It was uncertain how far the Vulture had gone.The vigilance of those guarding the river was aroused and Andre's guide insisted that he should go to the British lines by land.He was carrying compromising papers and wearing civilian dress when seized by an American party and held under close arrest.Arnold meanwhile, ignorant of this delay, was waiting for the expected advance up the river of the British fleet.He learned of the arrest of Andre while at breakfast on the morning of the twenty-fifth, waiting to be joined by Washington, who had just ridden in from Hartford.
Arnold received the startling news with extraordinary composure, finished the subject under discussion, and then left the table under pretext of a summons from across the river.Within a few minutes his barge was moving swiftly to the Vulture eighteen miles away.Thus Arnold escaped.The unhappy Andre was hanged as a spy on the 2d of October.He met his fate bravely.Washington, it is said, shed tears at its stern necessity under military law.
Forty years later the bones of Andre were reburied in Westminster Abbey, a tribute of pity for a fine officer.
The treason of Arnold is not in itself important, yet Washington wrote with deep conviction that Providence had directly intervened to save the American cause.Arnold might be only one of many.Washington said, indeed, that it was a wonder there were not more.In a civil war every one of importance is likely to have ties with both sides, regrets for the friends he has lost, misgivings in respect to the course he has adopted.In April, 1779, Arnold had begun his treason by expressing discontent at the alliance with France then working so disastrously.His future lay before him; he was still under forty; he had just married into a family of position; he expected that both he and his descendants would spend their lives in America and he must have known that contempt would follow them for the conduct which he planned if it was regarded by public opinion as base.Voices in Congress, too, had denounced the alliance with France as alliance with tyranny, political and religious.Members praised the liberties of England and had declared that the Declaration of Independence must be revoked and that now it could be done with honor since the Americans had proved their metal.There was room for the fear that the morale of the Americans was giving way.
The defection of Arnold might also have military results.He had bargained to be made a general in the British army and he had intimate knowledge of the weak points in Washington's position.
He advised the British that if they would do two things, offer generous terms to soldiers serving in the American army, and concentrate their effort, they could win the war.With a cynical knowledge of the weaker side of human nature, he declared that it was too expensive a business to bring men from England to serve in America.They could be secured more cheaply in America; it would be necessary only to pay them better than Washington could pay his army.As matters stood the Continental troops were to have half pay for seven years after the close of the war and grants of land ranging from one hundred acres for a private to eleven hundred acres for a general.Make better offers than this, urged Arnold; "Money will go farther than arms in America." If the British would concentrate on the Hudson where the defenses were weak they could drive a wedge between North and South.If on the other hand they preferred to concentrate in the South, leaving only a garrison in New York, they could overrun Virginia and Maryland and then the States farther south would give up a fight in which they were already beaten.Energy and enterprise, said Arnold, will quickly win the war.
In the autumn of 1780 the British cause did, indeed, seem near triumph.An election in England in October gave the ministry an increased majority and with this renewed determination.When Holland, long a secret enemy, became an open one in December, 1780, Admiral Rodney descended on the Dutch island of St.
Eustatius, in the West Indies, where the Americans were in the habit of buying great quantities of stores and on the 3d of February, 1781, captured the place with two hundred merchant ships, half a dozen men-of-war, and stores to the value of three million pounds.The capture cut off one chief source of supply to the United States.By January, 1781, a crisis in respect to money came to a head.Fierce mutinies broke out because there was no money to provide food, clothing, or pay for the army and the men were in a destitute condition."These people are at the end of their resources," wrote Rochambeau in March.Arnold's treason, the halting voices in Congress, the disasters in the South, the British success in cutting off supplies of stores from St.
Eustatius, the sordid problem of money--all these were well fitted to depress the worn leader so anxiously watching on the Hudson.It was the dark hour before the dawn.
