Washington [261]
Impetuous and overbearing, Benedict Arnold was a short man with a powerful, compact body. His penetrating eyes, aquiline nose, dusky complexion, and thick, unruly hair lent him a dashing but restless air. Growing up in a well-to-do Connecticut family, he had been a bright, mischievous boy with an incurably alcoholic father. His father’s drinking led to bankruptcy when Benedict was fourteen, a traumatic event that overshadowed his childhood. The boy was apprenticed to a relative who worked as a pharmacist, and then his mother died when he was eighteen. The deep shame and poverty of his childhood produced an energetic, headstrong young man who was obsessed with status and money. After opening a pharmacy in New Haven, Arnold diversified into trading, became a sea captain, and engaged in lucrative mercantile activities. Commercial success did not cool his temperament. He was pugnacious, often resorted to duels, and was litigious when libeled. In the early stages of the Revolution, he drifted into radical politics, starting as a captain in the Connecticut militia, then rising through the ranks.
Arnold’s early wartime exploits made him a legendary figure. After leading the impossible trek through the Maine woods in the failed mission against Quebec, he constructed a fleet on Lake Champlain and bade defiance to a superior British force. Most notably, he turned in such a fabled performance at Saratoga that General Burgoyne gave Arnold, not Gates, the laurels for the American victory. When Arnold took a musket ball in the leg at Saratoga, the doctors wanted to amputate the maimed limb, but he scoffed at this as “damned nonsense” and refused to muddle on as a single-legged cripple.39 This left him with one leg two inches shorter than the other, giving him a pronounced limp and forcing him to rely on crutches for a prolonged period. If Arnold was a blustery character who browbeat subordinates, his heroism and war wounds encouraged people to make allowances for him.
The quarrelsome Arnold never forgot the slight he suffered in February 1777 when Congress passed him over in naming five new major generals, all brigadiers junior to him. Even after Washington helped him to become a major general, Arnold still chafed over having lost seniority to these five men, and his bitterness curdled into settled malice. He wasn’t about to be placated by anyone. When he visited Washington at Valley Forge, his injured leg, in which slivers of shattered bone were embedded, was in such dreadful shape that two soldiers had to prop him up. Washington sympathized with Arnold’s plight, naming him military commandant of Philadelphia after the British evacuated in June 1778. During his time in Philadelphia, Arnold set up a fine household and courted the rich, fetching eighteen-year-old Peggy Shippen, who was half his age, and they wed the following year. Peggy was trailed by rumors of having fraternized with British officers during their occupation of Philadelphia. For his part, Arnold was shadowed by allegations that he had exploited his position as commandant to enrich himself. To clear his name, Arnold demanded a court-martial, which found him guilty of two relatively minor counts of misconduct, then let him off with a mild reprimand.
The whole episode lengthened Arnold’s extensive litany of grievances and convinced him that a conspiracy existed against him. As he told Washington, “Having made every sacrifice of fortune and blood and become a cripple in the service of my country, I little expected to meet the ungrateful returns I have received from my countrymen.”40 He believed that Washington, during the court-martial, had withheld the unconditional support he merited, by maintaining a studious neutrality. Afterward, Washington pledged to Arnold that he would give him “opportunities