Quotes About Benedict Arnold

even in the Loyalist press inside British-occupied New York City by February 1779. The Royal Gazette, praising Benedict Arnold for being "more distinguished for valor and perseverance" than any other American, including Washington, wondered why the enemy was wasting his "military talents" and had permitted him "thus to fall into the unmerciful fangs of the executive council of Pennsylvania."1

It would be the twentieth century before the opening of the British Headquarters Papers at the University of Michigan proved what the eighteenth century refused to believe that a young and beautiful woman was capable of helping Benedict Arnold plot the greatest conspiracy of the American Revolution and then completely fooling the astute warriors around her.

That Hamilton adhered to a code of gentlemanly honor was confirmed in yet another sideshow of the Benedict Arnold affair: the arrest of Major John André, adjutant general of the British Army and Arnold's contact, traveling under the nom de guerre John Anderson. As he awaited a hearing to decide his fate, he was confined at a tavern in Tappan, New York. Though seven years younger than André, Hamilton developed a sympathy for the prisoner

Millions of Americans cannot tell you who lived at Mount Vernon or who wrote the Declaration of Independence - let alone the Emancipation Proclamation. But they know that to be 'a Benedict Arnold' is to be a traitor of the deepest dye - someone who coldly betrays not only a sacred cause but every moral scruple along the way.

A traitor is a betrayer - one who practices injury, while professing friendship. Benedict Arnold was a traitor, solely because, while professing friendship for the American cause, he attempted to injure it. An open enemy, however criminal in other respects, is no traitor.

The irony is that Washington was, in reality, very much like Benedict Arnold. The big difference was that Washington was ultimately able to control his emotions, something Arnold never learned to do.

Arnolds' names should come up in conversation that summer. Benedict's family was established just across the border in Connecticut, and the former Miss Shippen—whose own family was extremely well connected—had been acquainted with many of the officers now in New York. Benedict Arnold's name might have even been something of a joke, at first, among the British. Here was an overly eager merchant–turned–major general who seemed

Midshipman Edward Pellew was in the British boat right behind Arnold's. The American general had escaped, but in his haste he had left behind his stock and buckle, which Pellew took as a keepsake. Years later, by which time Pellew had become the much-decorated admiral Viscount Exmouth, he could not help but wonder how differently the War of Independence might have turned out if on that cold autumn day near the southern tip of Lake Champlain he had captured Benedict Arnold.