This Day in Revolutionary War History (Benedict Arnold’s Wartime Profiteering)

June 23, 1778—Displaying the avarice that helped fuel his later infamous betrayal, Major General Benedict Arnold of the Continental Army used his new office as military governor of Philadelphia to make a secret profiteering deal with the army’s clothier general and the latter’s deputy. 

I’ve long felt that, as much as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, or just about any other patriot you could name, Arnold’s life deserves to be dramatized for film or TV. (In fact, it has been put on stage, in Richard Nelson’s 2002 drama The General From America, starring Colin Redgrave—yes, the brother of Vanessa and Lynn—and the outdoor drama Benedict Arnold: A Brave Revenge.) 

Or maybe I should say, “deserves a satisfying film or TV drama,” because several years ago A&E took a crack at it with a two-hour docudrama, “Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor,” starring Aidan Quinn. I never caught the show, and judging from this review, I can’t say I’m sorry. (Kelsey Grammer as George Washington?) 

In certain ways, Arnold’s covert pact with clothier general James Mease and deputy William West resembled the way the general moved on and off the battlefield: boldly and rapidly. Remarkably, he acted only four days after he had assumed his post as Philadelphia’s military governor. Washington made the appointment hoping to reward a talented but touchy subordinate while enabling him to recuperate from a nasty wound suffered at the Battle of Saratoga.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t his maimed left leg that ruined Arnold, but his service in an all-too-political job that left him naked to his many enemies. 

In his sterling biography, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor, Willard Sterne Randall demonstrates, with a kind of narrative energy that might have even captured the restless general’s attention, why his subject was “the best field commander in the war on either side.”

Indeed, it’s impossible not to be impressed by the soldier’s record up through and including Saratoga: seizing Fort Ticonderoga; marching through Maine and making a brave, doomed assault on Quebec in the winter; building virtually from scratch a makeshift, motley naval fleet on Lake Ticonderoga that delayed the British military campaign in New York State for a crucial year; then turning the tide at Saratoga by a charge across the battlefield. 

In short, if you wanted someone who could steal you a ghost of a chance at beating insuperable odds, you couldn’t do any better than select Arnold.

Over the years, historians have tried to answer why this master of the battlefield became the Lucifer of the American Revolution. Biographers such as Randall and Clare Brandt point to such developments as his growing resentment over the Continental Congress’ promotion of inferior officers over him, or his marriage to the beautiful young Tory Peggy Shippen. (Let it be noted in the latter case what guys for seemingly forever have forgotten: that no good comes when a man makes a fool of himself over a woman half his age.)

But you can’t help but notice concern with money as the overriding element in his life—before, during and after his military career. In The Man in the Mirror, Clare Brandt rides this thesis almost to the breaking point, but she still has compelling reasons to trace the seed of his treason to “the great American virus: social insecurity.”

Think about it: here’s a guy forced to leave an elite private academy as an adolescent because his rummy of a father went financially belly-up. (Sounds like what John O’Hara might have concocted if he’d ever written a historical novel.) At the start of the revolution, this apothecary and small-time merchant in New Haven saw the patriot cause—at least at first—as a means of securing glory—and, along the way, padding his wallet.

It wasn’t enough that Arnold’s seizure of Fort Ticonderoga’s cannon helped drive the British out of Boston; he had to submit a bill for expenses that was so high that lawmakers were prompted to do what they do best: talk and investigate without accomplishing much of anything except tick people off.

But already, there were signs of weakness in Arnold. It wasn’t only that he quarreled with almost everybody at one point or another. He saw every financial deal, every promotion as the recognition he deserved all his life. And when he didn’t get something, he usually reacted out of all proportion to the slight.

Washington, normally a good judge of men’s abilities, picked the exact wrong assignment for his physically and spiritually wounded subordinate. With the British just having left Philadelphia, the Supreme Executive Council, led by politician Joseph Reed, was, at least at that time, more powerful in Pennsylvania’s affairs than the Continental Congress itself. The council looked askance at Arnold’s fraternization with Tories, neutrals and those who moved stealthily among these camps, such as the Shippen family.

Arnold began entertaining on a scale wildly out of his salary range as a soldier. Later, he would defend some of his actions as simply carrying out the wishes of the Continental Congress—notably, closing the city’s shops while he inventoried captured goods to see which should be requisitioned by army headquarters.

However, take a look at the agreement among Arnold, Mease and West: “Whereas by purchasing goods and necessaries for the use of the public, sundry articles not wanted for that purpose may be obtained, it is agreed by the subscribers that all such goods and merchandise which are or may be bought by the clothier general, or persons appointed by him, shall be sold for the joint equal benefit of the subscribers and be purchased at their risk.”

The problem with the pact was twofold. The first was admirably summed up by Carl Van Doren in his Secret History of the American Revolution: “Under this arrangement Mease and his deputy might buy whole stocks if they chose, using public credit instead of their own capital, charge the army with what it could use, sell the remainder at whatever profit to them, account only for the sum originally paid, and divide the whole proceeds with Arnold.”

Second, Arnold never disclosed this agreement. In fact, it never saw the light of day until the exposure of Arnold’s treachery a few years later. If Arnold felt he had done nothing wrong, why did he go to such lengths to hide it?

Arnold’s lust for lucre resembled that of Daniel Webster more than a half century later. In both cases, the public never knew the full extent of the financial dealings involved, but sensed enough to suspect something was amiss. And that realization led both men to lose the prizes that their brilliance would otherwise have entitled them to—in Webster’s case, the Presidency; in Arnold’s, a larger command in the Continental Army.

Less than a year after his appointment as military governor, the Council of Pennsylvania lodged eight charges against Arnold, including abuse of power, misuse of military authority, and self-aggrandizing business dealings. Though he was acquitted on most charges, the tribunal found enough evidence to recommend that General Washington reprimand Arnold.

Shortly thereafter, Arnold began the negotiations with the British that led him to become a turncoat. As historian James Hanratta points out, his demand for turning over West Point to the British in 1780 was 20,000 sterling ($1 million in today’s money)—all too typical of the secret business partner of Mease and West, the man whose name has became a synonym in America for "traitor."