addressed himself to the delegation of New-York, in which state his reputation was peculiarly high; and a member of congress from this state, recommended him to Washington for the service which he desired. But this request could not be immediately complied with. The same application to the commander in chief was made not long afterwards through general Schuyler. Washington observed, that, as there was a prospect of an active campaign, he should be gratified with the aid of general Arnold in the field, but intimated, at the same time, that he should receive the appointment requested, if it should be more pleasing to him.

Arnold, without discovering much solicitude, repaired to camp in the beginning of August, and renewed, in person, the solicitations, which had been before indirectly made. He was now offered the command of the left wing of the army, which was advancing against New-York, but he declined it under the pretext, that in consequence of his wounds, he was unable to perform the active duties of the field. Without a suspicion of his patriotism, he was invested with the command of West Point. Previously to his soliciting this station, he had, in a letter to colonel Robinson, signified his change of principles, and his wish to restore himself to the favour of his prince, by some signal proof of his repentance. This letter opened to him a correspondence with Sir Henry Clinton, the object of which was to concert the means of putting the important post, which he commanded, into the possession of the British general.

His plan, it is believed, was to have drawn the greater part of his army without the works, under the pretext of fighting the enemy in the defiles, and to have left unguarded a designated pass, through which the assailauts might securely approach, and surprise the fortress. His troops he intended to place, so that they would be compelled to surrender, or be cut in pieces. But just as his scheme was ripe for execution, the wise Disposer of events, who so often and so remarkably interposed in favour of the American cause, blasted his designs.

Major Andre, Adjutant general of the British army, was selected as the person, to whom the maturing of Arnold's treason, and the arrangements for its execution should be committed. A correspondence was, for some time, carried on between them under a mercantile disguise, and the feigned names of Gustavus and Anderson; and at length, to facilitate their communications, the Vulture sloop of war moved up the North river and took a station convenient for the purpose, but not so near as to excite suspicion. An interview was agreed on, and in the night of September the 21st, 1780, he

was taken in a boat, which was dispatched for the purpose, and carried to the beach without the posts of both armies, under a pass for John Anderson. He met general Arnold at the house of a Mr. Smith. While the conference was yet unfinished, daylight approached; and to avoid the danger of discovery, it was proposed, that he should remain concealed till the succeeding night. He is understood to have refused to be carried within the American posts, but the promise made him by Arnold, to respect this objection, was not observed. He was carried within them contrary to his wishes and against his knowledge. He continued with Arnold the succeeding day, and when, on the following night, he proposed to return to the Vulture, the boatmen refused to carry him, because she had, during the day, shifted her station, in consequence of a gun having been moved to the shore, and brought to bear upon her. This embarrassing circumstance reduced him to the necessity of endeavouring to reach NewYork by land. Yielding, with reluctance, to the urgent representations of Arnold, he laid aside his regimentals, which he had hitherto worn under a surtout, and put on a plain suit of clothes; and, receiving a pass from the American general, authorising him, under the feigned name of John Anderson, to proceed on the public service, to the White Plains, or lower, if he thought proper, he set out on his return. He had passed all the guards and posts on the road without suspicion, and was proceeding to New-York in perfect security, when, on the 23d of September, one of the three militia-men, who were employed with others in scouting parties between the lines of the two armies, springing suddenly from his covert into the road, seized the reins of his bridle and stopped his horse. Instead of producing his pass, Andre, with a want of self-possession, which can be attributed only to a kind Providence, asked the man hastily, where he belonged; and being answered "to below," replied immediately, "and so do I." He then declared himself to be a British officer, on urgent business, and begged that he might not be detained. The other two militia men coming up at this moment, he discovered his mistake; but it was too late to repair it. He offered a purse of gold and his gold watch, and said, "this will convince you that I am a gentleman, and if you will suffer me to pass, I will send to New York, and give you any amount you shall name, in cash, or in dry goods;" and, pointing to an adjacent wood, "you may keep me in that wood till it shall be delivered to you." All his offers. however, were rejected with disdain, and they declared that ten thousand guineas, or any other sum would be no temptation. It is to

their virtue, no less glorious to America, than Arnold's apos tacy is disgraceful, that his detestable crimes were discovered. The militia men, whose names were John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Vanwert, proceeded to search him. They found concealed in his boots, exact returns, in Arnold's hand writing, of the state of the forces, ordnance, and defences of West Point and its dependencies; critical remarks on the works, and an estimate of the men ordinarily employed in them, with other interesting papers. Andre was carried before lieutenant colonel Jameson, the officer commanding the scouting parties on the lines, and regardless of him self, and only anxious for the safety of Arnold, he still maintained the character which he had assumed, and requested Jameson to inform his commanding officer that Anderson was taken. An express was accordingly dispatched, and the traitor, thus becoming acquainted with his danger, escaped.

Major Andre, after his detection, was permitted to send a message to Arnold, to give him notice of his danger; and the traitor found opportunity to escape on board the Vulture, on the 25th of September, 1780, a few hours before the return of Washington, who had been absent on a journey to Hartford, Connecticut. It is supposed, however, that he would not have escaped, had not an express to the commander in chief, with an account of the capture of Andre, missed him by taking a different road from the one which he travelled.

Arnold, on the very day of his escape, wrote a letter to Washington, declaring that the love of his country had governed him in his late conduct, and requesting him to protect Mrs. Arnold. She was conveyed to her husband at New York, and his clothes and baggage, for which he had written, were transmitted to him. During the exertions which were made to rescue Andre from the destruction, which threatened him, Arnold had the hardihood to interpose. He appealed to the humanity of the commander in chief, and then sought to intimidate him by stating the situation of many of the principal characters of South Carolina, who had forfeited their lives, but had hitherto been spared through the clemency of the British general. This clemency, he said, could no longer, in justice, be extended to them, should major Andre suffer.

When Arnold's treason was known at Philadelphia, an artist of that city constructed an effigy of him, large as life, and seated in a cart, with the figure of the devil at his elbow, holding a lantern up to the face of the traitor, to show him to the people, having his name and crime in capital letters. The cart was paraded the whole evening through the streets of the city with drums and fifes playing the rogue's march, with other marks of infamy, and was attended by a vast con

course of people. The effigy was finally hanged for the want of the original, and then committed to the flames. Yet this is the man on whom the British bestowed ten thousand pounds sterling as the price of his treason, and appointed to the rank of brigadier general in their service. It could scarcely be imagined that there was an officer of honour left in that army, who would debase himself and his commission by serving under or ranking with Benedict Arnold!

Arnold preserved the rank of brigadier general throughout the war. Yet he must have been held in contempt and detestation by the generous and honourable. It was impossible for men of this description, even when acting with him, to forget that he was a traitor, first the slave of his rage, then purchased with gold, and finally secured by the blood of one of the most accomplished officers in the British army. One would suppose that his mind could not have been much at ease; but he had proceeded so far in vice, that perhaps his reflections gave him but little trouble. "I am mistaken," says Washington, in a private letter, "if, at this time, Arnold is undergoing the torments of a mental hell. He wants feeling. From some traits of his character, which have lately come to my knowledge, he seems to have been so hacknied in crime, so lost to all sense of honour and shame, that while his faculties still enable him to continue his sordid pursuits, there will be no time for remorse."

Arnold found it necessary to make some exertions to secure the attachment of his new friends. With the hope of alluring many of the discontented to his standard, he published an address to the inhabitants of America, in which he endeavoured to justify his conduct. He had encountered the dangers of the field, he said, from apprehension that the rights of his country were in danger. He had acquiesced in the declaration of independence, though he thought it precipitate. But the rejection of the overtures, made by Great Britain in 1778, and the French alliance, had opened his eyes to the ambitious views of those, who would sacrifice the happiness of their country to their own aggrandizement, and had made him a confirmed loyalist. He artfully mingled assertions, that the principal members of congress held the people in sovereign contempt.

This was followed in about a fortnight by a proclamation, addressed" to the officers and soldiers of the continental army, who have the real interest of their country at heart, and who are determined to be no longer the tools and dupes of congress or of France." To induce the American officers and soldiers to desert the cause, which they had embraced, he represented that the corps of cavalry and infantry, which he

was authorized to raise, would be upon the same footing with the other troops in the British service; that he should with pleasure, advance those, whose valour he had witnessed; and that the private men, who joined him, should receive a bounty of three guineas each, besides payment, at the full value, for horses, arms, and accoutrements. His object was the peace, liberty, and safety of America. "You are promised liberty," he exclaims, but is there an individual in the enjoyment of it saving your oppressors? Who among you dare to speak or write what he thinks against the tyranny, which has robbed you of your property, imprisons your persons, drags you to the field of battle, and is daily deluging your country with your blood?" "What," he exclaims again, "is America but a land of widows, orphans, and beggars? As to you, who have been soldiers in the continental army, can you at this day want evidence, that the funds of your country are exhausted, or that the managers have applied them to their private uses? In either case you surely can no longer continue in their service with honour or advantage. Yet you have hitherto been their supporters in that cruelty, which, with equal indifference to yours, as well as to the labour and blood of others, is devouring a country, that from the moment you quit their colours, will be redeemed from their tyranny.'

These proclamations did not produce the effect designed, and in all the hardships, sufferings, and irritations of the war, Arnold remains the solitary instance of an American officer, who abandoned the side first embraced in the contest, and turned his sword upon his former companions in arms.

He was soon despatched by sir Henry Clinton, to make a diversion in Virginia. With about seventeen hundred men he arrived in the Chesapeake, in January, 1781, and being supported by such a naval force, as was suited to the nature of the service, he committed extensive ravages on the rivers and along the unprotected coasts. It is said, that while on this expedition, Arnold enquired of an American captain, whom he had taken prisoner, what the Americans would do with him if he should fall into their hands. The captain at first declined giving him an answer, but upon being repeatedly urged to it, he said, "Why, sir, if I must answer your ques"tion, you must excuse my telling you the plain truth: if my "countrymen should catch you, I believe they would first cut "off that lame leg, which was wounded in the cause of freedom "and virtue, and bury it with the honours of war, and after"wards hang the remainder of your body in gibbets." The reader will recollect that the captain alluded to the wound Arnold received in one of his legs, at the attack upon Quebec, in 1776.