Benedict Arnold- Some Thoughts

   While Benedict Arnold's treatment by the Church Committee may seem harsh to a contemporary American, it is not anything out of the ordinary for mid-eighteenth century military finance. The colonists adopted the complicated British system of procurement, ripe with favoritism and corruption and expected a commander to shoulder a number of exigent expenses for which he would be later reimbursed. What is interesting about Arnold's appearance before the committee is his failure to provide receipts. While Arnold would not have been able to provide receipts for the odd situation, he certainly should have had them for the bulk of his expenses. It was the job of the committee to view Arnold's claims with suspicion.
  Benedict Arnold, throughout his career, demonstrated an utter lack of political acumen. He was not an intellectual and had no feel for human interplay, the ambitions of men, and the cut throat nature of politics. Alexander Hamilton, who knew Arnold from Hamilton's days as Washington's aide, remarked of him that "the fighter did not combine...any intellectual qualities with his physical prowess. Instead of engaging in interesting argument, he shouted and pounded the table." A description of Arnold from his days in Philadelphia perhaps describes him best:

He was by nature impetuous, aggressive, alert and eager for battle under any circumstances but he had never been a good politician. He was tactless, impatient, extremely outspoken and had made numerous enemies unnecessarily.

 One of the things that Arnold's biographers gloss over during Arnold's actions during April and May of 1775, is the utterly callous way in which he abandoned his Connecticut Company in favor of a commission from a colony in which he had no friends and no political base. Colonelcies were highly sought after in every colony and there were more candidates for colonelcies than there were colonelcies. Arnold had nurtured this company but abandoned them without a moment's hesitation to take a colonelcy in a colony in which he was not known. This was a rash act of a man with no political acumen.

  In closing, it should be noted that in September 1775, Arnold turned over his financial records to Silas Deane and asked whether he might get satisfaction from the Continental Congress. Deane, who was a friend of Arnold's and sympathized with Arnold over his treatment by Massachusetts, pursued the claim. In late January 1776, the Continental Congress awarded Arnold and additional L245,14, 1. This was probably in reaction to Arnold's recent surge in stature as a wounded hero in the Patriots attempt to conquer Canada.

Major John Andre's self-sketch drawn the night before he was hung.

   

The Benedict Arnold/Dr Benjamin Church Jr. Confrontation - Part Five

   Benedict Arnold departed Crown Point on July 4th, 1775 and after arriving in Albany, New York was informed that his wife Peggy (Margaret) had died two weeks before of a fever. Three days after her death, her father, Samuel Mansfield, High Sheriff of New Haven, Connecticut, and a man to whom Arnold was very close, also passed away. The two main pillars of Arnold's personal life were now gone, and it seems so had his military reputation. After visiting briefly with General Philip Schuyler, Arnold proceeded to New Haven where he placed the care of his three young sons in the care of his sister Hannah, to whom he was very close. Hannah also took control of her brother's many business affairs since he was determined to travel to Massachusetts to confront his problems with the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and, ever the military man, to meet the new Commander of the Continental Army, George Washington. Hannah was a very resourceful and pious woman who soon had the two older boys enrolled in school and took complete control of her brother's many business affairs proving herself to be a shrewd businesswoman.

Benedict Arnold's birthplace in Norwich, CT - No longer standing

   Normally a very physically robust man, Arnold's health now took a turn for the worse and he suffered a severe attack of the gout, which periodically struck his legs, and he was bedridden for a week. (I am always struck by how so many ailments in this period were diagnosed as an "attack of the gout." Given the state of diagnostic medicine at the time, I wonder how many of these gout diagnoses were, in fact, something modern medicine would be able to identify more specifically.) Arnold's malaria also flared up again; but he soon recovered and, toward the end of July, he embraced his sons and his sister, mounted his horse, and began his second journey in just three months to Massachusetts. This time he was determined to confront a Provincial Congress whom he felt had abused him.
   With his accounts in hand, Arnold presented himself to the General Court of Massachusetts. Historians and biographers of Arnold refer to it as the "Third Provincial Congress." In fact, the Third Provincial Congress of Massachusetts had dissolved itself on June 20th, 1775 upon the advice of the Continental Congress. The Third Provincial Congress had dispatched Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia with a confidential communication requesting advice from the Congress to clarify the situation of a permanent government as a result of the activities in the colony since April 1775. Acting on that request, the Continental Congress resolved that Massachusetts was correct in recognizing that the positions of Governor and Lieutenant Governor, as well as the Council were vacant. It recommended that the Massachusetts towns elect a new Assembly that would choose a Council from among its members. On July 19, 1775, this newly elected General Court "resumed" government under the old 1691 Massachusetts Charter.
   The Council, the successor to the assistants under the old charter, consisted of twenty-eight men selected from the House of Representatives. They acted as the upper body of the legislature and advisor to the governor. No money could be issued from the treasury without a warrant from the Governor and Council. The lower body of the legislature, known as the House of Deputies under the old charter, was now called the House of Representatives. Freeholders, those men holding a certain amount of property, elected the House of Representatives annually. The General Court appointed officers, passed laws and orders, organized all courts, established fines and punishments, and levied taxes, all with the consent of the governor. The House alone controlled the salaries of the governor and judicial officers.This House has been sitting in continuous session since then.

   On August 1, 1775, the House of Representatives named a committee of five, headed by Dr Benjamin Church, Jr, to review Arnold's records and recommend a final settlement of his accounts. Dr Church was not only the member of the Committee of Safety who had signed Arnold's Commission, he had four days earlier been appointed to a newly established position. The Continental Congress had created a Medical Department of the Army with a Director General and Chief Physician who would be head of both the Hospital Department of the first Army Hospital and of the first headquarters of regimental surgeons in the army before Boston. Dr Church's appointment to this position made him the chief medical officer of the Continental Army besieging Boston, under the command of George Washington as of July 3, 1775. Thus Church is considered the first "Surgeon General" of the United States
   Only a week earlier, Dr Church had authored the infamous cipher letter addressed to his brother-in-law that he attempted, through his mistress, to smuggle into Boston.
   The Church Committee was ready and waiting for Arnold and the rancor started almost immediately during a very testy, day-long hearing. The committeemen had heard all sorts of reports about Arnold from his enemies Col Easton and Brown, and from the Spooner committee, none of them favorable and they were ready to take Arnold on. Dr Church was known as a trenchant wit, quick with a retort, quip, or cutting remark or statement. Indeed, he may have been the most effective propagandist that the Patriots had in their long struggle against the Crown. Church was also the most famous poet in the colonies and had given a most remarkable oration on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. A distinguished graduate of Harvard, Church was up against a man with a very rudimentary formal education with only a couple of years at the Reverend Cogswell's school.

The Edmund Fowle House, Watertown Massachusetts

   The Committee started off by asking Arnold why he was weeks late in reporting to the Congress since the Spooner Committee had directed him to to ride to Watertown immediately to settle his accounts. He had not received authorization to travel by way of New Haven, regardless of his personal circumstances.
   Arnold, true to his martial character, decided that the best defense was a good offense and went on the attack. He stated he resented the insinuations of the committeemen. Why did they doubt his truthfulness when he said he had to spend his own money after the meager L100 they had furnished him with which he was to pay for an entire regiment? He presented the committee with copies of a set of ledger sheets itemizing all of his expenses, listing pay for entire companies, for carpenters and a shipwright, for lumber, for milling grain, and for much more. But why, the committee wanted to know had Arnold not obtained proper receipts for each expenditure? He needed to provide them with evidence. When he asked how he could do that, they facetiously advised him to ride to Ticonderoga and secure receipts from Massachusetts' own Colonel James Easton. Arnold scoffed at the suggestion. Arnold insisted that as the man on the scene for Massachusetts, he had to make countless decisions on behalf of the Province and pay prevailing prices and wages. He had spent what he considered appropriate to maintain his men. Now was not the time for civilians to second-guess a field commander operating under very difficult conditions. The Committee, in turn, took special umbrage at the number of personal charges Arnold had levied against the public account. Even before the hearing, the House had refused to pay bills of credit drawn by Arnold on Massachusetts until it had examined his accounts.
   All day long, the committee and Arnold went back and forth and the quill pens scratching "disallowed' became more and more numerous. The first target was Arnold's horse which, he maintained, he had purchased on the authorization of the Provincial Congress before he had departed for Ticonderoga. He valued it at L16; the committee at L3. The committee also struck out L38, 4s, 9d for the wages of a wheelwright Arnold had hired to build gun carriages to transport cannon. Arnold was supposed to pay troops and use them as carpenters, not hire carpenters, no matter how skilled they were. Arnold's policy of paying well for workers and skilled mariners did not go down well in Massachusetts where it was viewed as driving up the cost of war.
   The accusations against Arnold ranged from the petty - paying L3, 15s, for an officer's out of pocket expenses without obtaining a proper receipt - to some much more serious. They objected that he had acted as his own commissary and then charged a broker's fee; they refused to pay for livestock Arnold had bought from Colonel Easton without a receipt from him. They demanded to know what had happened to the L160 reportedly found aboard the captured British sloop. The committee assumed that Arnold had pocketed the money as a prize of war and they therefore disallowed L163 from his expenses for soldiers' pay. Since Arnold had not attached the company's pay table, Dr Church would not accept Arnold's word of honor that he had ever paid the company of men before he disbanded them and the men went home. Finally, Dr Church and his committee disallowed L100 Arnold said he paid the crew of the sloop Enterprise. When the hearing was over, the committee reserved judgement until another day.
   A number of weeks later, the committee released its findings ( Dr Church was in detention at this point in the Vassall House in Cambridge) and repaid Arnold L757 - 65% of the money he said he had spent in the name of the Massachusetts Congress.

   I will conclude this story tomorrow with some final thoughts about Arnold and this whole enterprise. A contemporary American may feel that Arnold was shabbily treated based on what has been so far reported, but I think that is an emotional reaction. It's a little more complicated. One of the things that has always struck me about Arnold is that he was, in many ways - an innocent, naive, and, at times, just plain obtuse.

Note: I have included illustrations of both the Meeting House and Fowles' House in Watertown. The Meeting House has long been demolished but the Fowle House has been restored but moved from its original location. The confrontation between the Church Committee and Arnold took place in one of these buildings. Although the House met in the First Parish Church, the Upper Council met in the Fowle House and committees of the lower House did hold meetings in the Fowle House.

 To Be Continued

The Benedict Arnold/Dr Benjamin Church Jr Confrontation - Part Four

   In June 1775, Benedict Arnold found himself in an untenable position. Massachusetts was trying to wash its hands of the Lake Champlain campaign, the Continental Congress was unsure of what it wanted to do, the Connecticut Committee appointed to oversee the campaign notified the Connecticut House of Assembly that it had postponed sending further assistance to Captain Arnold, New York was divided, and Ethan Allen hovered over the whole affair with his personal ambitions paramount. And, unbenownst to Arnold, his patron, Dr Joseph Warren, who until then had not apparently outlined Arnold's secret mission to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, became the President of the Congress and turned over the affairs of the Committee of Safety to its new Chairman, Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr.
  

Benedict Arnold sketch from Lossing

   Dr Church had become Chairman of the Committee in the early part of May and had personally signed Arnold's commission to take Fort Ticonderoga on May 10th. At this point it gets confusing again. Sometime in the middle of May, Dr Warren replaced Dr Church as Chairman of the Committee of Safety in what has been described as "a bloodless and even noiseless coup." I have not been able to determine the precise reason for this action or what the politics involved were. Although Drs Warren and Church were allied to each other as staunch Whigs, there was a rivalry between them and one gets the impression that they were more colleagues than friends. In any event, Church was selected by the Provincial Congress to take secret correspondence to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia asking it to assume control and support of the Massachusetts militia now besieging Boston. Church departed for Philadelphia on May 20th, 1775 and did not return to Cambridge until the afternoon of June 16th, arriving in the middle of the battle of Bunker Hill. On May 20th, Warren became President of the Provincial Congress, and on June 14th a major general in the Massachusetts militia only to die two days later at Bunker Hill. (See my post on" Dr Joseph Warren at Bunker Hill - Heroic or Foolish.")
   In the meantime, Arnold was awaiting authority from the Continental Congress to proceed with a plan he had drawn up to attack Canada. On June 15th, 1775, Arnold sent an aide to Philadelphia to outline his plans. But, on that very day George Washington was appointed as Commander in Chief of the new American Army by that Congress and it would be months before Washington could turn his attention to Arnold and his plans to invade Canada. Washington's first priority was to hasten to Cambridge and take command of the army besieging Boston.

Enterprise - Arnold's flagship

 In the absence of Drs Warren and Church, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety proceeded to undermine Arnold in a series of actions. The first was the dispatch of Colonel Henshaw to Connecticut. If Connecticut was ready to take control over the captured forts, Henshaw was to proceed to Ticonderoga and turn over command to a Connecticut officer. If Connecticut had not sent officers and men to take control of Ticonderoga, Henshaw was to tell Arnold to stay on. But on his arrival in Connecticut, Henshaw learned that it had opened up a third possibility by sending a delegation to Albany to ask New York to take control of the forts. New York was less than thrilled with the prospect of assuming responsibility for the Massachusetts-Connecticut attack on crown forts on its own territory and only wanted to make sure that the captured cannon and supplies remained in New York and were not sent on to Boston. Henshaw sent an aide to Arnold at Crown Point with a letter instructing him to guard against any surprise from the enemy and that he would receive further instructions. Arnold was left in a state of a bewildering confusion of interests and orders but could take relief in the fact that Massachusetts had not relieved him of command -yet.
  The Committee of Safety was receiving reports from a number of sources to include an account of the taking of Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen which only further increased their apprehension over the whole Ticonderoga affair. On June 12th, acting on a recommendation from the Committee of Safety, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress decided to send a an investigative committee to Ticonderoga with authority to review how Arnold had executed his commission and to give him such orders as they deemed necessary. The committee consisted of Walter Spooner, Jedediah Foster, and James Sullivan. In addition, Arnold was to turn over his command to an officer appointed by Connecticut and the three members of the special investigative committee were authorized to decide if Arnold should remain in the employ of Massachusetts and could discharge him and order him to return to Massachusetts and render an account of his actions.

James Sullivan - Member Spooner Committee, later Governor of Massachusetts



     The three Massachusetts investigators arrived at Crown Point on June 22nd and to the beleaguered Arnold they appeared to be just another delegation come in to reflect in his glory or perhaps to bring in some sorely needed cash. Nothing prepared him for the confrontation that took place abroad his flagship, Enterprise. The committee ordered Arnold to step down immediately as commander and was informed that, if he wished to remain in charge of his contingent of Massachusetts militia, it would have to be as second in command to a newly arrived Connecticut officer. Arnold flatly refused; he would resign first. There was no further negotiation. Later that day, the committee chairman, Walter Spooner, sent Arnold a note in which it was stated that "It is the expectation of the provincial congress that the chief officer of the Connecticut forces at these stations will command..." Arnold not only was to turn command of his troops over to a Connecticut officer but he was ordered  to "lay an account of your disbursements before the Provincial Congress."
   That night Arnold retired to his cabin and drafted a long letter to the Committee. He expressed his outrage in the manner in which he had been treated, stating, among other grievances, that the whole manner in which the committee had acted was "a most disgraceful reflection on him and the body of troops he commands " and was "a sufficient inducement to resign." Arnold ended the letter by offering his resignation because of the failure of Massachusetts to discharge its obligations honorably to him as well as to his men. The Congress had failed him and his men by only furnishing L100 to keep his army in the field for two months. He had advanced the army L1000 out of his own fortune and had borrowed money on his own word to pay his men when it became necessary. This had put him in a terrible financial bind.

Jedediah Foster home outside of Worcester

   Benedict Arnold then took the only action he thought he could. On June 24th, 1775, six weeks after taking Fort Ticonderoga, he disbanded his regiment and resigned his Massachusetts commission. Arnold now only wanted to go home to Connecticut, straighten out his financial affairs, and then proceed to Massachusetts to clear his name.
   He was soon to discover, however, that three days prior to his confrontation with the Spooner committee, on June 19th 1775, his wife of eight years, Peggy Mansfield, had died, leaving him a widower with three young sons.

  To be continued