Treacherous Beauty

by Stephen Case

  Joseph Reed had other plans. The Pennsylvania Council issued eight charges against Arnold:

  •That he had written a pass to a “disaffected person”—a Loyalist—to take the Charming Nancy out of Philadelphia.

  •That he had purchased goods in Philadelphia while ordering the stores closed.

  •That he had forced militiamen to perform menial tasks, such as summoning the barber.

  •That he had acquired an unethical financial interest in the Active shipping case.

  •That he had commandeered public wagons to move his private property.

  •That he had written an illegal pass for Hannah Levy, the woman planning a mysterious mission to New York City.

  •That he had responded in an “indecent and disrespectful” manner to Pennsylvania authorities’ inquiries.

  •That his support for Tories was “too notorious to need proof or illustration.”247

  Some of the charges were valid, yet Reed was armed with more rumors than evidence. Moreover, his timing was suspect, seemingly designed to catch Arnold out of town and to scuttle his mission to New York.

  Arnold had reached the Pennsylvania town of Bristol, on the Delaware River northeast of Philadelphia, when a messenger rode up. Along with an enumeration of charges, the message disclosed that the accusations also had been sent to Congress, to General Washington, and to the leaders of the other twelve states. Reed seemed determined to destroy Arnold.

  The besieged general decided then and there to cross the Delaware River into New Jersey and proceed to Washington’s headquarters to confer with his commander. This allowed Reed’s forces to state accurately but misleadingly that Arnold had left the state after hearing about the charges. Rumors spread that the general had gone over to the enemy. Reed’s accusations put Washington in a bind, since the council threatened to refuse to assist in any military actions as long as Arnold was in authority. Washington suggested that Arnold ask Congress for a military court-martial to address the charges. Arnold embraced that strategy rather than submit to Reed’s Council, whom he accused of “as gross a prostitution of power as ever disgraced a weak and wicked administration.”248

  Arnold waited at Washington’s headquarters for several days, confronted by a dilemma: He could return immediately to Philadelphia and give up his hopes of a New York manor, or he could continue with his planned trip to New York, risking further assaults on his character in Philadelphia.

  Perhaps Reed’s charges had poisoned the well anyway and no mission to New York could have succeeded. Or perhaps the silence of his fiancée Peggy compelled him back to Philadelphia. Arnold was hoping for some sign from Peggy, some letter of encouragement, and he did not get it. “Never did I so long to see or hear from you as at this instant,” he wrote to Peggy five days after the charges were issued, begging for her to write. “Make me happy by one line.”249

  Was Peggy wavering? Did she feel trapped? She had agreed to marry a man despite his severe physical disability. But now she was being asked to accept another handicap—that he had been declared a public enemy and might be subject to imprisonment and permanent disgrace. She wasn’t married yet. There was still time to change her mind. Peggy’s thoughts are not on paper—or at least not on any paper that wasn’t consumed by fire long ago. But the fact is, she did not promptly write to Arnold at this moment of crisis in his life.

  Arnold’s letter announced that he was coming home because bad winter roads had prevented his journey to New York. He even dismissed the purpose of the trip as a quest for “a few dirty acres.” But those dirty acres had been a great opportunity for the two of them, a great opportunity lost. Arnold wrote to Peggy:

  Six days’ absence without hearing from my dear Peggy is intolerable. Heavens! What must I have suffered had I continued my journey: the loss of happiness for a few dirty acres. I can almost bless the villainous roads and the most villainous men who oblige me to return. . . . I daily discover so much baseness and ingratitude among mankind that I almost blush at being of the same species, and could quit the stage without regret were it not for some few gentle, generous souls like my dear Peggy who still retain the lively impression of their Maker’s image. . . . I am treated with the greatest politeness by General Washington and the officers of the army, who bitterly execrate Mr. Reed and the Council for their villainous attempt to injure me. They have advised me to proceed on my journey. The badness of the roads will not permit.250

  Arnold’s upbeat tone could not have fooled Peggy. The general was coming back to Philadelphia to wage a desperate battle for his reputation, and also to cement her commitment. As she would throughout her life with Arnold, Peggy remained true to her word.

  Peggy’s cousin Elizabeth Tilghman remained reliably chatty, writing: “I think all the world are running mad, what demon has possessed the people with regard to General Arnold, he is certainly much abused; ungrateful monsters, to attack a character that has been looked up to, in more instances than one, since this war commenced.” Elizabeth knew her cousin’s anguish. “Poor Peggy, how I pity her. At any rate her situation must be extremely disagreeable, she has great sensibility and I think it must often have been put to the trial.”251

  Arnold’s request for a military court-martial was put off in favor of a congressional committee investigation chaired by Maryland lawmaker William Paca, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who was married to one of Peggy’s friends.

  Reed and his allies offered evidence on the misuse of government wagons but otherwise refused to cooperate with the committee, suggesting that Paca was meeting secretly with Arnold. The general actively defended himself before the committee, stretching the truth in several instances, such as when he declared “upon my honor” that he had made no purchases while Philadelphia’s shops were closed. Technically, that was true, since one of Arnold’s partners had done the dealing, but Arnold was in line for the profits.

  The Paca committee cleared Arnold on six charges and referred two others to a court-martial—the wagon use and the barber incident. Arnold claimed victory, confident that he could quickly dispatch those two charges later. But Arnold’s triumph was temporary. The full Congress feared that the Paca findings would widen an already dangerous split with the state of Pennsylvania, a division so sharp that there was even talk of Congress leaving Philadelphia. Congress decided to cast aside the Paca committee’s findings altogether. Instead, Continental lawmakers reached a compromise with Reed to refer four charges to a court-martial. Arnold would face a military trial over the wagons, the barber, the Charming Nancy pass, and purchases while shops were closed.252

  Arnold was furious. The clarity of victory or defeat that he had experienced on the battlefield was unattainable in the murky chaos of American politics. But at least Peggy was constant. With the New York land opportunity unpursued, Arnold set about finding another way to demonstrate his prosperity to the Shippen family. He purchased an impressive gift for his bride-to-be: Mount Pleasant, an elegant Georgian mansion on the banks of the Schuylkill River.

  The home was built in the early 1760s by Scottish-born ship captain John Macpherson, whose firstborn son served under General Montgomery and was killed in the failed storming of Quebec, the same battle where Arnold was first wounded. John Adams, who dined with Macpherson at Mount Pleasant in 1775, called the ninety-six-acre estate “the most elegant seat in Pennsylvania.”253

  Mount Pleasant was rented to a Spanish diplomat at the time that Arnold made the purchase. It appears that he and Peggy never got a chance to move in—that for Peggy, Mount Pleasant was a grand opportunity barely missed, like the Meschianza (and like the conspiracy yet to come).

  Arnold’s purchase of Mount Pleasant only increased his enemies’ suspicions about his sources of income. He is believed to have made the down payment with proceeds from the Active deal and a twelve-thousand-pound loan from French shipping agent Jean Holker. This enormous
French loan not only increased his financial and psychological insecurity but also created yet another potential conflict of interest, since Arnold had to deal with the French on official military business.254

  But Mount Pleasant won over the Shippen family. It was no fleeting promise—it was an estate that might keep Peggy in Philadelphia, a tangible asset that she could build a future on.

  On the evening of Thursday, April 8, 1779, General Benedict Arnold and Miss Margaret Shippen were married. Neither the family finances nor the political atmosphere made a lavish public ceremony advisable. Instead of following her sister’s lead with a gala featuring twenty-five bridesmaids, Peggy was married quietly in her Fourth Street home with relatives on both sides of the family serving as witnesses. An aide helped the blue-uniformed Arnold stand up during the ceremony. When he could be seated, Arnold propped his lame leg on a stool.

  A witness described the bride as lovely, but the event was a long carriage ride away from the nights of high-haired glory when Peggy had been the object of admiration, lust, and jealousy among entire roomfuls of prominent people. Peggy was a married lady now, newly won by a proud and increasingly besieged man. The gossip against Arnold extended even to his wedding behavior. An Englishman who was privy to the rumors reported that the “miscreant” Arnold “made the mysteries of the nuptial bed the subject of his coarse ribaldry to his companions the day after his marriage.”255

  Elizabeth Tilghman, noting Arnold’s fame as the general who had defeated Britain’s Burgoyne, wrote after the wedding that Peggy had been “Burgoyned.”256 But Peggy was no mere conquest. She was nothing like her own mother, who made hardly a dent in the written record of her time despite being surrounded by literate relatives in a famous family. Peggy would prove herself to be an adviser, a strategist, and a true partner.

  The bride moved into the Penn Mansion to live with her husband, his sister Hannah, and his youngest son. Arnold’s older two boys were soon sent off to further their education in Maryland. The general told the boys’ new schoolmaster that he had decided Philadelphia was a “bad school,” and indeed Arnold was learning his own bitter lessons here.

  Arnold had resigned his military governorship of the Philadelphia area, not because of pressure from Reed but because of a previous arrangement with Washington to allow the hero of Saratoga to restore his leg to vitality. Now Arnold had a twofold mission: the recovery of both his reputation and his health. Demanding that his court-martial proceed immediately, Arnold was disappointed to learn that Reed had succeeded in gaining an indefinite postponement so that he could gather evidence. Such a delay felt like extended torture to Arnold, and he penned a furious rant to Washington. “If your Excellency thinks me criminal,” he wrote, “for heaven’s sake let me be immediately tried and, if found guilty, executed.”257 He warned Washington that if Reed and his followers were allowed to get away with falsely accusing him, they might go after Washington next. Arnold’s letter was emotional, almost hysterical, and expressed disbelief that his bravery and physical suffering had been so carelessly discarded. “Having made every sacrifice of fortune and blood, and become a cripple in the service of my country, I little expected to meet the ungrateful returns I have received from my countrymen,” he wrote. Arnold’s point was as sharp as the end of his sword: “Delay in the present case is worse than death.” His breaking point had come, but Arnold wasn’t alone. He had Peggy, a smart and savvy ally willing to help him maneuver through the bedlam that the American Revolution had become. As one of the “Meschianza ladies” subject to ridicule and condemnation from the likes of Reed, Peggy had her own set of grievances. Her friends and their families had been harassed, arrested, and banished. Her family’s wealth had been drained.

  And so, just a month after their wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Arnold made a decision. The bravest and most brilliant general in the revolutionary army—and his astute, awe-inspiring wife—would offer their services to the enemy.

  CHAPTER 8

  Spymaster

  Who gave birth to the Arnolds’ plot against the American Revolution? Was it the general? Was it his wife? Was it the two of them together in a private moment of bitter realization and resolve? In some measure, the plot was a creation of Joseph Reed. His unrelenting pressure undoubtedly weighed heavily in the general’s decision to turn against the country he had pledged to defend. But was that decision fully formed before Arnold took Peggy into his confidence and took her as his wife? Did Peggy try to argue with him? Did she encourage him? Or did she plant the idea in the first place?

  Some facts are evident. Once the decision was made, Peggy was a full partner, a coconspirator. A key difference between Mr. and Mrs. Arnold was the extent of their betrayal. Arnold had taken a loyalty oath the previous year at Valley Forge, swearing to “support, maintain, and defend the said United States against the said King George the Third, his heirs and successors, and his or their abettors, assistants, and adherents . . . with fidelity, according to the best of my skill and understanding.”258 Peggy had made no such pledge. Her only promise was to support her husband, and indeed she did so with fidelity. Both Arnold and his wife were treacherous, but only Peggy was true.

  The timing of their conspiracy, set in motion only a month after their wedding, suggests that Peggy was the catalyst. Most of the players in the plot came from her world, not her husband’s. The man who would be Arnold’s British counterpart in the plot, John André, was a close friend of Peggy’s who had never met Arnold. The man who would carry Arnold’s messages to the British was a Loyalist gadabout from Philadelphia who was more familiar with the Shippen family than with Arnold.

  When the Arnolds’ scheme began in early May 1779, the outcome of the war was very much in doubt. And in the plot’s sixteen months of gestation, the political and military situations in America remained in flux. It was impossible for the Arnolds to predict whether they were joining the winning side or leaving it. But perhaps they were confident enough to believe that their defection to the British might be the decisive action that settled the issue in North America.

  While the Arnolds nurtured their ambitions, pessimism was in strong supply on both sides. For the rebels, the freefall in the value of their paper money was potentially disastrous. Congress—in a practice that has survived to modern times—found it politically expedient to spend more money than it took in. If Continental lawmakers needed cash, they simply printed more. Meanwhile, the British found it easy to counterfeit Continental currency, enriching themselves and destabilizing their enemy.

  Many traders refused to accept anything but metal coins, known as specie. When a person wanted to dismiss the value of something, he would compare it to paper money, saying it was “not worth a Continental.” There were stories about a barber papering his shop with money, a soldier dressing his wound with it, and even a dog being tarred and covered with the near-worthless cash.259 It was a terrible time for an “old money” woman like Peggy to have married a “new money” man like Arnold. Their need for a trustworthy income was immediate.

  Meanwhile, on the battlefield, the rebels’ strategy often was not worth a Continental. The defense of the South was in ruins. Having lost the city of Savannah, Georgia, the rebels attempted to recover it with French help in September and October 1779. The siege failed with heavy losses, including the mortal wounding of famed Polish nobleman Casimir Pulaski as he led a cavalry charge for the rebels. Then in May 1780 the Continental Army suffered an even more excruciating defeat: the fall of Charleston, South Carolina, the South’s most populous city.

  Meanwhile up north, the Patriots’ battle for hearts and minds was turning into a rout. “There is a terrible falling off in public virtue since the commencement of the present contest,” General Nathanael Greene wrote. “The loss of morals and the want of public spirit leaves us almost like a rope of sand.”260 Greene was embarrassed and distressed by the indulgent atmosphere in Philadelphia. “I dined at one table where there were a
hundred and sixty dishes; and several others not far behind,” Greene wrote. “The growing avarice and a declining currency are poor materials to build an independence upon.”

  French diplomat Conrad Alexandre Gérard wrote to his government that America’s cities were repudiating the idea of independence: “Scarcely one quarter of the ordinary inhabitants of Philadelphia now here favor the cause. Commercial and family ties, together with an aversion to popular government, seem to account for this. The same feeling exists in New York and Boston, which is not the case in the rural districts.”261

  While the words “Valley Forge” bring to mind the supposed low point for Washington’s army in the winter of 1777–78, the army’s winter bivouac two years later in the Morristown, New Jersey, area was worse in some ways. By all accounts, the weather was more severe. Some historians believe the winter of 1779–80 was the coldest of the eighteenth century. The rebel camp was buried under twenty-eight separate snowstorms, by one count.262 The snowbound troops suffered through a continual food supply crisis, their most severe yet, according to Washington. The general wrote to Joseph Reed in December that the troops had been on half rations for more than a month and added: “There is every appearance the army will infallibly disband in a fortnight.”263

  Yet the British were disappointed and disgusted with their own war effort. General Howe’s nine-month stopover in Philadelphia had proved nothing except that the British army’s leadership was irresolute and its strategy unclear. The defeat at Saratoga would sting for years. France’s entry into the Revolutionary War greatly complicated the picture for Great Britain. Following up on the signing of an alliance with the new nation in February 1778, the French menaced the British on the high seas, threatened their investments in the Caribbean, and forced them to keep sufficient forces guarding the home islands. The Spanish declaration of war against Britain in May 1779 imperiled the king’s outposts along the Gulf Coast.