can we trust now?” he feared others would no longer trust
him
.

But his second-guessing vanished in the sound of that tortured cry. America faced a crisis. It needed sound judgment and instant action. It needed a leader. George Washington, reluctant as he was to fill that role, knew that he had no other choice. It was time to act.

“Hamilton!” he demanded. “We are going to West Point! It must be defended! The British may strike at any moment! I want every unit within a day’s march to head there in short order. General St. Clair will take command of the post. No, wait—he’s too far away. I still want him—but General MacDougall will command until St. Clair arrives! Greene must mass the troops in the Highlands. And, yes, sound the alarm! Scour the countryside for Arnold!”

September 25, 1780

Aboard
Vulture

Hudson River

Benedict Arnold had a request.

Not for twenty thousand pounds sterling or a brigadier general’s uniform—but for simple pen and paper.

He gathered his wits about him and sat down to write his first communication from the other side of the great divide he had just now so perilously crossed. And though he sailed down the Hudson, moving closer to Manhattan and Sir Henry Clinton and irretrievably farther from West Point and George Washington, it was to Washington that he now wrote the following words:

SIR
:

The heart which is conscious of its own rectitude, cannot attempt to palliate a step which the world may censure as wrong. I have ever acted from a principle of love to my country, since the commencement of the present unhappy contest between Great Britain and the colonies; the same principle of love to my country actuates my present conduct, however it may appear inconsistent to the world, who very seldom judge right of any man’s actions.

I have no favor to ask for myself; I have too often experienced the ingratitude of my country to attempt it; but from the known humanity of your excellency, I am induced to ask your protection for Mrs. Arnold, from every insult and injury that the mistaken vengeance of my country may expose her to. It ought to fall only on me: she is as good and as innocent as an angel, and is incapable of doing wrong. I beg she may be permitted to return to her friends in Philadelphia, or to come to me, as she may choose; from your excellency I have no fears on her account, but she may suffer from the mistaken fury of the country.

I have to request that the enclosed letter may be delivered to Mrs. Arnold, and she permitted to write to me.

I have also to ask that my clothes and baggage, which are of little consequence, may be sent to me. If required, their value shall be paid in money.

I have the honor to be, with great regard and esteem,

Your Excellency’s most obedient, humble servant.

B. ARNOLD.

The truth could no longer be found within Benedict Arnold—but an immense amount of sheer nerve had certainly remained.

September 28, 1780

Road to Washington’s headquarters at Tappan, New York

John André thought he could talk his way out of it.

André rode toward Tappan, New York, alongside his newest captor,
George Washington’s chief of intelligence, Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge. Surrounding him on every side was a troop of cavalry, ready to kill André without hesitation if he attempted to flee.

It hadn’t taken long for the handsome Tallmadge to take a distinct liking to André. Then again, everyone had always taken a liking to Major André, so that was nothing new. As their carriage jostled along the rutted country road, André argued to Tallmadge that he had not actually landed behind enemy lines, he had landed on neutral ground. It was Arnold who had transported him to within the American lines. It wasn’t his idea at all! He had not originally been out of uniform. It wasn’t his idea that he don civilian garb! His original visit, André argued, had even been authorized by an American authority! Yes, of course, that man was Arnold, and he was a traitor, but still …

Tallmadge liked André, but André got nowhere. So he shifted his tactics. No longer pestering Tallmadge with his excuses, he now posed a question: what did Tallmadge think would be André’s fate? Tallmadge hemmed. He hawed. But André nervously kept after him. He had played a dangerous game and lost, and now he desperately needed to be assured that he wasn’t about to lose everything.