America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation Paperback (24 page)
Authors: Kenneth C. Davis
The only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence (also the last surviving signer; he died in 1832), Charles Carroll was said to be one of America’s three richest men at the time. His grandfather had known Lord Baltimore, Maryland’s founder, and the Carroll family was among Maryland’s first rank, with extensive land holdings. Born in Maryland, young Charles Carroll was sent to France for a proper Catholic education, then unattainable in America, and returned to Maryland in 1764, fluent in French and heir to a massive estate called Carrollton. Drawn to the patriot cause, he became a | 194 \
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leader of the opposition to the Stamp Act, persuading one owner of a ship loaded with tea to burn it rather than risk mob violence, as in Boston.
Although Carroll was not yet a member of Congress, his social status, his religion, and his fluency in French made him a clear choice to attempt to convince French Canadians to throw in with America.
He brought along his cousin John Carroll, a Jesuit priest whose presence was meant to further reassure the Canadian Catholics, and especially their clergy, that their religion would be respected in America.
(Father John Carroll became America’s first Catholic bishop and is credited with founding Georgetown University, America’s first Catholic university, in 1789.) Whatever hopes the commissioners had of success were quickly dashed. The small, tattered American military presence in Canada was falling apart. A great many French Canadians who were asked to accept what was thought to be worthless Continental currency had been alienated by the Americans. The British, meanwhile, had moved to reinforce their garrisons in Canada, and within a few months the American army was driven out of Canada entirely.
With Canada lost, the recently promoted Brigadier General Benedict Arnold was ordered to block any British advance into New York from Canada. Having built a small flotilla on Lake Chaplain once before, he set about creating another navy on the lake. During the summer of 1776, Arnold built a collection of warships and gunboats with which to control Champlain’s waters. Manned mostly by farmers and backwoods militia men with precious little sailing experience, Benedict Arnold’s improvised navy accomplished the near-impossible: fending off a British fleet in a series of battles. Although ultimately chased from the lake after the battle of Valcour Island in October | 195 \
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1776, Arnold and his patchwork crews had sufficiently delayed the British advance. Faced by the onset of winter, and with Lake Champlain freezing over by November, the British abandoned the invasion of New York, which would have severed New England from the rest of the colonies, possibly putting an end to the Revolution. Like Bunker Hill, Arnold’s campaign on the lake had ended in an American defeat, but it still had saved the rebellion from greater disaster.
Returning to New Haven, Arnold mustered a small Connecticut militia that harassed the British at Danbury, Connecticut, where Arnold was injured again when his horse was shot from under him.
A bigger wound was to his pride. Congress bypassed him, promoting several other generals over Arnold to major general. In yet another fit of petulance, he offered his resignation in July 1777. When Washington asked Congress to recommission Arnold, they complied, and he was sent north to join the armies preparing to confront British General John Burgoyne who, after a year’s delay created by Arnold, had embarked on the invasion of New York from Canada.
In a series of battles fought around Saratoga, New York, Arnold played a conspicuous and heroic role. At the battle of Bemis Heights on October 7, 1777, Arnold personally led his men who turned back part of Burgoyne’s army for the last time. Rallying the American troops from horseback, Arnold was shot, wounded in the same leg that had been injured at Quebec. Having suffered tremendous losses, Burgoyne surrendered his army in the most stunning victory of an otherwise largely unsuccessful American military campaign. The shocking news that Burgoyne had surrendered and most of his five thousand men had been paroled was the key to bringing the French into the war as America’s ally. With French troops, ships, and powder, the Revolution was given new life.
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And Benedict Arnold had played a crucial role. He had demonstrated the courage and leadership skills that George Washington had recognized two years earlier in Cambridge. But once again, Arnold was denied glory. Another bitter feud, this time with General Horatio Gates, the American commander at Saratoga, meant Arnold received no official credit for his daring at Bemis Heights. Worse, he had been vilified by Gates for having disobeyed orders. Withdrawn to Philadelphia, where he convalesced, Arnold nearly lost his leg again. He continued his recovery with Washington at Valley Forge in the bleak winter of 1777–78.
Aftermath
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 actuate my present conduct, however it may appear inconsistent to the world, who very seldom judge right of any man’s actions.
—Benedict Arnold to George Washington, September 25, 178017
Standing on the Saratoga Battlefield in upstate New York is a statue of a single boot. Its worn dedication reads, in part, to “the most brilliant soldier of the Continental army.” The statue anonymously honors the bravery and leadership of Benedict Arnold, the heroic officer who became the greatest villain in American history.
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After Saratoga, Arnold’s fall from grace was as stunningly dramatic as the rest of his incredible life had been. In June 1778, Washington appointed Arnold military commissioner of Philadelphia, which had earlier been captured by the British but was back in American hands. Embittered at being passed over for promotion, disgruntled at having Congress question his wartime expenses—he had borne many of the Quebec campaign’s costs himself and expected reimburse-ment—Arnold threw himself into the whirl of Philadelphia’s social life and swiftly fell into debt. His extravagances drew attention, and Congress investigated his financial dealings as Philadelphia’s military commissioner. Faced with this investigation, Arnold complained to Washington, still a staunch defender, “Having become a cripple in the service of my country, I little expected to meet [such] ungrateful returns.” (The injuries to Arnold’s leg had shortened it by two inches, and he was now forced to wear a special boot.) He also fell in love. During this time Arnold renewed his acquain-tance with Peggy Shippen, the now eighteen-year-old daughter of Judge Edward Shippen. They were married on April 8, 1779. Peggy’s previous suitor, the English major John André, had left the city when the British withdrew. About a year later, Arnold sought and was given command of the fort at West Point, perched above the Hudson River in New York just north of New York City. The fort controlled Hudson River traffic.
In September 1780, while George Washington was traveling to visit Arnold and Peggy at their home in what is now Westchester County, New York, Major André was captured in civilian clothes.
Stripped by the Americans who were planning to rob him, André was found carrying the plans for Arnold’s surrender of West Point to the British. With possession of the fort, the British could once again | 198 \
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control the length of the Hudson River, reopening the possibility of an assault from Canada, which Arnold had fought so hard to prevent.
For his betrayal, Arnold had been promised £20,000 and a brigadier’s commission. Knowing the plan was undone, Arnold raced off to safety aboard a waiting British ship, leaving behind Peggy and their infant son to contend with a shaken but enraged Washington.
When George Washington went to see Peggy Arnold, she flew into a fit of hysterics at the news, claiming that men were trying to kill her and her baby, even allowing her dressing gown to fall open, offering a glimpse of “her charms,” as genteel historians like to put it.
Washington’s aide Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette, the young French nobleman whom Washington had practically adopted as a son, were both asked by Peggy to intercede with the general. She was clearly a talented actress and duped them all. Convincing Washington that she knew nothing of the plot, Peggy Shippen was allowed to return to Philadelphia with her six-month-old infant. On the ride back to her family’s home, she was unable to purchase food from anyone who knew who she was. It would be centuries before British military documents revealed the extent of her complete complicity in the plot.
On October 9, Arnold appeared in his new uniform, that of a British general. That same day, a letter appeared in a New York Tory newspaper, the
Royal Gazette
, addressed “to the Inhabitants of America.” In it, the turncoat attempted to explain his actions. Once again, anti-Catholic sentiment moved to center stage. Arnold claimed that he had been loyal to the American cause as long as it was a “defensive”
war. But when France joined the American side, that had changed, claimed Arnold. It was, wrote Arnold, “infinitely wiser and safer to cast my confidence upon [British] justice and generosity than to trust | 199 \
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a monarchy too feeble to establish your independency . . . the enemy of the Protestant faith, and fraudulently avowing an affection for the liberties of mankind while she holds her native sons in vassalage and chains.”18
Setting aside this sudden and convenient burst of anti-Catholic fervor, perhaps Arnold thought that he, like King Lear, was “a man more sinn’d against than sinning.” More simply, Arnold’s motives seem fairly clear: an ambition to rise in society born of his father’s dramatic fall; bitterness at being constantly slighted and passed over; and greed—his own and that of his young wife, who had a taste for the finer things. In the end, Arnold’s treachery did not affect the war’s outcome. Major André was hanged as a spy after Washington unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate an exchange for Arnold with General Cornwallis. Arnold was given a command, calling it the “American Legion.” He led this collection of loyalists and Continental army deserters against Richmond, Virginia, which they captured. Later, he moved north to attack New London, in his home state of Connecticut, burning it to the ground, in the hope it would divert Washington from Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. During the attack, surrendering patriot defenders were massacred by Arnold’s men. But the ploy failed as a diversion and Cornwallis surrendered his army to Washington, bolstered by French troops and a French fleet, in October 1781, essentially ending the Revolutionary War in America.
After the British surrender, the Arnolds lived in New York, still very much a loyalist stronghold, until 1783, when the treaty ending the war was signed. When some thirty-five thousand New York Tories evacuated the city, Arnold moved to New Brunswick, Canada, where he returned to his life as a merchant and shipper before finally moving to London in 1791. His son, Benedict VI, joined the British | 200 \
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army against his father’s wishes and died in the Napoleonic Wars.
Benedict Arnold V, hero and traitor, died in London in 1801, at age sixty. There were four state carriages and seven mourning coaches at his funeral, and he was buried at the Church of St. Mary’s in Bat-tersea. When the church was renovated a century later, his body was mistakenly disinterred and buried with a jumble of others in an unmarked grave.
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1784 James Madison publishes his
Memorial and Remonstrance
Against Religious Assessments
, an argument for the separation of church and state.
1785 The Mount Vernon Conference. Meeting at Washington’s home, delegates from Virginia and Delaware agree to a pact that deals with uniform currency. They invite Pennsylvania to join, an indication of the need for cooperation between the individual states.
1786 The Virginia legislature adopts an Ordinance of Religious Freedom on January 16.
Protesting high taxes, ineffective state government, and the legal system, especially in home foreclosures, representatives from more than fifty Massachusetts towns meet on August 22–25. On September 20, an armed mob in New Hampshire marches on the legislature. On September 26, Massachusetts governor James Bowdoin dispatches six hundred militiamen to protect the state supreme court in Springfield from an armed band of insurgents.
1787 Beginning on January 26, Daniel Shays leads his men in an assault on the federal arsenal at Springfield, called Shays’ Rebellion.
On May 25 a working quorum of delegates finally arrives in Philadelphia, and George Washington is named president of the convention.
On September 17, thirty-nine delegates to the constitutional convention vote to endorse the final form of the Constitution, which must be ratified by nine states. In October, advocates of the new Constitution begin to publish articles supporting ratification. Written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, the essays are compiled as
The Federalist Papers
.
December 7: Delaware is the first state to ratify the Constitution.
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December 12: Pennsylvania ratifies, the second state to do so.
December 18: New Jersey ratifies.
1788 January 2: Georgia ratifies.
January 9: Connecticut ratifies.
February 6: Massachusetts ratifies after anti-Federalist forces led by Samuel Adams and John Hancock support the document with the promise of amendments guaranteeing certain civil liberties.
March 24: Rhode Island, which refused to send a delegation to Philadelphia, rejects the Constitution.
