Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married

by Nancy Rubin Stuart

  It was near sundown as he was “going for the cows,” Samuel Cahoon recalled, when Smith brought him before the scowling general, who demanded he row a certain British gentleman from the Vulture to Haverstraw Bay that very night. “I said I could not go, being up the night before, and told him I was afraid to go,” the farmer recalled. “But General Arnold urged me to go, and told me if I was a friend to my country I should do my best.”14

  Intimidated, Samuel convinced his brother, Joseph, to return with him to Arnold. Drams of whisky, bribes of flour, and, finally, threats of imprisonment followed. “If I did not assist . . . for the good of my country and Congress he would put me under guard immediately,” Samuel said.15 At midnight, the Cahoons and Smith rowed with muffled oars six miles downriver to the Vulture.

  By 1 a.m. the morning of Thursday, September 21, Arnold was waiting at a landing beneath Long Clove Mountain at Haverstraw Bay. Through the inky darkness, he spotted an approaching rowboat with three men and a cloaked figure seated in the stern. Once the vessel landed, the passenger disembarked and walked towards a thicket. There Arnold greeted him. The slender, fine-featured man was Major John André. But he was not wearing a disguise. Instead, beneath his blue cloak was his scarlet uniform. As the men talked, André refused to cross British lines to Smith’s manor house on the American side. Clinton had forbidden him to do so, as well as to wear a disguise. Both, the British general had warned André, were the behaviors of a common spy.

  Although disgruntled, Arnold provided André with information about West Point, after which the two men argued about the size of his reward. By 4 a.m. Smith interrupted them to warn of the approaching sunrise. Worried about their visibility in the dawning light and the possibility of being shot by the British, the Cahoons balked at rowing André to the Vulture. That left the British major trapped. Consequently he had to ride with Arnold through American lines two miles to Smith’s country house.

  After a hurried breakfast, Arnold and André gazed down upon the river at the Vulture, bobbing quietly at anchor. Suddenly cannon fire burst across the Hudson at Teller’s Point, today’s Croton Point. Arnold was stunned: no cannons had previously been stationed there. A day earlier, though, the doughty commander, Colonel James Livingston, worried about the Vulture’s proximity, had ordered heavy guns delivered from Verplanck, which he fired upon the ship at dawn. The “very hot fire . . . continued two hours, and would have been longer but luckily their magazine blew up,” Robinson recalled.16 So badly damaged was the Vulture’s hull, rigging, and gangway stanchions that its captain, Andrew Sutherland, launched longboats to tow the battered ship downriver for repairs.

  André and Arnold were flabbergasted, for the retreat of the Vulture left the British officer stranded in enemy territory. Arnold quickly proposed two possible solutions. Joshua Hett Smith, he assured the edgy André, would see to his safe return to British territory. To ensure that, Arnold coolly issued two passes. The first allowed Smith to travel “with a boat and three hands, and a flag to Dobbs Ferry,” from where André could cross the Hudson to British territory. The second allowed Smith and a “Mr. John Anderson” (the alias for a disguised André) to ride through Westchester County to neutral ground and reach the British border.17

  Intuitively, André distrusted the second option. Westchester County was dangerous, especially in its southern reaches, a no-man’s land where skirmishes between patriots, or “cowboys,” and ruffians, or “skinners,” men with no political allegiances, robbed travelers in exchange for permission to proceed to British lines.

  Dismissing André’s objections, Arnold foisted maps and papers about West Point upon him, insisting he carry them back to Clinton in his boots. Smith, Arnold reassured the agitated British officer, would ensure his safe return to New York.

  By Friday morning, September 22, Arnold had returned to the embrace of a relieved Peggy. During his absence, Varick and Franks had confided in her. The general, they feared, “had some commercial plan” through Smith involving a Mr. John Anderson. If that was true, Varick and Franks said they intended to quit.18 After hearing Peggy’s report, Arnold drew his secretary and aide aside and promised to cut off his relationship with Smith. Privately, he intended to see the country lawyer only once more, in any case, and then only to confirm André’s safe return to the British.

  The next morning, Saturday, September 23, Smith arrived at Robinson’s to report that he had delivered André to safe territory. The night of the crossing, he had disguised André in an old velvet jacket, frayed lace shirt, and beaver-skin cap, and had crossed Kings Ferry, arriving at Verplanck, where they slept in a farmhouse. At dawn on Friday, they paid a woman for a breakfast of cornmeal gruel and rode south through Westchester County. Along the way Smith, complaining of an attack of ague—a malaria-like syndrome of fever and chills to which he was prone—convinced André to complete the last few miles of the journey alone to the British border. To that, the British officer had happily agreed.

  After hearing Smith’s account, Arnold invited him to stay for the midday meal. During the fish course, the butter ran out. Peggy called for more, but a servant explained that their supply was gone. “Bless me, I had forgot the olive oil I bought in Philadelphia. It will do very well with salt fish,” Arnold replied, adding it cost him “eighty dollars” in Continental money. “‘Eighty pence,’ [meaning] that a dollar was really no more than a penny,” Smith countered. Varick, resenting Smith’s crack, snapped, “That is not true, Mr. Smith.” What followed, according to General Lamb, was “a very high dispute,” which grew so acrimonious that Peggy, “observing her husband in a passion, begged us to drop the matter.”19

  After an awkward silence the meal ended and Smith returned to Haverstraw. Arnold then ordered Franks and Varick into his office where the trio argued. Varick declared Smith a “damned rascal, a scoundrel and a spy.” Acidly, Arnold bellowed, “If he asked the Devil to dine with him, the gentlemen of the family should be civil to him, I’m always willing to be advised by the gentlemen of [my] family but by God [I will] not be dictated by them.”20 Exasperated, Franks left the house and rode to Newburgh to deliver a military notice.

  In the wake of Franks’s departure, Varick presented Arnold with a letter from an aide to the governor of New York State warning of Smith’s untrustworthy and “loose character.” Solemnly, the general listened. Then, to the younger man’s surprise, Arnold apologized for “treating [him] with such cavalier language” and promised to refrain from seeing Smith again.21

  Later that evening, Varick developed flu-like symptoms, ran a high fever, and collapsed in bed. When servants told Peggy about his illness, she dashed to his side. Varick recalled that the “amiable lady had spent an hour while I lay in a high fever, made tea for me, and paid me the utmost attention in my illness.”22 Like other Revolutionary era-women, Arnold’s wife was an accomplished nurse. That she did not abandon Varick to her servants convinced everyone in the Robinson’s household that Peggy would never deliberately hurt others.

  Between Thursday, September 21, and Friday, September 22, as sailors repaired the Vulture, neither Captain Sutherland nor Robinson had expected André’s return. By Saturday, September 23, though, they grew alarmed. “It is with the greatest concern that I must now acquaint your Excellency that we have not heard the least account of him since he left the ship,” Robinson finally informed Clinton on Sunday. “I shall do everything in my power to come at some knowledge of Major André.”23

  That same day, Washington announced a change of plans: he would arrive at the Arnold’s residence on Monday morning, September 25. Accompanying him were the Marquis de Lafayette, twenty-three-year-old Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, and two French engineers. That morning, at around 9 a.m., as servants completed preparations for breakfast, Hamilton and Lafayette arrived to report that Washington was delayed. On their way to Robinson’s, the commander in chief, Knox, Lafayette, and the engineers had turned down a path towards the Hudson. “General, you are going in the wrong direct
ion: you know that Mrs. Arnold is waiting breakfast for us, and that road will take us out of our way,” Lafayette reminded Washington.24

  “Ah, Marquis, I know you young men are all in love with Mrs. Arnold and wish to get where she is as soon as possible,” the commander in chief had jovially replied. “You may go and take your breakfast with her, and tell her not to wait for me. I must ride down and examine the redoubts on this side of the river, and will be there in a short time.”25

  Soon after Hamilton and Lafayette appeared for breakfast, Arnold received a letter. A Mr. John Anderson had been captured in Westchester County. Within the man’s boots were treasonous papers about West Point. Arnold, Franks recalled, immediately “went upstairs to his lady.”26 Above, in their bedroom, an agitated, whispered conversation took place as Arnold and Peggy realized their own lives were at risk.

  “In about two minutes his Excellency General Washington’s servant came to the door and informed me that his Excellency was nigh at hand,” Franks added. “I went immediately upstairs and informed Arnold of it. He came down in great confusion and ordering a horse to be saddled, mounted him and told me to inform his Excellency that he was gone over to West Point and would return in about an hour.”27

  Waves of fright swept over Peggy, set her trembling, and, perhaps, as historians later suspect, prompted her to burn her husband’s incriminating letters in the bedroom’s fireplace. As Arnold’s wife, Peggy would be subjected to questioning, possible imprisonment, and, if found guilty, hanged for treason. Those thoughts raced through Peggy’s head, and then a plan formed: she would become mad, jolted into insanity by the shock of Arnold’s betrayal of America. It would not be difficult; as a child, indeed as a half-grown woman, Peggy had thrown tantrums and feigned fits to get her way. Now her life depended upon her successful display of still another outburst.

  As Peggy plotted her course of action, Washington arrived for breakfast. After the meal, he left for West Point where he anticipated meeting Arnold. Peggy, cowering in her bedroom, asked her housekeeper to check on the ailing Varick. Then, willing herself into a frenzy, she tore at her hair and clothes, weeping, her sobs accelerating in volume.

  Suddenly an earth-piercing shriek emanated from the Arnolds’ bedroom, prompting Varick to throw off his bedclothes and dash upstairs. There stood a nearly unrecognizable Peggy. Instead of being tastefully dressed and coiffed, the young blonde was “mad to see him, with her hair disheveled and flowing about her neck,” Varick later wrote his sister. “Her morning-gown with few other clothes remained on her—too few to be seen even by gentlemen of the family, much less by many strangers. Peggy was raving, distracted. She seized me by the hand with this—to me—distressing address and a wild look; ‘Colonel Varick, have you ordered my child to be killed?’”28

  Shocked, the young man wondered at the outburst from “this most amiable and distressed of her sex whom I most valued. Then, she fell on her knees at my feet with prayers and entreaties to spare her innocent babe. A scene too shocking for my feelings, in a state of body and nerves so weakened by indisposition and a burning fever.” Varick immediately summoned Dr. William Eustis from West Point. By then Franks, having returned from his errand at Newburgh, Varick, and the physician “carried her to her bed, raving mad.”

  Repeatedly, Varick attempted to calm her. “When she seemed a little composed, she burst again into pitiable tears and exclaimed to me, alone on her bed with her, that she had not a friend left here,” he explained. After all, he reasoned, she had “Franks and me, and General Arnold would soon be home from West Point with General Washington.” To that, Peggy wildly retorted, “No, General Arnold will never return; he is gone, he is gone forever; there, there there, the spirits have carried [him] up there, they have put hot irons in his head—pointing that he was gone up to the ceiling.” By then, Varick sensed “something more than ordinary having occasioned her hysterics and utter frenzy.”

  Washington, meanwhile, puzzled by Arnold’s absence at West Point, returned to his home in mid-afternoon. Hamilton handed him a packet of dispatches after which he was asked to summon Knox and Lafayette. “Arnold has betrayed us!” Washington exclaimed, holding the letters in his trembling hand. “Whom can we trust now?”29 That was the only time, said Lafayette, “that Washington ever gave way, even for a moment, under a reversal of fortune. I was the only being who ever witnessed in him, an exhibition of feeling so foreign to his temperament.”30 Hamilton and Lafayette’s aide, James McHenry, immediately raced to Verplanck in hopes of arresting the traitor. It was too late. Arnold had already boarded the Vulture.

  Upstairs at the Robinsons’, Peggy continued to rave about “a hot iron on her head and no one but General Washington could take it off, and [she] wanted to see the general.”31 Hearing that, the unsuspecting Dr. Eustis summoned Varick and Franks, roaring, “For God’s sake send for Arnold or the woman would die.”32 Judging from Peggy’s comments, the two aides suspected that after confessing treason to his wife, Arnold had defected. Fearful of overstepping their authority, Franks and Varick brought Washington to Peggy’s bedside, hoping the general could confirm their suspicions.

  Peggy stared vacantly at Washington. “She said, no, it was not [him]. The general assured her he was, but she exclaimed, ‘No! that is not General Washington! That is the man who is going to assist Colonel Varick in killing my child.’ She repeated the same sad story about General Arnold; poor, distressed, unhappy, frantic and miserable lady,” Varick recalled.33

  Washington then left the bedroom. “Come gentlemen; since Mrs. Arnold is unwell and the General is absent, let us sit down without ceremony,”34 Washington calmly told Lafayette, Knox, and Hamilton. “Never was there a more melancholy dinner,” Lafayette recalled. “The general was silent and reserved and none of us spoke of what we were thinking about. . . . Gloom and distrust seemed to pervade every mind.”35

  At Verplanck, where Hamilton discovered Arnold had escaped to the Vulture, a messenger handed him a letter. Addressed to Washington, the traitor had written:

  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.36

  “Too often,” Arnold claimed, he had “experienced the ingratitude of my country” and now expected nothing else. He had only one request: “From the known humanity of your Excellency, I am induced to ask your protection for Mrs. Arnold from every insult and injury that a mistaken vengeance of my country may expose her to. It ought to fall only on me: she is as good and innocent as an angel, and is incapable of doing wrong. I beg she may be permitted to return to her friends in Philadelphia, or come to me, as she may choose.”

  Within that envelope Arnold also enclosed a letter for Peggy, which read:

  Words are wanting to express my feelings and distress on your account, who are incapable of doing wrong, yet are exposed to suffer wrong, I have requested his Excellency General Washington to take you under his protection and permit you to go to your friends in Philadelphia—or to come to me. I am at present incapable of giving advice. Follow your own intentions. But do not forget that I shall be miserable until we meet. Adieu—kiss my dear boy for me. God almighty bless and protect you, sincerely prays

  Thy affectionate and devoted

  B. Arnold

  P. S. Write me one line if possible to ease my anxious heart.37

  Even Arnold’s note did not calm Peggy, who remained “frantic with distress.” Her reaction, an overwhelmed Hamilton wrote his fiancée, Elizabeth Schuyler, was “the most affecting scene I was ever witness to. At one moment, she raved, another she melted into tears, sometimes pressing her baby to her breast and lamenting its fate by the imprudence of his father. All the sweetnes
s 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.” Consequently, he added, “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 that he must banish himself from his country and from her forever.”38

  Lafayette, too, was hoodwinked. “The unhappy Mrs. Arnold did not know a word of this conspiracy,” he insisted to Chevalier Luzerne. “Her husband told her before going away that he was flying never to come back, and he left her unconscious . . . we did everything we could to quiet her; but she looked upon us as the murderers of her husband, and it was impossible to restore her to her senses. The horror with which her husband’s conduct has inspired her, and a thousand other feelings, make her the most unhappy of women.”39

  The next morning, Tuesday, September 26, Hamilton returned to Peggy’s bedside. Though more composed, “she is not easily to be consoled . . . very apprehensive of her country will fall upon her (who is unfortunate) for the guilt of her husband. I have tried to persuade her that her fears are ill-founded, but she will not be convinced.” The young woman’s suffering, Hamilton added, was “so eloquent that I wished myself her brother, to have a right to become her defender. As it is, I have entreated her to enable me to give her proofs of my friendship.”40