Henry Knox (27 page)

British hopes also rose with the news of the Lord Charles Cornwallis's victory over Horatio Gates's troops at Camden, South Carolina. Gates surprised his supporters in Congress by abandoning his troops in the heat of the fighting, grabbing the fastest horse he could find, and fleeing at full gallop. By nightfall, he had reached Charlotte, North Carolina, a full 60 miles away, and was 120 miles away from the battle within three days. Gates would never again pose a threat to Washington's command or his circle of advisors.

Knox's place in the army was more secure than ever, however, not only because of Gates's actions but due to his own merits. He had become indispensable to the army and to Washington. He possessed a thorough and intricate knowledge of the army's bewildering inventory of weapons and armament along with the expertise to deal with contractors and find supply channels to get equipment into soldiers' hands. He had developed relationships with state leaders throughout the country. But what made Knox truly irreplaceable was that he combined this detailed knowledge with a strategic vision in which Washington placed a tremendous amount of faith.

After a war council of generals on Wednesday, September 6, Knox advised Washington to send help to the South and to forget about a siege of New York until spring. Henry proposed a joint American-French expedition to liberate Charleston. If the British were allowed to continue unopposed in Georgia and the Carolinas, the union might be irrevocably split, he wrote to Washington on September 9: "The full possession of those three states will confer immeasurable advantages on the enemy in the cause of the war and enable them to conquer the others. The principal inhabitants of spirit will be made prisoners, and the common people enjoying the sweets of ease, and commerce will be willing to remain under the British government even at the conclusion of peace, and will perhaps act of their own and refuse to return to the union.“
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Knox broke with the majority of generals, who advised Washington against launching a southern expedition. They agreed, however, that any siege
of New York should be postponed until the following year. Washington listened carefully, then passed on a summary of the war council opinions to Benedict Arnold, who continued to relay information to the British.

Quartermaster Nathanael Greene wrote to Arnold that same week: "We are starving here for want of provisions. Our troops don't get one day's meat in four. This can't hold long, what is to become of us?“
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Through Arnold, the British had a full picture of the Continental army's shortcomings.

Knox was asked by Washington to attend the summit with General Rochambeau in Hartford, Connecticut, along with the Marquis de Lafayette to discuss strategy. Alexander Hamilton, Washington's aide, also made the trip. They set out from Bergen County on Sunday, September 17, and arrived that Wednesday.

Although aristocratic by birth, Rochambeau was well suited to work with commanders from a democratic society because of his congenial personality. He had been assigned to head the French army in America because of his military reputation rather than his impressive political connections. Knox was pleasantly surprised that Rochambeau brushed aside formalities and expressed a willingness to take orders from Washington.

Henry's self-taught fluency in French as well as his own gregarious nature helped foster an affectionate air between the officers as they made their introductions. Washington did not speak French, and relied on Knox and Lafayette to interpret. Knox listened diplomatically during the discussions, anxious not to reveal the Americans' limited ordnance supplies as plans for a joint campaign proceeded. Nothing of substance came from the meeting. Everyone agreed that until the second fleet of French navy arrived, they lacked the naval superiority to dislodge the British.

On the return trip from the meeting, Knox, Washington, and Hamilton detoured to confer with General Arnold, who had set up his headquarters at the home of a man named Robinson on the opposite side of the Hudson from West Point. As they neared the fort, they were surprised by signs of disrepair to the fortifications. Arnold was nowhere to be found, so Washington and the rest of the party proceeded on to the Robinson home. Along the way they had stopped to inspect a redoubt, during which time a letter arrived at the Arnold home from a nearby commander announcing the capture of a British spy. Arnold, who received the message while eating breakfast, was horrified, realizing his plot had been detected. He said a hasty good-bye to his wife and bolted, fleeing just minutes before Washington, Knox, and their party arrived. The men immediately realized that something was profoundly wrong. Mrs.
Arnold, whom Knox had met in Philadelphia, was weeping inconsolably and seemed to be in shock. Holding her infant in her arms while swaying through extremes of emotion—one minute melting into tears while lamenting her state of abandonment and in the next screaming wide-eyed that the American generals had come to kill her baby—she seemed insane.

Washington and Knox examined the letter that had tipped off Arnold that his conspiracy had unraveled. It had been sent by Lieutenant Colonel John Jameson, commander of the American outpost at Lower Salem, New York. The suspect had been traveling under the name of John Anderson and wearing civilian attire, yet he claimed to be no spy at all. A note was attached to Jameson's message identifying Anderson as none other than John Andre, the top aide of the British commander in chief, Lord Henry Clinton. Andre had been captured by three militiamen who had searched him and uncovered several military documents concealed in his boots. All were in the handwriting of Benedict Arnold, and included notes from Washington's most recent war council, which Knox had attended, along with estimates of the number of soldiers posted at West Point and the surrounding posts and layouts of the fortifications, artillery orders, and a flag-of-truce pass written by Arnold that authorized "John Anderson" to pass the guards at White Plains without question.

Although Jameson recognized Arnold's handwriting, he did not suspect that the general had plotted with Andre. Instead he complied with an order from Arnold to notify him if anyone answering the name of "John Anderson" appeared along the American lines.

As the American generals tried to piece together what had happened, Knox remembered that he had spent an entertaining evening with prisoner-of-war Andre at Fort George in 1775 during his Ticonderoga mission. At the time, Andre was on his way to take part in a prisoner exchange. Knox had been immediately impressed with the British officer. As Knox and Washington discussed Andre's capture, it soon became apparent that Arnold had had a hand in the plot. Mrs. Arnold cried that she had been deserted by her cad of a husband despite her unwavering love for him. She did not deserve this fate, she sobbed, rocking back and forth and pressing her child to her breast. To Knox, Washington, and Hamilton, she appeared to be plunging toward a breakdown.

The scene of the abandoned mother tearfully clinging to her baby tugged at the empathetic instincts in Knox and the other generals. They believed that Mrs. Arnold had been completely unaware of her husband's duplicitous plot
and that both she and the nation had been betrayed in the same treasonous act. The officers tried to comfort her with soft words, assuring her that they meant no harm to her child but instead extended their deepest sympathies for her plight.

Her manner would have "pierced insensibility itself," wrote Alexander Hamilton, who was present. In describing Mrs. Arnold in a letter written that same day to his future wife, Elizabeth Schuyler, Hamilton explained: "All the sweetness of beauty, all the loveliness of innocence, all the tenderness of a wife, and all the fondness of a mother showed themselves in her appearance and conduct. We have every reason to believe that she was entirely unacquainted with the plan, and that the first knowledge of it was when Arnold went to tell her he must banish himself from his country and from her forever.“
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Peggy Arnold was not, however, an innocent bystander. She had supported her husband's overtures to the British from the beginning and pushed him to betray his command to satisfy her social ambitions. As she cried and moaned before Washington, Knox, Hamilton, and Lafayette, she was giving the manipulative performance of her life—as she would later admit with glowing pride.

Knox was stunned by Arnold, a man whom he had continued to trust even after presiding over his court-martial. Uncertain how extensive the plot with the British was or whether the enemy was on the verge of attacking, Knox sent off a dispatch to Major Sebastian Baumann, who was stationed at West Point, for the troops to stand ready to fight, expressing dismay over Arnold's betrayal: "The strangest thing in the world has happened. Arnold has gone to the enemy. . . . It is incumbent on us to be on our guard." Washington, no less surprised and disheartened by Arnold's defection, turned to Knox and Lafayette and asked, "Whom can we trust now?“
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Hamilton was sent to King's Ferry in pursuit of Arnold, who had managed to escape by climbing aboard a barge and sailing south down the Hudson to reach the British sloop
The Vulture
. Safely aboard, he sent a message under a flag of truce to Washington, asking that his wife be protected from acts of vengeance and justifying his actions: "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.“
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Realizing that Arnold was now providing the British with detailed intelligence about West Point, including its layout, the position of its artillery, and the location of its most vulnerable points, Knox had to rearrange its guns to offset the redcoats' precise intelligence.

He was also given the unenviable task of sitting on the fourteen-man board of general officers appointed to try Major Andre as a spy. At his hearing, Andre pleaded that he was innocent of this charge and that he had left
The Vulture
dressed in his regimental uniform rather than civilian clothes. He explained that he had rendezvoused with Arnold the night of Thursday, September 21, for a meeting in neutral territory at a secluded clearing along the banks of the Hudson. The meeting continued longer than planned as they discussed the details for the British to attack and capture West Point and for Lord Clinton to ostensibly take Arnold prisoner. Dawn broke with elements of the conspiracy yet to be settled. Rather than return to the river and risk detection, Andre claimed that he followed Arnold on horseback to a safe hiding place and that Arnold and one of the general's associates had betrayed him by leading him to a house behind American lines. Arnold may have done this in order to sacrifice Andre if they were discovered. Andre said he had no choice at this point but to change out of his regimental uniform and into civilian clothes. In a written statement, he explained: "I [was] betrayed into the vile condition of an enemy in disguise within your posts.“
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Whatever fondness Knox had for Andre, whatever sympathies he felt for the plight of a British officer who had been unwittingly betrayed by Arnold, Henry sided with the rest of the board of generals that Andre should be hanged as a spy. Knox signed the board's verdict, which was handed down on September 29, and reported its findings: "Major André, Adjutant General to the British Army, ought to be considered as a spy from the Enemy and that agreeable to the Law and usage of nations it is their opinion he ought to suffer Death.“
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Andre impressed Knox and nearly everyone else with the dignity in which he faced his fate. On the eve of his hanging, he sketched a self-portrait that showed himself in relaxed repose, his hair pulled back to reveal the delicate features of his boyish face with his eyes wistfully transfixed in distant thought. He asked for the honor of being shot like a soldier rather than hanged as a spy. Washington turned down this request. Knox watched as Andre was ordered at noon to mount a wagon beneath the gallows on Monday, October 2, 1780, at the army camp at Tappan. The condemned man drew admiration for his grace and composure in his final moments. Wearing
a new suit of his regimental colors and with a sword by his side, he opened his shirt, placed a tied handkerchief over his own eyes, and uttered his last earthly words: "I have said all I had to say before, and have only to request the gentlemen present to bear testimony that I met death as a brave man.“
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With that, the cart was pushed forward and Knox watched Andre hang. A journalist from the
Pennsylvania Packet
wrote of Andre's death: "Perhaps no person (on like occasion) ever suffered the ignominious death that was more regretted by officers and soldiers of every rank in our army; or did I ever see any person meet his fate with more fortitude and equal conduct.“
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Nathanael Greene, who had recently resigned from the post of quartermaster after serving two years in that capacity, had returned to field duty. He believed that Henry Knox should be given the command of the Continental army's southern department and succeed the discredited Horatio Gates. After two successive American generals, Lincoln and Gates, had both suffered demoralizing defeats at the hands of the British in the morass of the southern states, the task of reviving American hopes in the region seemed monumental. Nevertheless, Greene told Washington that Henry had demonstrated time and time again an ability to achieve the near impossible with ingenuity and perseverance: "Knox is the man for this difficult undertaking. All obstacles vanish before him; his resources are infinite."