Benedict Arnold: Traitor or Tragic Hero?

Some have asked why I called my new book God Save Benedict Arnold.

In the final chapter, I pose the question: What if, during the Revolutionary War, Arnold had gotten the assignment at sea that he had always wanted? A nautical command might have saved him from the idleness that festered into treason. He might have continued to serve America as courageously and effectively as ever and returned home draped in glory. Someone on the wharf might have shouted, “God save Benedict Arnold!”

It was not to be. But the title is also an appeal to leave the moral judgment of Arnold to a higher power. Arnold’s paradoxical career — hero and villain, patriot and traitor — has always been hard to grasp. We can never completely resolve his contradictions, nor can we plumb the obscure motives that gave rise to his betrayal.

Arnold’s treason was more grievous than many imagine. It was not just a change of heart, a return to the loyalty he had previously felt for the king. He betrayed the companions who had trusted him, George Washington most of all. He attempted to hand the enemy a success that might have won them the war. He attacked an American city and led redcoats to kill American soldiers.

But earlier, when the patriot cause had most needed initiative, determination, and sheer military brilliance, Arnold had proven to be one of its most stalwart advocates. He had risked his life, spent his fortune, and undergone enormous hardships for the cause of freedom. His victories on Lake Champlain and at the Battle of Saratoga place him among the most accomplished military leaders in our history.

I choose not to idolize Benedict Arnold. Nor do I carve out a special place in Hell for him. I try, as well as I can, to imagine him in life — not as a character in history but as a human being. I look for those enduring qualities that can help us to connect with a problematic figure from a vastly different time.

My book is not a biography of Arnold, but I found myself turning back to the sketchy details we know about his childhood. He was an avid youngster, something of a show-off and a daredevil. His mother was a strict Calvinist whose letters to her son were filled with fatal admonitions: “Whatever you neglect do not neglect your precious soul.” She urged him to be prepared at all times to “step off the banks of time,” as she had seen others of her children do already.

Still a child, Arnold endured the decline and alcoholism of his father. Once a prosperous merchant and seaman, the elder Arnold became the town drunk, a man reviled, laughed at and scorned. Young Benedict was given the heartbreaking duty of fetching him home as he lay insensible in a tavern or along some street. The experience left Arnold with a keen regard for his own honor and with a sensitivity to any slight.

In the critical year 1776, Benedict Arnold stood guard with a small fleet of warships on the northern reaches of Lake Champlain, waiting to oppose an enemy invasion from Canada. While he floated on the cold water in that dark wilderness, a letter from his sister, Hannah, reached him. She sent him three pairs of stockings and news from home. At the end of her letter she reminded him of their mother’s austere faith. “To the great Disposer of all events we must commit the issue,” she wrote. “We all want to see you, but whether that happiness is again to be repeated to us, God only knows.”

He needed no reminder. Arnold’s willingness to face death and to give his life willingly for a cause were qualities that made him a supremely effective warrior.

Hannah included a message from his son Harry, four years old. The boy wanted his father to buy him “a little horse and a pair of pistols” so that he could become a cavalryman. “As far as courage goes,” Hannah wrote, he was very like his father. She concluded by writing that the boy “sends a kiss to Pa and says, ‘Auntie, tell my Papa he must come home, I want to kiss him.’”

The course of Arnold’s life is among the human tragedies of our country’s early history. The Greeks had long ago examined the concepts of heroism and hubris, of courage and limitation, circumstance and destiny, that seem to direct people’s lives in spite of themselves. Tragedy describes not what a person should be but what it’s like to be a person. One philosopher called it “the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.”

Like everyone, Benedict Arnold followed a path through life. Whether he chose it or whether it was chosen for him is an unanswerable question. The final judgment of his actions must indeed be left to the great Disposer of all events.

GOD SAVE BENEDICT ARNOLD is on sale next week!

“A deeply researched, insightful page-turner.” – Booklist

“Jack Kelly brings the smell of gunpowder to every page.” –Ty Seidule, Professor Emeritus, West Point

Order a copy HERE.
Order a signed copy HERE.

I’ll be talking about the book in the coming week. Some of these events are also available on Zoom. Tell your friends:

Tuesday, December 5 — 6:30pm
Morton Library (Oblong Books)
Rhinecliff, NY [INFO and SIGN UP]

Wednesday, December 6 — 6:30 pm
Ridgefield Historical Society
353 Main St., Ridgefield, CT [INFO and TICKETS']

Thursday, December 7 — 6:30 pm
The American Revolution Institute
2118 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC [INFO and REGISTER]

Saturday, December 9 — 11 a.m.
Lake George Battlefield Alliance
Holiday Inn Resort
2223 US Route 9 (Canada Street)
Lake George, New York [INFO and REGISTER]