Reed, in fact, had bad mouthed Washington as a bumbling commander while serving him as an aide back in 1776. Reed was one of those people who could find something to dislike in everyone else but himself. This brought Arnold into contact with the nominal head of Pennsylvania’s government, Joseph Reed. In June 1778, George Washington, knowing the recovering Benedict Arnold could not take a field command, named him the military governor of Philadelphia. My opinion, a misrepresentation of the evidence. Wounded seriously twice, a near cripple the rest of his life, Benedict Arnold, as just noted, started to have serious doubts about the cause even before he met the bewitchingly beautiful Peggy Shippen. Benedict Arnold didn’t and brought the victory at Saratoga, with piker Horatio Gates getting the public credit. George Washington agreed but urged Arnold not to resign. 1777 for a very deserved promotion that Washington thought Arnold should have had (to major general) was a complete insult to Arnold’s honor as a gentleman. A Congressman wrote Arnold while he was on Lake Champlain warning him about petty backbiting directed toward him in Congress, to the effect that your best friends are not your countrymen. William Maxwell of New Jersey publically faulted Arnold for wasting the naval fleet, as if the idea was to save the vessels and let the British invade. Two examples: After Arnold pulled off a magnificent defense of Lake Champlain in October 1776 that caused the British to call off their invasion from Canada that year, Gen. In his martial success, he became the target of jealous mediocrities. It is what happened after 1775 that began to wear him down and bring on his disillusionment. Benedict Arnold was an enthusiastic patriot who believed passionately in the cause of American liberty.
He sent this letter to Washington in March 1778, two and a half years before he gave up completely on the American cause.Ĭertainly not in 1775. When Benedict Arnold did respond to Washington, he said that he wished the commander in chief well in his “arduous task” of “seeing peace and happiness restored to your country on the most permanent basis.” In his mounting disillusionment, Arnold was separating himself from a cause in which he was losing his faith. He was furious that Congress had cast a medal to Horatio Gates as the alleged “hero of Saratoga” when Arnold had actually provided the field leadership in both battles leading the Americans to victory. 1778, after the great victory at Saratoga, that Congress had finally restored his seniority, Arnold did not immediately respond. When Washington wrote a still suffering Benedict Arnold in Jan. Congress had restored his rank before Saratoga but not his seniority. Moreover, he had forsaken his lucrative career as a merchant/trader operating out of New Haven, CT. He had plenty of time to think how much suffering he was going through after having been passed over for higher rank, a burning insult to is good name as a virtuous patriot, and in addition to how much he had sacrificed in terms of using his own wealth to support the American cause. Seriously wounded in the same leg in which he had taken his first terrible wound at Quebec, Benedict Arnold was angry and peevish during more than four months in a patriot military hospital in Albany, NY. One wonders if Benedict Arnold had served directly under George Washington’s command instead of detached operations whether his rejection of the American cause might have taken place.ĭefinitely a factor. Washington thought of Arnold as his “fighting general,” and supported him as much as he could up to the time of Benedict Arnold’s defection back to the British on Sept. Benedict Arnold went on to fight successfully in 1776 in keeping the British from invading the colonies through the Lake Champlain region, and his greatest victory was at Saratoga in 1777, which led to the French coming into the war as the American’s first and most important allies.
Arnold did so with aplomb but suffered a serious wound on the last day of 1775 in a failed attempt to capture that city. Because of Arnold’s management both in taking and keeping Fort Ticonderoga back in May-June 1775, Washington decided to ask Arnold to lead a column into Canada to take Quebec City and bring that province into the rebellion. Benedict Arnold and George Washington first met in August of 1775 after Washington had taken command of the newly formed Continental army outside Boston in Cambridge, MA. Mount Vernon had the chance to sit down with James Kirby Martin, author of Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered ( order online), and Cullen University Professor of history at the University of Houston, to discuss the heroism and treachery of Benedict Arnold during the Revolutionary War.ĭid George Washington and Benedict Arnold know and admire each other?