Two weeks later news arrived from upstate New York that marked a change in the course of the Revolution—the patriots’ triumph over General Burgoyne at Saratoga. Euphoric, Henry wrote Lucy about his consequently celebratory cannonade. “They [Howe’s men] have been very angry for our feux de joie . . . and say that by and by [we] shall bring ourselves into contempt for propagating such known falsehood. Poor fellows! Nothing but Britain must triumph.”63
Nevertheless, in early December, after Howe’s skirmish at White Marsh, New Jersey, Washington ordered his eleven thousand men to retreat into the countryside northwest of Philadelphia. “The situation of our army on account of clothing is such as to render a winter’s campaign impossible,” Henry morosely wrote Lucy. “We have a mind to put an end to the war by starving all the soldiers.”64
During his trip to New England to recruit soldiers and order munitions that winter, Knox visited Lucy, but their reunion was interrupted by a February 26 note from Nathanael Greene. “The army has been in great distress since you left,” Knox’s friend wrote to him from Valley Forge. Many of the soldiers had worn out their clothes and were nearly naked. And they were starving. The soldiers were “seven days without meat and several days without bread.”65 In his haste to return to that camp, Knox conceded that Lucy could join him at Valley Forge the following spring.
On May 1, Arnold returned to New Haven and a hero’s welcome. The previous September 7, while leading a bold offensive at Freeman’s Farm, Saratoga, the Hessians shot Arnold’s horse and pierced the warrior’s left leg with a musket ball. As the horse fell, it landed on Arnold’s wounded limb and splintered his thigh bone. Even before that his leg was in bad shape, having been badly injured a year earlier at Quebec. Now it was so badly shattered that doctors urged an amputation. Though writhing in pain, the warrior refused. For the next five months, Arnold lay in Albany’s General Hospital with his leg encased in a wooden contraption.
By December Washington, who considered Arnold his favorite fighting general, conveyed wishes for his speedy recovery and promised that, once recovered, he would be awarded with a new field command. A week after Arnold’s return to New Haven, Washington sent him a set of French epaulettes and a sword knot in “testimony of my sincere regard and approbation of your conduct.”66 Arnold consequently decided to visit Washington in Valley Forge, even though his crippled leg meant he had to travel by carriage. Somehow—and here the details become hazy—the war hero agreed to transport Lucy and her toddler with him.
Privately, Arnold still seethed with resentments. After Saratoga, his blustery rival, General Horatio Gates, had claimed sole responsibility for the triumph. Arnold’s men knew the truth, that their leader had pounded the enemy at Freeman’s Farm without Gates’s permission while that general tarried behind. Yet neither the nicknames the soldiers conferred upon Arnold—the “Hero of Freeman’s Farm” and the “Eagle of Saratoga”—deflated Gates’s boasts or convinced Congress to recognize Arnold’s critical contribution. The final insult arrived at Arnold’s hospital bedside in December: a notice from Washington that he had been appointed a major general. Congress had not announced it publicly. Instead, the commander in chief was to inform Arnold privately about his change in rank.
Personally, Arnold was also in a funk. That spring he learned that his former Boston sweetheart, Betsy DeBlois, was still unwed. With soaring hopes he wrote to her again:
Twenty times have I taken my pen to write to you, and so often has my trembling hand refused to obey the dictates of my heart. . . . Long have I struggled to efface your heavenly image from it. . . . Dear Betsy, suffer that heavenly bosom . . . to expand with friendship at last and let me know my fate.67
In response, the Boston belle asked him to stop writing to her.
By mid-May 1777, Arnold, Lucy Knox, and her toddler set off from New Haven. Each snap of the coachman’s reins upon the horses brought Lucy closer to Knox. Arnold, meanwhile, brooded over his forthcoming visit to Washington.
On May 20, two days after John André’s Mischianza in Philadelphia, the unlikely threesome arrived at Valley Forge.
3
“The Delight, and Comfort of Her Adoring General”
“BOTH LUCYS ARRIVED IN perfect health and are situated in my hut in the center of the park, perhaps better situated than any other ladies in Camp,” Henry Knox boasted in a letter to his brother William May 27, 1778. The “park” was Valley Forge, at whose center stood Knox’s log hut, adjacent to his artillery center in which stood cannons, howitzers, and field pieces.1
While Knox spent his days training his men, Lucy visited with wives of other officers, watched her daughter play with their youngsters, and helped Martha Washington sew shirts and knit stockings for soldiers. She also admired the portrait of “her Harry,” painted by the artist Captain Charles Willson Peale, along with those he had done of Washington, Nathanael Greene, and Clement Biddle, commissary general at Valley Forge. Evenings were spent with officers and their wives in communal song fests. Yet, as Knox predicted to William, neither Lucy nor their toddler could enjoy camp life for long, “because the army was preparing for action.”2
By then the soldiers of Valley Forge were no longer starving, ill-trained men but had been transformed into sturdy warriors. Several factors had contributed to that. In March, a Philadelphia gingerbread baker and seventy helpers had arrived to prepare daily batches of bread. Nathanael Greene, the army’s new quartermaster, had also ordered roads cleared and bridges built to speed deliveries of food and supplies. By April, farmers began appearing with wagonloads of crops. Drovers arrived with herds of livestock stalled earlier by winter storms and bureaucratic delays. The result, as Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Ward Jr. cheerfully wrote his wife on May 5, was that “we get a piece of good beef or pork, though generally of both—and have as good bread as I ever eat.”3
Colonel Arnold
Contrary to Lucy’s expectations about existing upon “bread and water,” the Continental officers and their wives dined on generous portions of meat, salt pork, fish, and vegetables. Had those servings been more scanty, neither she nor Knox would have starved. “Mrs. Knox is fatter than ever, which is a great mortification to her,” Nathanael Greene gleefully wrote his wife, Caty. “The General [Knox] is equally fat, and therefore one cannot laugh at the other.”4
By early spring too, visiting French engineers had encircled Valley Forge with redoubts and other fortifications to protect the camp’s twelve thousand soldiers and two thousand log huts. Some men were veterans, others new recruits, but all had trained vigorously under the beloved Prussian drillmaster, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Augustus Von Steuben, and the Marquis de Lafayette. No longer a “receptacle for ragamuffins,” as Knox had bitterly dubbed the army the previous December, Washington’s army now consisted of tightly disciplined regiments of warriors.5
Soon after Lucy’s arrival, rumors swept through the camp about an imminent British evacuation of Philadelphia. Spies reported that the city’s “sick, women, children, and prisoners . . . [were] already on board ship, and the whole army ready to move at a moment’s warning.”6 General Clinton, it was suspected, would march his men through New Jersey towards New York City—a destination Washington planned to block with his troops. During those last days of the army at Valley Forge, Lucy and her daughter consequently left camp to live with their New Jersey friends, the Lots. After the June 28 Battle at Monmouth, though, Knox wrote to his wife that he hoped “in a few days to have the superlative happiness of being with you.”7
Simultaneously, Washington pondered how to bring order to Philadelphia after the evacuation. After being ruled by two governments in nine months, the city’s residents remained politically divided. Some, like Quaker Sarah Logan, feared the patriots’ return. “Having so long enjoyed the greatest tranquility & peace under the British government, the apprehensions of again coming under the arbitrary power of the Congress are very dreadful,” she noted in her journal.8
Other neutralists, like Judg
e Edward Shippen, doubtless recalling the harsh treatment they had received under the earlier patriot regime, worried about their return. More frivolous were Shippen’s teenage daughters’ complaints about the prospect of finding suitable “beaux” among the returning Americans. The Continental officers they had met two years earlier had seemed crude, provincial, and indifferently dressed—like others, as Peggy observed later in life, “wholly unaccustomed to [the] genteel life” that she expected as her due.9
Twenty-five miles from the Shippens’ silken drawing room in Valley Forge, Washington understood that he needed a charismatic leader, a man to inspire a renewal of patriotic sentiment. Newly arrived Benedict Arnold was a likely candidate. Admired as one of America’s most courageous warriors, the crippled general seemed well-suited to serve as the military commandant, or governor, of Philadelphia.
Arnold accepted Washington’s offer only coolly. A command, even a dull one to restore civilian peace in America’s largest city, was better than no command at all. The task Washington had outlined for Arnold seemed mundane: “to preserve tranquility and order in the city and give security to individuals of every class and description.”10 As military commandant, Arnold would remain a commissioned officer while regaining his health and full vitality. In addition, Philadelphia might provide opportunities for new, lucrative enterprises on the side. Such a thing was permissible legally as long as those enterprises supported the patriotic cause. Other officers had done so to support their meager salaries, among them Henry Knox and his friends Henry Jackson and Nathanael Greene.
Privately, Arnold still resented Washington on two counts. First, he believed the Virginian should have insisted upon his Congressional appointment as a major general over younger officers. Second, Arnold blamed the commander in chief for failing to obtain reimbursements for funds Arnold had spent supporting his soldiers in battle. Had he considered Washington’s then-tenuous position with Congress, Arnold might have understood why the Virginian could not fulfill his wishes. Instead, ignoring talk about the schemes then threatening Washington in Congress, the narcissistic Arnold remained as tragically nearsighted as the horses he once rode into battle.
Ultimately, though, necessity compelled Arnold to put his ill-founded resentments aside. On Saturday, May 30, he consequently raised his right hand before his friend Henry Knox and vowed:
I, Benedict Arnold, Major General, do acknowledge the United States of America to be Free, Independent and Sovereign States, and declare that the people thereof owe no allegiance or obedience to George the Third, King of Great-Britain; and I renounce, refute and abjure any allegiance or obedience to him; and I do swear that I will, to the utmost of my power, support, maintain and defend the said United States against the said King George the Third, his heirs and successors . . . and will serve the said United States in the office of Major General which I now hold, with fidelity, according to the best of my skill and understanding.11
By dawn, June 18, 1778, an eerie silence surrounded the docks of Philadelphia, which were strewn with tables, chests, and other household gear. Tossed overboard by the departing British to make room for military gear, those possessions were the remaining personal effects of the three thousand Tories who had streamed onto British ships and sailed for New York City the preceding day. “This morning, when we arose, there was not one redcoat to be seen in Town,” an astonished Elizabeth Drinker noted in her diary. “Col. Gordon and some others, had not been gone a quarter of an hour before the American light horse entered the city . . . the few that came in today had drawn swords in their hands, galloped about the streets in a great hurry. Many were much frightened at their appearance.”12
Among them was David Salisbury Franks, Arnold’s aide de camp. In addition to finding a stately residence for the new commandant, Franks was ordered to purchase “European and East India goods” and keep them secret from even “his most intimate acquaintances.”13 Prices for those goods had soared during the Revolution and now, temporarily retired from combat, Arnold planned to profit from their sale. Already he had experimented with that idea when, while still at Valley Forge, he issued a pass, or permission, to suspected Tory Robert Shewell to purchase imports from The Charming Nancy, a privateer docked in Philadelphia. Arnold later issued passes for two other vessels for Shewell’s shady partners.
Subsequent to the British evacuation, Philadelphia’s shops were filled with British goods. Fearful of looting, Washington consequently ordered a curfew for the night after the evacuation. “A bellman went about this evening . . . to desire the inhabitants to stay within doors after night,” Elizabeth Drinker jotted in her diary. “If any were found in the street by the patrol, they should be punished.”14
The next morning, throngs of enthusiastic residents gathered on Philadelphia’s streets to welcome Arnold as he rode through in a military carriage. Crowds cheered and church bells clanged for the “Eagle of Saratoga,” who would restore order to the torn City of Brotherly Love. “I understand Gen’l Arnold, who bears a good character, has the command of the city, and the soldiers conducted with great decorum,” wrote Sally Wister from nearby Germantown. “I now think of nothing but returning to Philadelphia.”15
Initially Arnold lived up to his promise. Soon after his arrival, he ordered Colonel Henry Jackson, head of the Massachusetts militia, to “follow the route of the enemy . . . harass them by all means in your power.”16 He also insisted that workers clean Philadelphia’s debris-cluttered streets, especially behind the State House, where the British, in a snide farewell, had dumped human and horse carcasses and garbage. As late as June 25, when Knox toured the city with Lucy, the stench was still overwhelming. Philadelphia, he wrote his brother, “stunk so abominably that it was impossible to stay.”17
During that same period Arnold also signed a Congressional resolve to close the city’s shops. That was the brainchild of Congressional delegate and attorney Joseph Reed, vice president of the patriotic Supreme Executive Council, which, as its name implied, governed Pennsylvania. As wiry and tough as his name, Reed formerly served as Washington’s aide but later sided with the Virginian’s rival, Horatio Gates. Consequently Reed distrusted Arnold even before they met. Others who knew Reed, including Nathanael Greene, regarded him warily, perceiving him as an overly ambitious, avaricious politician who believed “to have power, you must have riches.”18
To acquire them, the Pennsylvania power broker shrewdly adopted the mantle of militant patriotism. Officially he had convinced Congress to shut the shops so that “quartermaster, clothier, and commissary generals may contract for such goods . . . wanted for the use of the army.” Secretly though, Reed wanted first choice of those goods for his own resale and profit.19
Arnold had similar ambitions. His new residence, the stately three-floor brick and marble Masters-Penn House on High Street, was filled with costly furnishings, staffed by ten servants, and was home to a luxurious coach and four. Before long, Arnold’s flashy lifestyle raised eyebrows among Philadelphia’s lean-living patriots. Especially those of Joseph Reed.
Soon after the shop-closure resolve became official, James Mease, the Continental army’s clothier general, purchased stacks of clothes at cost and sold them at top dollar on the open market. Fuming, Reed traced those sales back to Arnold, whom he believed was receiving kickbacks. Later, upon learning about the sale of Philadelphia flour in Havana at five times the domestic price and originally stockpiled for the army, Reed’s suspicions deepened.
The covert sale of government property was reprehensible, he asserted, for it prevented Americans from purchasing household goods at fair prices on the open market. After all, even affluent Philadelphians like Edward Shippen struggled to obtain certain food and drink. “It will be very difficult to procure Madeira wine at any price,” the judge complained to his elderly father in early July. “There is no such thing as syrup, the sugar bakers having all dropped the business a long while.”20
Believing the United States owed him a debt, Arnold vowed
to collect it by cultivating friendships among Philadelphia’s most wealthy and influential citizens. Among them was Robert Morris, Philadelphia’s richest merchant, as well as New Yorkers Robert R. Livingston, Gouverneur Morris, and John Jay. Inevitably Arnold’s friendships attracted still more public notice, further eroding his image as Philadelphia’s neutral peacekeeper.
Simultaneously, the city’s new patriotic leaders scorned those once friendly with the British, dubbing them the “disaffected.” So vitriolic was public sentiment against them that one Congressional delegate insisted they pay a collective fine of £100,000—in today’s terms, millions of dollars. One of their well-publicized targets was the women of the Mischianza. Those participants, thundered General “Mad Anthony” Wayne, leader of the Pennsylvania militia, should lay their costumes “at the feet of those virtuous daughters of America who cheerfully gave up ease and affluence in a city, for liberty and peace of mind.”21 Reed went even further, proposing that five hundred known British sympathizers be tried for treason and hanged. Ultimately, reason and appeals for leniency prevailed. Nevertheless, the “disaffected” continued to be treated like second-class citizens, excluded from public galas like the July Fourth celebration at the Masonic temple.
Still, Peggy Shippen and her friends gadded about town in their imported finery and attended concerts and plays, impervious to the snubs and cold stares of Philadelphia’s patriots. Peggy’s best friend, Becky Franks, privately snickered about the patriots’ drab homespun dresses, crudely nailed leather shoes, and dull entertainments. “Oh! The ball,” Becky gossiped to the Shippen sisters after one gala. “Not a lady there. The committee of real Whigs met in the afternoon and frightened the beaux [men] so much that they went to all the [fashionable] ladies . . . to desire they’d stay home. . . . I’m delighted that it came to nothing, as they had the impudence to laugh at us.”22
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