Washington's Revolution: The Making of America's First Leader (38 page)

He did not reveal his first impressions of Rochambeau and de Ternay, but it is clear that nothing they said charmed him. He, on the other hand, impressed the French officers who met him—his was a quiet yet powerful presence, marked by “a simplicity of manners, and mild gravity,” Comte Mathieu de Dumas wrote, that “surpassed our expectation and won every heart.”
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These impressions did not change French attitudes toward American capacities. Washington had not
expected to find a willingness in the French to join the Americans in attacking Clinton in New York. He knew he was not ready for a major operation with the French, and by this time he probably did not think much would come of the meeting.

Not much that bore on immediate action did; there were no plans for attack, no details about such a thing. Yet the military principles that would shape combined operations did emerge. The two sides agreed that naval superiority would have to be clear in any major operation. Washington did not have to be persuaded to adopt this principle, as he had long held it, had in fact thought much about the military and naval character of the war that he was fighting. For a creature grown up on the land, he possessed a remarkable sensitivity to the sea.
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If the allies were to carry the offensive to the British, they would have to control the sea around New York, and it was New York that provided the key objective of their war. This was Washington’s idea, conceived because New York was “the centre and focus of all the British forces.”
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He had an outline of a plan for such an operation. The navy, taking station at Sandy Hook, would blockade the city, cutting off British supplies of men and matériel. The combined army—American and French—would number thirty thousand men, a number not actually in existence in September. Washington asked the French to build up their forces to fifteen thousand men, and he would approach Congress for a much larger army of his own.

Washington wanted more than the agreement embodied. He suggested that the French divide their forces, de Ternay taking his ships to Boston, where they would be more easily protected, and Rochambeau moving his troops to New York, where they would take positions near Washington’s. Neither proposal moved the French to accommodate their American superior. That Washington was in command of the two forces was, of course, a polite fiction. Politeness carried the day, and Washington did not argue that if he was in command he should be obeyed. Rather, he listened as the French explained that their orders from the court were to hold the army and the navy together and to maintain a position on an island, not the mainland.
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The weakness of Washington’s army compelled him to accept these conclusions, but it is doubtful that he would have insisted that the French should yield even if he had an army of first-rate strength and ability. His assessments in these circumstances were founded on a recognition
of the likely consequences: He wanted to maintain French support, for it would be crucial to what he hoped to achieve. He had little chance of defeating the British with only his own army in the fight. To keep the French at his side, he did not have to follow their orders, and Rochambeau issued none for the Americans. The implications embedded in this situation in September could be read in several ways. One was that the French were useless, a latent power that would not awake; Washington dismissed this notion easily. A second understanding was simply that the French had much wisdom to offer, and if it seemed coated with caution at this time, the American course should be to wait until circumstances that seemed favorable to the French emerged, and then seize the opportunities that combined operations offered and seek action against the British.

Washington bade Rochambeau farewell shortly after the conference ended in one day’s discussion, and on September 23 set off for Fishkill. On the way he met Luzerne, the French ambassador, and he dined with him that evening. Early the next morning, September 25, he was on the road again, bound for West Point, where he intended to breakfast with Benedict Arnold, the newly appointed commander of the fort. The distance between Fishkill and West Point is not long, and there were small posts along the Hudson that he felt obliged to inspect, thinking perhaps that visits by the commanding general could raise the morale of the men manning them.

Arnold’s headquarters was in the house of Beverly Robinson, on the east side of the river; West Point jutted out into the river on the west side. Washington had planned to have his breakfast before looking at the defenses of West Point, but on arrival at the house, he was told that Mrs. Arnold had not yet risen from her bed and that the general was across the Hudson at the fort.

Washington could not have been pleased by Arnold’s absence, but he expected that he would receive a formal greeting on the other side of the river at West Point. Such ceremonies were not to be ignored in the army, for they reinforced the importance of command and discipline of the troops. No one was more aware than Washington of the effects of such observances. But before he climbed into a barge to be
ferried across the river, he ate breakfast and talked with Alexander Hamilton and other officers.

Once across the river, he was given another surprise: Arnold was not there. Nor did anyone at the fort know where he was, including its immediate commander, Colonel John Lamb. Concerned, but not deeply alarmed, Washington proceeded to inspect the variety of posts, redoubts, gun emplacements, blockhouses, and trenches that made up the fortress. What he found dismayed him: The works of the fort were in bad repair or, in the case of many sites where emplacements might have been established, did not even exist. Building materials lay around, evidence of carelessness and a lack of planning and construction. Now in a state of confusion and distress, Washington recrossed the river and entered the Robinson house once more. There he was met by Hamilton, who gave him a handful of papers that went a long way toward explaining the mysteries of the morning.

The papers included letters written by Arnold to Major John André, the acting adjutant general of the British army in New York, who in this correspondence acted as General Clinton’s representative. The letters revealed a sensational story: Benedict Arnold was a traitor who was attempting to betray—indeed, in a sense to sell—West Point to the British army. The plot now uncovered had begun in May 1779, when Arnold wrote Clinton a letter that more than hinted that he was prepared to join the British. At the time, Arnold was the military commander of Philadelphia, an assignment made by Washington shortly after the British army evacuated the city. Arnold had not been happy in this command, though he made a good thing out of it, selling supplies left behind by both the departing British and their loyalist allies. The proceeds from these sales properly belonged to public authority but instead went into the pockets of Arnold and his friends. Citizens of Philadelphia complained to the local council about this conduct, and in time Arnold stood trial, but the charges against him were of minor import, and he had escaped any real penalty.

Arnold came into command of West Point about a year after he first wrote to Clinton. His messages were in code and in fact concealed his identity. Clinton turned them over to André almost from the beginning of negotiations, and those negotiations had assumed serious importance when Washington appointed Arnold to West Point. He
had offered Arnold the command of a division in the army and was surprised when Arnold turned it down. But this time, in August 1780, Arnold hoped to increase his value by offering something besides himself to Clinton. His assignment to West Point met this purpose in every way. For his new command comprised more than the post itself—it included the forts at Stony Point and Verplanck’s Point, stations on both sides of the river, and ground on the east side of the river from King’s Ferry to Fishkill. The troops in the entire area were his, as well as those holding positions extending to the enemy’s lines and down to North Castle. It was an area critical to the defense of the Highlands, an area that Washington had always wished to hold.

Clinton shared Washington’s perception that the fort stood as a key point of control of the corridor to Canada and a vital opening to the New England states. His interest in a seizure of the area through a betrayal by an American increased when he learned of Arnold’s appointment to the West Point command.

Arnold and André had agreed to meet to make firm the conditions for the betrayal while Washington was at Hartford. The British interest had risen as Clinton, fearing French strength, gave up plans for striking the French in Newport, a venture that had been stimulated by the arrival of Admiral George Rodney on September 14 with an additional ten ships of the line. With Arbuthnot’s fleet, Rodney’s ships gave the British local naval supremacy. Rodney would have the responsibility of protecting New York; Arbuthnot’s squadrons would carry the army up the Hudson, take West Point, betrayed by its commander, and thereby gain access to the Highlands.

Clinton recognized that he was dealing with an unscrupulous man in Arnold, and to ascertain his price and his ability to give over the fort, he sent André to establish plans for its seizure. André went up the Hudson on the
Vulture
, a British sloop, and debarked the vessel near Haverstraw. Two days of difficulty followed, which included a meeting with Arnold, discovery and attack on the
Vulture
by Americans, and a failed effort by André to evade American militia on land. Captured just above Tarrytown, André, in civilian dress, was discovered to have papers revealing that he was on a mission involving the security of West Point.

Arnold learned of André’s capture and the exposure of his plan in the hour of Washington’s arrival at Robinson’s house. Washington’s
inspection of West Point had given Arnold several hours more to make his escape to the
Vulture
, still waiting nearby. It took only a few minutes for Washington to make his way through the letters that exposed Arnold’s treachery, and he immediately ordered Hamilton and John Laurens to capture him. His anger was complicated by the larger question of what Arnold’s defection meant for the army: Whom could he and the army trust now? Arnold, a brilliant fighter, had demonstrated his bravery in service of the American cause—and now showed himself guilty, as Hamilton said, of “the blackest treason.”
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As far as Washington could see, the treason evident in Arnold’s conduct did not extend to his wife, Margaret (called Peggy), who had joined him in Robinson’s house when he took command of West Point. Not that Washington or any of his officers there coolly examined the question. Washington had hardly finished reading the letters telling of Arnold’s betrayal when he was summoned to Peggy Arnold’s bedroom by Lieutenant Colonel Richard Varick, who told him that Mrs. Arnold seemed out of her mind, “frantic with distress,” as Hamilton described her a few hours later. Washington went to her room immediately with Varick, who was afflicted with a high fever and who had left his own bed when the sensation created by Arnold ran through the house. When Washington arrived to see Mrs. Arnold, a scene followed with tears and ravings by Mrs. Arnold that he was there to kill her child, followed by bewildered and sympathetic reassurance from Washington. He was clearly astounded by her charge that he intended to kill her child, a baby she clutched in one of the most curious scenes in the entire affair. The historians of these events in Robinson’s house have concluded that Mrs. Arnold’s talents extended to high drama. Her temporary madness was a part of her performance to persuade onlookers—most certainly General Washington—that she had not been aware of her husband’s plot, and knew nothing of it until he told her just before he abandoned her to go to the British army. On seeing Washington enter her room, she denied at first that he was Washington, but rather “the man who was going to assist Colonel Varick in killing my child.” Finally convinced that he was the man who was attempting to soothe her spirit, she nevertheless again accused him of plotting to murder her child. Amid the shouts she issued in making this claim, and while writhing on the bed, she allowed her nightdress to fall open, exposing a beautiful body and thereby producing even more
confusion in the officers standing in the room. All of this took place in a scene marked by Mrs. Arnold’s shouts, tears, partial sentences, and thrashings around on the bed, involving blankets and, undoubtedly, the baby as well.
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Whether it was all a grand act or temporary hysteria, it moved Washington and, as far as one can tell, all or most of his aides in the house. Peggy Arnold had not finished her performance, or her agony, when, after a few minutes of trying to reassure her that he meant her no harm, Washington left the room. He carried with him an impression he would never lose: She was innocent of the guilt her husband bore, and had not known of or been a part of his plot.

Washington may have given too much thought to Mrs. Arnold’s wild behavior, including the accusation that he intended to murder her child, for he failed to do something a commander in his situation might have done: alert his troops along the river to get into position to defend its most important fortress, at West Point. Hamilton did not wait for such an order but sent off a dispatch to Nathanael Greene, who was at Orangetown, New York. By the time the warning went off to Greene, Hamilton knew that Arnold had escaped and was with Clinton’s army or soon would be. At this point Washington had not acted, and in fact he did nothing until early evening, sometime between six and seven o’clock, when he ordered that West Point receive reinforcements and that commanders at key points in its maze of defenses be replaced. For all he knew, Arnold had placed officers who were a part of the plot at these sites, and they were prepared to turn them over to the British.
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