that described him as misunderstood, if admittedly flawed.6
During the 1976 bicentennial, Norwich historian Marian O’Keefe told a New York Times reporter, “if the British had shot higher at Saratoga, I could have sold medals,” a claim repeated in dozens of popular culture outlets, including the Tonight Show.7 Though not a champion of Arnold, O’Keefe was playing one of our favorite national games, imagining an alternate history. She was also echoing the habitually dour John Adams’s endorsement for Arnold’s valiance after the Battle of Saratoga:
We could make a Beginning, by Striking a Medal, with a Platoon firing at General Arnold, on Horseback, His Horse falling dead under him, and He deliberately disentangling his feet from the Stirrups and taking his Pistolls out of his Holsters, before his Retreat. On the Reverse, He should be mounted on a Fresh Horse, receiving another Discharge of Musquetry, with a Wound in the Neck of his Horse. This Picture Alone … would be sufficient to make his Fortune for Life. I believe there have been few such Scenes in the World.8
And Saratoga was not a lone instance of this courage. Arnold had taken part in the capture of Ticonderoga; he was instrumental in securing the cannon that freed Boston. He had invaded Quebec after a long, often brutal march through Maine. He had stopped the British fleet on Lake Champlain. And when the British invaded his home state of Connecticut, he did not hesitate but galloped from New Haven to Ridgefield, where he fought again with undisputed fury and intelligence.
The bicentennial also saw Ellsworth Grant give what has come to be known as the modern “balanced view” of Arnold. In the Hartford Courant he stated that “no one can but admire the boldness, tenacity and brilliance” of Arnold’s military career. He quoted historian Willard Wallace: “[Arnold] was a brilliant and daring soldier who accomplished a great deal of good for the young republic, probably even saving it. He was also a proud, imperious, avaricious individual who hungered after power and glory and high social standing, a man who saw in every slight a blemish upon his honor.”9 With full knowledge of his military exploits, it is admittedly difficult not to admire parts of Arnold’s life. Before his treason Benedict Arnold had been one of the Continental Army’s bravest and most skillful field commanders; when the New York Times Magazine rated Saratoga as one of the most important battles of the last millennium, they gave Arnold his due.10
Arnold’s heroic march through Maine and attack on Quebec helped solidify his reputation as a capable military leader, as seen in this contemporary etching from 1776. Colonel Arnold, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
The matter of Arnold was just as confusing for his contemporaries. The Marquis de Lafayette wrote to a friend shortly after the betrayal:
In the course of a revolution such as ours it is natural that a few traitors should be found, and every conflict which resembles a civil war of the first order (although ours is, properly speaking, but a war between nations) must necessarily bring to light some great virtues and some great crimes…. But that an Arnold, a man who, although not so highly esteemed as has been supposed in Europe, had nevertheless given proof of talent, of patriotism, and, especially, of the most brilliant courage, should at once destroy his very existence and should sell his country to the tyrants whom he had fought against with glory, is an event … which confounds and distresses me, and, if I must confess it, humiliates me, to a degree that I cannot express. I would give anything in the world if Arnold had not shared our labors with us, and if this man, whom it still pains me to call a scoundrel, had not shed his blood for the American cause. My knowledge of his personal courage led me to expect that he would decide to blow his brains out (this was my first hope).11
The confusion caused by Arnold’s life could hardly be shown more clearly. Lafayette’s humiliation and hope that Arnold would take the “honorable” way out stem from a real problem, caused not by the treason itself but by the preceding feeling of respect. In a contemporary diary Henry Dearborn, who had served with Arnold in Quebec and at Saratoga, expressed “joy” in seeing him at Valley Forge, then expressed alarm at his treason at West Point. And when news reached him of the attack on New London, he said, “it is said the Infamous Arnold headed the party that perform’d those brilliant exploits.”12
This mixture of respect for his military prowess and moral disgust has been echoed by many thoughtful historians over the years. But in recent decades the mixture has unfortunately become muddled, leading some historians to respect Arnold as a man. Of course, it is important to give Arnold a historical due and to flesh out a demonized figure into a complex human being. Indeed, the complication of simple “truths” is always a worthy project, though sometimes this leads to a troubling ethical relativism.13 But as we get further from an event, it becomes easier to forgive, and in the case of Benedict Arnold the balanced view has in some cases become a nearly complete amendment, to the point where many are not even clear what Arnold did, much less why he was so reviled by his peers.14
Another partial exoneration of Arnold has arisen out of the interesting reimagining of the American Revolution as our first civil war.15 Assuming this is a valid point of view and that Lafayette’s interpretation was incorrect, what is it that separates Arnold from the thousands of other Tories or Loyalists or Royalists, as they were variably called? Let’s take a look at one of Arnold’s Connecticut neighbors, Charles Jarvis of Danbury. He had been brought up as a Tory and during the war served in the British Army, fighting in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, South Carolina, and even within ten miles of his home in New York, burning property and shooting American soldiers. But he often derided the British officers and saw himself and the other Loyalist troops as liberating their country from the “rebels.” On his return home in April 1783 to his father’s house, he was harassed and finally emigrated out of the state to Canada.16
It is easy to see how and why Arnold does not fit the classic Loyalist mold. Jarvis never wavered from one side to the other, but he risked his life for a strong belief in his country’s allegiance to England. Arnold switched sides during the middle of an armed conflict, after taking an oath of allegiance at Valley Forge in 1778, and he took money to do so. Previous to this, he had no Tory sympathies and in fact had often acted passionately against them. One Loyalist, Samuel Ketchum, had been pressed into the “rebel militia” commanded by Arnold early in the war. Ketchum recalled in his claims testimony that he was not doing his duty and that Arnold “ordered that he and a few more Tories should be shut up in a House and burnt.”17
Of course, there were others who played both sides, who looked out for only themselves, who used both sides for their own purposes.18 But none of Arnold’s stature. What examples do we have of a successful and apparently enthusiastic general who fought valiantly for one side, then switched sides and fought for the other, attacking his own countrymen, even his former friends and associates? It is an example without equal, to remain as Washington Irving said a few decades later, “sadly conspicuous to the end of time, as the only American officer of note, throughout all the trials of vicissitudes of the Revolution, who proved traitor to the glorious cause of his country.”19
Another issue is the use of the word “traitor” itself. Over the past two centuries, very few Americans have been tried and hanged as traitors, as intended by the writers of the Constitution. Treason is defined narrowly in section 3 of Article 3 to prevent political misuse, the only crime specifically noted in the document.20 When Chief Justice John Marshall freed Aaron Burr in 1807, he set a precedent that made securing a treason conviction very difficult. In the case of Timothy McVeigh, a former soldier who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City and killed 168 people on April 19, 1995, the prosecution was unable to use the treason clause of the Constitution due to its strictness, even though McVeigh had clearly broken the bonds of loyalty and moral attachment.21 Nevertheless, by the Burr precedent set by Chief Justice Marshall, Arnold would still have been hanged as a traitor. Unlike during Burr’s conspiracy to create a new nation west of the Appalachians, there was actual armed action to prosecute, and the Constitution covers both Arnold’s initial “adhering to their Enemies” in his plans with General Henry Clinton