Washington

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  Undoubtedly, then, this important British staff officer had held a meeting with Arnold and received from the General the papers found on him! Washington never had sustained such a shock, but he gave no indication of distress of mind. He merely made it plain that he wished to be alone with Hamilton and Harrison. When he told them what the papers disclosed, he learned for the first time of an incident that had occurred at breakfast. While Arnold was eating, he was handed a paper which he read with manifest concern. Without remark, he stuffed it in his pocket and in a few minutes got up and left the table. Whatever the origin of the sheet delivered Arnold, it must have been a warning. Arnold doubtless had fled, and if so, he probably had gone down the river to the vessel from which André had come ashore. Colonel Hamilton must take horse and, if possible, intercept the fugitive.

  Then, gripping himself, Washington went to dinner at four o’clock without a word to anyone else about Arnold’s disappearance. After the meal, Washington asked Lieut. Col. Richard Varick, Arnold’s chief aide, to come for a walk, and, as they strolled, told him of Arnold’s conduct. There was not, said Washington, the slightest ground of suspicion against Varick or Franks but, in the circumstances, they must consider themselves under arrest. Varick did not protest. Instead, he tried to explain all he knew about Arnold. As Washington listened, the Colonel told with some difficulty how he and Franks had been puzzled and troubled because they had observed an enlarging intimacy between Arnold and Joshua Hett Smith, whom they took to be a spy or a trader in illicit enemy goods, or both. Voluntarily, he and, later, Franks gave up the keys to their chests and to all those of Arnold that were under their care.

  Washington took up the task of correcting mistakes deliberately made to expose an American stronghold to successful attack. Arnold had been careful to be careless. What had appeared to be the derelictions of a patriot now were disclosed as the iniquities of a traitor. It seemed that Arnold’s scheme was to invite the enemy’s advance. By seven o’clock Washington knew enough about the situation to begin to issue his orders: Redoubts opposite West Point were to be manned; Greene was to advance his nearest division immediately to King’s Ferry, where further orders would await it; all the troops of the main Army were to be held in readiness to move; the militia and men detached as a wood-cutting party were recalled to the east bank of the Hudson; officers of known character were put on duty.

  Before the last of these papers was ready Washington received this letter, which had been sent ashore by flag of truce near King’s Ferry:

  On board the Vulture, 25 September, 1780.

  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 a 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 the honor to be with great regard and esteem, your Excellency’s most obedient humble servant

  BENEDICT ARNOLD

  N.B. In justice to the gentlemen of my family, Colonel Varick and Major Franks, I think myself in honor bound to declare that they, as well as Joshua Smith, Esq., (who I know is suspected) are totally ignorant of any transactions of mine, that they had reason to believe were injurious to the public.

  Washington did not take time to analyze this paper, with its references to the infamy Arnold knew his betrayal would bring on him. The traitor had escaped. Nothing could be done about that now. Washington then examined a communication from Beverley Robinson that accompanied the one from Arnold. It developed that Robinson, too, was aboard the Vulture and was immensely concerned over the apprehension of André. The former Virginian demanded the release of André on the ground that the British Adjutant General “went up with a flag at the request of General Arnold, on public business with him” and had acted as Arnold had directed, even to using a “feigned name.” This argument Washington instantly rejected, but if André was so much esteemed it would be well to have the captured spy brought to West Point. The transfer consequently was ordered. Next was Smith, the man whom Arnold had described as a suspect. Find him, arrest him and bring him to Headquarters. Collect, too, all possible intelligence.

  Washington’s last instructions on these matters were not issued until after 10 P.M. of the twenty-fifth; movement of men to their stations at West Point went on most of the night. Before the return of daylight, there was good augury: The wind shifted and began to sweep strongly downstream, an obstacle to a British approach by water. In event the enemy planned the earliest possible attack, Washington might have the twenty-sixth in which to prepare a defence. The General put all available men to work and was standing on the piazza of the Robinson house when up clattered horsemen who had apprehended Smith. The General soon went into the house, called Lafayette, Knox and Hamilton to his room and then sent for Smith, a voluble individual who began almost immediately to protest against the arrest of so loyal an American as he. He displayed wariness, but he gave information that filled some gaps in Washington’s knowledge of what had happened.

  Until the examination of that loquacious individual was completed Washington had been so mired in the detail of Arnold’s treason that he had not been able to stand off and look at the whole. Now he gave instruction for the drafting of a report to Congress and, in outlining what was to be said, saw that Arnold must have been fashioning for a long time a plan to get command at West Point and deliver the American citadel to the British. In the absence of suspicion, Arnold almost certainly would have succeeded but for the chance capture of André. In Washington’s eyes, the circumstances attending that officer’s failure to escape were beyond human fashioning. It was, said Washington, “by a most providential interposition,” and he described the facts as far as he knew them. Assurance was given Congress, and Governor Clinton in a separate letter, that precautions had been taken to prevent a surprise of West Point.

  The morning of the twenty-sixth brought still another development when Maj. Benjamin Tallmadge and a party of dragoons delivered to Headquarters a young man, unshorn and untidy—Maj. John André. Would Washington care to question André? No; but he was interested to hear details of the capture of the Adjutant General: On the afternoon of September 22 a number of young militiamen had procured leave of absence to waylay some of the “cowboys” engaged in stealing and driving cattle into the British lines above New York. The next morning the party divided, and three of them took station on the Old Post Road close to Tarry-town. About 9:30 they halted there a solitary rider, who was on his way to New York. In the belief that the trio were Loyalist partisans and that they had established their lookout on the British side of the “neutral ground” the horseman did not show his pass and talked so carelessly that the Americans made him dismount and strip. In the feet of his stockings they found the papers that led them to suspect he was a spy. Although he thereupon tried to bribe them into permitting him to go on his way, they took him to the nearest outpost, which was at North Castle. Jameson, temporarily in command there, read the papers and concluded they were a forgery, written to discredit the Armerican commander at West Point. He consequently wrote Arnold of the capture of André and started the captive on the way to West Point; but the vehement protests of Major Tallmadge induced the bewildered commanding offi
cer to recall the prisoner. Jameson insisted that the letter to Arnold be forwarded but, fortunately, he dispatched to Washington, not to the commander at West Point, the documents André was carrying. Occurrences after the return of André to North Castle already were known to Washington. He did not express an opinion, so far as is known, on a question that much disturbed the more romantic of his young officers—the puzzle of Mrs. Arnold’s involvement. She manifestly feared that public indignation would be visited on her for what her husband had done, and she sought permission to go to Philadelphia. As Washington saw no reason why she should be held at West Point, she left September 27, with Major Franks as her escort.

  The departure of Arnold’s wife was followed at once by an examination of his records, from which apparently he had not been able, in his hurry, to extract any papers. His cool request for a map of the country between West Point and New York appeared now to be a device to facilitate the march of the column that was to “surprise” the Hudson defences. Other drafts of orders and dispatches showed how carefully Arnold undertook to get a British agent into the lines without arousing suspicion. The letter of Robinson, concerning which the traitor so ostentatiously had consulted Washington, obviously was intended to make sure that Arnold had reached his station. A full set of the profiles of the West Point fortifications, each on a separate sheet, presumably had been made ready for conveyance to the enemy. The accumulating pile of papers was maddening in its disclosure of a lack of vigilance on the part of senior officers who now saw a score of acts suspicious in retrospect. One consolation only did they have: they went through all the traitor’s correspondence and did not read the name of a single soldier, humble or conspicuous, who had been party to Arnold’s design. Robert Howe, for example, was shown by Arnold’s correspondence to have been asked, and almost ordered, to disclose the identity of his spies, a request Howe had refused politely but inflexibly. So with every other officer represented in Arnold’s papers. The only American, besides the traitor himself, on whom the correspondence cast the faintest shadow of suspicion was Smith.

  The Commander-in-Chief put the experienced, if half-incapacitated, Alexander McDougall in charge of West Point and its approaches, until Arthur St. Clair could arrive. It seemed wise, also, to send André and Smith to the custody of the main Army at Tappan, whither Washington himself intended to return as soon as McDougall reached West Point. Washington proceeded to Tappan September 28 and opened Headquarters at the house of John de Windt.

  There he had to deal almost immediately with a sustained, desperate effort by Sir Henry Clinton to save André from execution as a spy. The British commander, writing on the twenty-sixth, stated that he had permitted André to “go to Major General Arnold at the particular request” of that general officer. An enclosed letter from Arnold, said Clinton, would show “that a flag of truce was sent to receive Major André, and passports granted for his return.” Arnold’s letter was a cold avowal of his treason and his delivery to the Major of “confidential papers in my own handwriting for Clinton.” Arnold wrote: “I commanded, at that time, at West Point [and] had an undoubted right to send my flag of truce for Major André.”

  Preposterous as this contention seemed to Washington, he did not call a drumhead court-martial for the immediate sentence and execution of a spy caught in civilian dress. The American leader named, instead, a board of fourteen general officers to make a careful and speedy examination of André. Greene was designated President of the Board; the Judge Advocate General was to attend. Members assembled the day they were assigned. When André was put on the stand, he confessed readily the authorship of his letter of September 24 to Washington and then volunteered a stage-by-stage account of the manner in which he was brought ashore and subsequently told he must return by the route he was following when captured. After that statement, the Judge Advocate put to André the question his General was arguing vigorously in his behalf: Did André consider he had landed under the sanction of flag of truce? The answer recorded in the minutes of the court, was both honest and impetuous: “It was impossible for him to suppose he came on shore under that sanction, and [he] added, that if he came ashore [under flag] he certainly might have returned under it.” That knocked away the last frail defence. The rest was formality. When André was asked if he acknowledged the facts in the record, he did so, with the simple remark that he “left them to operate with the board.”

  Insofar as all this was known in camp it created sympathy for André rather than astonishment that he seemed to be courting death. It was the duty of Washington to see that sentiment did not prompt leniency towards a man engaged in the most dangerous conspiracy the war had hatched. No comfort for the sentimentalists was presented in the report the Board of Officers filed with Washington. The Board reported “ . . . That 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.”

  The sentence accorded exactly with Washington’s own judgment, but the report was received too late September 29 for any action on it that day. On the morning of the thirtieth, the General answered the letter in which Clinton asserted that André had immunity under Arnold’s flag of truce. The American commander quoted in full the report of the Board and added simply: “From these proceedings it is evident that Major André was employed in the execution of measures very foreign to the objects of flags of truce and such as [they] were never meant to authorize or countenance in the most distant degree.”

  This letter was intended to be Washington’s last word, though he complied readily with a request that André’s servant be allowed to visit the prisoner and deliver clothing to him. Calmly, methodically, Washington proceeded as in every other death-sentence, except in one particular. In the usual formula, the findings of a court-martial were “confirmed” or “approved.” This time General Orders quoted the report of the Board of Officers and then stated tersely: “The Commander in Chief directs the execution of the above sentence in the usual way this afternoon at 5 o’clock precisely.”

  André had spent quietly his hours of imprisonment at Tappan, and, when the General Orders were read to the young officer, he scarcely seemed to change expression; but soon the General received from him an appeal that he be sent before a firing squad rather than hanged. Washington sympathized with a soldier young and accomplished, but he could see no reason for deviating from the rule that sent spies to the gallows. All the mercy that could be shown would be to give no direct answer to André and thereby save him from certainty that her was to die on the gallows.

  About 1 P.M. there arrived another letter from Clinton. The British commander still was trying to save André and insisted that the Board of Officers who passed on the case could “not have been rightly informed of all the circumstances on which a judgment ought to be formed.” Clinton continued: “I shall send his Excellency, Lieutenant General Robertson, and two other gentlemen, to give you a true state of facts, and to declare to you my sentiments and resolutions.” There was no reason for listening to Robertson in any official capacity, though it would be courteous to receive an officer of his rank. Washington consequently instructed Greene to go to Dobbs Ferry and receive Robertson as an individual, not as a bargaining representative of a hostile government that had nothing to do with the enforcement of American military law. The other representatives of Clinton must not be permitted even to come ashore. Until the result of the meeting was reported, the execution of André should be postponed without any formal reprieve. Washington waited until his senior lieutenant returned with a report that Robertson merely had restated feeble arguments and, in the end, virtually had made a plea for the release of André as a personal favor to Clinton, who would reciprocate generously. Washington listened to the statement of his lieutenant but found nothing to justify any revision of the sentence imposed on André. Greene was told that he was to notify Robertson in writing the next day that the American commander had not
changed his opinion. Meantime, orders must receive this addition: “Major André is to be executed tomorrow at twelve o’clock precisely a Battalion of Eighty files from each wing to attend the Execution.”

  On the morning of October 2 Washington took up his regular work. Before many hours passed there was much stirring in the camp, all the way from André’s place of confinement to a tall gallows of two forked poles and a crosspiece on a knoll half a mile away, but there was little noise of preparation, because everything had been made ready the previous day. Presently there came the sound of marching in the vicinity of André’s prison. Soon the frenzied shriek of the fife and the fast heartbeat of the drums died in the distance. Washington was left almost alone with his papers. There were vastly greater questions in his mind than that of the just fate of a spy who had come within the American lines to bargain with a traitor. After a long quiet, the sounds of the camp were renewed gradually. Officers returning from the place of execution were talking of what they had seen. It was over; André was dead; every incident of the hanging had increased the respect of witnesses for the young man in the red coat. He had faced the last ordeal as all right-minded men would pray they might if their fate had been his. Washington listened to the reports as any person of amiable nature would, but he had more of wrath towards Arnold than lament for André.