Defiant Brides (9 page)

Only one event tainted their joy: the Supreme Executive Council’s smear campaign. Disgusted with Reed’s attacks, Arnold left Philadelphia on February 6 or 7, 1779, and headed to the Continental army camp at Middlebrook to ask Washington for advice. From there he planned to travel to upstate New York to meet with General Schuyler. No sooner had his coach reached the Delaware River at Bristol Ferry when a messenger handed Arnold a proclamation from the Supreme Executive Council that accused him of military misconduct. The proclamation had been shrewdly timed to coincide with Arnold’s departure from Philadelphia to spark rumors of his supposed defection to the British.

By Tuesday, February 9, the council’s accusations had appeared in the
Pennsylvania Packet
newspaper and sent to the governors of other states. Arnold’s behavior, the
Packet
declared, was “oppressive to the faithful subjects of this state, unworthy of his rank and station, highly discouraging to those who have manifested their attachment to the liberties and interests of America, and disrespectful to the supreme executive authority.”
⁴⁸

The eight charges included Arnold’s friendship with persons of “disaffected character”; sailing a vessel (
The Charming Nancy
) from British-held Philadelphia to an American port; the closure of city shops for his own private profits from sale of those goods; the imposition of menial services on militia men and Arnold’s defense of that behavior; the awarding of a prize (a ship) for his own profit; the use of public wagons to transport private cargo; an illegal attempt to permit a British sympathizer to enter occupied New York; an “indecent and disrespectful refusal” to explain the use of those wagons to the council; and, finally, “discouragement and neglect” of patriotic individuals while friendly to “those of another character.”
⁴⁹

At the Shippen townhouse on South Fourth Street, Peggy and her family were as stunned by those notices as they were suspicious of Reed’s accusations. Remembering the patriots’ harsh treatment of the judge in 1776–1777 and the family’s frightened retreats to the countryside, the Shippens considered the Supreme Executive Council’s accusations one more example of power run amok.

From Middlebrook on February 8, Arnold confirmed that assessment to Peggy. Washington and his officers had “treated [me] with the greatest politeness,” he wrote his fiancée, and “bitterly excoriate Mr. Reed and the council for their villainous attempt to injure me.”
⁵⁰
To clear his name, Washington suggested Arnold ask for a Congressional hearing. But Peggy’s fiancé would not hear of it: a court-martial, he believed, was preferable, for then he would be judged by his peers. The Supreme Executive Council, Arnold bitterly responded in the
Pennsylvania Packet
, exemplified “as gross a prostitution of power as ever disgraced a weak and wicked administration.”
⁵¹

Adrift in a sea of uncertainty and public censure, Arnold lingered in Middlebrook for several days before canceling plans to visit Schuyler. Longing for reassurance, he wrote Peggy:

Among those few “generous souls” was Henry Knox, whose letter to his brother William complained that the newspapers carried “highly [unfair] charges against General Arnold by the State of Pennsylvania.” To Knox, as to his wife, Lucy, Reed’s accusations seemed absurd. “I shall be exceedingly mistaken if one of them can be proven,” Knox confided to his brother. Arnold was then returning to Philadelphia, he added, “and will, I hope, be able to vindicate himself from the aspersion of his enemies.”
⁵⁴

Ultimately Arnold rejected the concept of a court-martial. Instead he appealed to Congress, which, in turn, handed over the accusations to a special committee. After an anguished debate, all but two of the charges were dropped. Reed was outraged, protesting so forcefully that on April 3 Congress agreed that Arnold must be judged on four accusations of the Supreme Executive Council.

Peggy, meanwhile, continued to believe in Arnold’s innocence. She was eighteen, in love, implicitly trusted her fiancé, and had the support of her relatives. “I think all the world are running mad. What demon has possessed the people with respect to General Arnold? He is certainly much abused; ungrateful monsters, to attack a character that has been looked up to,” wrote her cousin, Elizabeth Tilghman, to Betsy Shippen. “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 be put to trial.”
⁵⁵

Discretion was bred into the Shippens’ bones. Whatever arguments, embarrassments, or regrets the family expressed were hidden behind their handsomely polished front doors. The accusations against Arnold were unjust, the Shippens publicly maintained, yet another instance of political chicanery from the fanatically patriotic Reed and his intimidated Congressional cronies.

By March 19, Arnold had resolved to change his plans, resigning that day as commandant of Philadelphia. He also released General Schuyler from his offer for an upstate New York residence. Instead, either by scraping together or borrowing assets, he purchased Mount Pleasant, an elegant property just outside Philadelphia for £16,240. Built of white stone, the Georgian mansion on the banks of the Schuylkill included ninety-six acres of lawn, a formal garden orchards, and outbuildings. According to John Adams, it was “the most elegant seat in Pennsylvania.”
⁵⁶
Now part of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, Mount Pleasant was never meant to be Arnold’s residence. Instead it was to serve as an income-producing rental, placed in trust for Peggy and her future children as financial protection in the event of his death.

On Thursday, April 8, a white-gowned Peggy and Arnold, leaning on the arm of an aide, were married in the Shippen drawing room. Among the witnesses were Peggy’s relatives, bridal attendants, Arnold’s sister Hannah, and his three sons, newly arrived from Connecticut. Of the subsequent celebration, Judge Shippen wrote, “We saw company for three days. This, with punch drinking, etc. is all the entertainment that was given.”
⁵⁷

Six days later an enchanted Elizabeth Tilghman gushed to Betsy, “Will you my dear give my best love to Mrs. Arnold, tell her that I wish her every happiness that this world is capable of affording, and that she may long live the delight and comfort of her adoring General.”
⁵⁸

BY THE WINTER OF
1779 Lucy Knox was happily ensconced in a fieldstone farmhouse in the hills of Somerset County, New Jersey. After the June 28 Battle of Monmouth, Henry had urged Lucy to join him in the army camp at White Plains where she and her daughter stayed until mid-autumn. So pleasant was that reunion that when Washington ordered the Continentals to a winter encampment in New Jersey, the Knoxes saw no need to separate again. Lucy, consequently, had traveled with her daughter to a hamlet near Middlebrook, New Jersey, near the contemporary town of Bound Brook.

To Washington, the encampment was an ideal site from which to protect the Hudson Highlands, spy upon the British movements in New York City, and protect patriotic New Jersey from an enemy attack. Located at the crossroads of the state, Middlebrook was also “as near our supplies as possible,” a place where “our cattle can be driven to us,” with easy access to Pennsylvania and supplies of flour.
¹

Instead of a log hut, Henry, Lucy, and their little daughter lived in a Dutch farmhouse owned by the elderly Jacobus Vandeveer, whose house stood two and a half miles west of the army camp. There at the foot of the Watchung Mountains, Knox fulfilled his dream of establishing a military school, or “college.” Called the Pluckemin Artillery Cantonment, heavy field pieces and cannons guarded the entrance to the square-shaped campus at whose borders stood barracks, an armorer’s shop, a military forge, and a munitions laboratory. The centerpiece of Knox’s first war college was a cupola-topped hall where soldiers studied tactics, military engineering, and gunnery. A foreign visitor, amazed that its construction was only “the work of a few weeks,” praised the results for their “look of enchantment.”
²
Needing funds to train more men, Knox traveled to Philadelphia in January to meet with Congress.

Lucy, heavy with a second pregnancy, had remained in Pluckemin, waiting anxiously for the arrival of two relatives, Elizabeth and Sarah Winslow. The two women had left Boston in 1775 and settled in New York City, but by 1779 longed to return to their home town. Nearly penniless but knowing that the Knoxes lived nearby, Elizabeth and her niece, Sarah, had appealed for help. Lucy and Henry had complied, assuring them they would “afford them every assistance necessary,” in spite of their political differences. It was “absolutely necessary” for them to leave New York, Knox wrote his brother, since one of their relatives was sailing for England, which would have left the two Winslows “friendless and without protection.”
³

Just before Knox left for Philadelphia, the two women arrived. Little is known about that visit, although Sarah seems to have been the more spirited of the two, so street smart that the Knoxes’ somber Rhode Island friend Nathanael Greene labeled her a “hussy.” Lucy, nevertheless, warmly welcomed them. Undoubtedly they chatted about life in New York City under the British and gossiped about its Loyalist Bostonian residents. More important for Lucy’s purposes, though, was that their visit served as a family reunion, evoking memories of the high-toned life they had shared in Boston before the Revolution—the splendid dinners, drawing-room receptions, and formal teas Lucy enjoyed as a girl.

If the Winslows provided a window to Lucy’s past, the forthcoming gala at Pluckemin previewed her future. By mid-February, workers swarmed over the Pluckemin campus to prepare the first-anniversary celebration of the Franco-American alliance. Tables, chairs, blue-plate dishes, and utensils soon appeared in the academy building and transformed it into a banquet hall for four hundred guests. Outside, carpenters hammered boards into a towering colonnade one hundred feet long, “a temple, or frame, of 13 Corinthian arches . . . each . . . containing an illuminated painting emblematic of the Revolution.”
⁴
Each mural contained an inspiring picture of the Revolution, among them the battle at Lexington, the founders of Congress, the triumph at Saratoga, a portrait of Louis XVI, and the anticipated fall of England. On the appointed day, a sunny Thursday, February 18, Washington and his wife, Martha, arrived in mid-afternoon. So too did dignitaries like Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens, Alexander Hamilton, and General “Mad Anthony” Wayne, followed by throngs of the most “respectable ladies and gentleman of the state of New Jersey,” Dr. James Thacher noted in his journal.
⁵

At 4 p.m., thirteen cannons sounded, signaling the start of the festivities. After toasts and a dinner, fireworks lit up the clear winter sky. Then, as music wafted from the banquet room, “the ball was opened by Mrs. Knox and General Washington in the Academy building,” reported the
Pennsylvania Packet.
⁶
Though in her ninth month of pregnancy, the begowned Lucy danced a minuet with Washington, glorying in her role as the event’s presiding hostess. Afterwards, musicians struck up a lively tune as thirty couples appeared on the dance floor, ready “to foot it to no indifferent measure.”
⁷

To the astonishment of the guests, Washington and Caty Greene joined hands and danced tirelessly to song after song, each seemingly daring the other to quit. “We had a little dance at my quarters a few evenings past,” Nathanael Greene proudly recalled. “His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down. Upon the whole we had a pretty little frisk.”
⁸

In contrast to Caty’s “frisk,” Lucy spent most of that night conversing with Martha Washington, dignitaries, officers, and their wives, forming what the
Packet
described as a “circle of brilliants.”
⁹
Conversations in other parts of the room dwelled upon the course of the Revolution. When the flirtatious
Packet
reporter asked a young woman “if the roaring of the British lion in his late speech did not interrupt the spirit of the dance,” she saucily retorted, “Not at all. It rather enlivens, for I have heard that such animals always increase their howlings when most frightened.”
¹⁰
The celebration was so dazzling, gushed the
New Jersey Journal
, that “the power of description is too languid to do justice to the whole of this grand entertainment.”
¹¹

Afterwards, Knox boasted to his brother: “We had above seventy ladies, all of the first
ton
[class] in the State. We danced all night; between three-hundred and four-hundred gentlemen: an elegant room. The illuminating fireworks, etc. were more than pretty.”
¹²

Ten days after the Pluckemin Grand Alliance Ball, Lucy “was brought to bed of a beautiful daughter,” Knox announced to William. “Though we wished her a son. . . . It is a divine child—we shall call it Julia.”
¹³
Soon afterwards he reported, “Mamma has been so well as to ride out every day for the . . . post.”
¹⁴
By May 2, Lucy even traveled to Middlebrook to watch the Continental army parade before French minister Gerard.