Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/283

A.D.1780.] in writing; and sketching, and made a pen-and-ink portrait of himself, now preserved in the Trumbull Gallery at Yale College. One thing only troubled him; that was, that he must die by the halter, and not by a soldier's death. To escape this last and most undeserved ignominy, he addressed a letter to Washington on the 1st of October, entreating that this might be allowed.



"Buoyed," he said, "above the terrors of death by the consciousness of a life devoted to honourable pursuits, and stained with no action that can give me remorse, I trust the request I make to your excellency at this serious period, and which is to soften my last moments, will not be rejected. Sympathy towards a soldier will surely induce your excellency and the military tribunal to adapt the mode of my death to the feelings of a man of honour. Let me hope, sir, that if aught in my character impresses you with esteem towards me—if aught of my misfortunes marks me the victim of policy and not of resentment—I shall experience the operation of these feelings in your heart, by being informed that I am not to die on a gibbet."

Washington did not even vouchsafe him a reply; but the next morning he was led forth to the gallows. He was dressed in his uniform as a British officer, and his behaviour was marked by firmness and composure, till he beheld the fatal tree, when he started, and said, "Must I, then, die in this manner?" But he added, "It will be but a momentary pang." He advanced to the gallows with a firm step, and bandaged his eyes himself with his handkerchief. Being then told that he might speak to the bystanders if he liked, he simply raised the bandage from his eyes, and said, "I pray you bear me witness that I meet my fate like a brave man."

No sooner was he thus executed like a felon, than his judges, the officers who had witnessed his conduct through these trying circumstances, and Washington himself, who in his anger had forgotten his usual courtesy and temper, were ready to bear testimony to the fortitude and gentlemanly conduct and accomplishments of this too open and noble-minded young man, who was as yet only in his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year. Indeed, throughout the whole of the proceedings nothing could exceed the gentlemanly and communicative bearing of Andre. He seemed to feel it as a point of honour to conceal nothing regarding himself, to reveal nothing that might implicate any one else. Little care as Arnold had evinced for his safety till it was too late, he never dropped a syllable of censure upon him. On the other hand, all this fine and affecting demeanour was lost on the Americans, who, whilst they pretended to lament his fate, never ceased coolly to press it to a conclusion. And there can now be but one opinion on this transaction anywhere, except in America—that it is a blot upon their history, and upon their almost solitary great man, which nothing can ever wash out, and which the virtues and nobleness of the victim only render the darker.

A monument was raised to the memory of Andre in Westminster Abbey, and his remains, in 1821, were removed from the soil where they had been so vindictively dishonoured, and carried to England.



Arnold continued to issue his addresses to the American people and army, in which he described the tyranny and deceitfulness of the American government in the blackest terms. He declared that he had always been disposed to accept the very liberal conditions of the mother country, and had seen, with increasing disgust, its disguise and concealment of the true proposals of England from the American people; that they had now reduced the States to a country of widows, orphans, and beggars; had allied themselves to a perfidious and bankrupt nation, which hated