Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 01.djvu/143

ARNOLD.ARNOLD. to win so distinguished a soldier and patriot to their views, soothed him with their sympathy when his proud and haughty spirit smarted under the stinging recollection of the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of his ungrateful compatriots. Things were very dark and disheartening for the Revolutionist cause at that time. The army was unpaid, clad in rags, half starved; there was no money in the treasury, and Congress and the states were divided by factions.

Washington wrote May 28, 1780, that he had "almost ceased to hope." This was the time chosen by the British emissaries and Tories to allure Arnold into the belief that his defection from the patriotic cause would be the means of bringing peace to his country, and that a reconciliation with the parent country would effect all, and more than all, that the Americans could hope to gain by continued resistance. On the 31st day of July, 1780, Arnold on his way to Philadelphia from Connecticut, visited Washington in his camp, and was tendered the command of the left wing of the army, which honor he declined on the plea that his wounds still rendered him incapable of active service in the field. He then asked for the command at West Point, which was given him, and he was soon established in his headquarters at Beverly, formerly the residence of Beverly Robinson, one of the instruments of his seduction. Here he continued his treasonable correspondence with the agents of Sir Henry Clinton, and on the 21st of September met Adjutant-General André near Stony Point, where they made arrangements for the surrender of West Point. Plans of the works, number of troops and armament were furnished by Arnold, who gave to the English officer also a horse and a passport. André was captured as he was returning to New York after the interview, and the treasonable papers concealed in his boots revealed the whole plot. Arnold, hearing by a mere chance of André's capture, fled to New York, where he was protected by the British. He was appointed to a brigadier-generalship in the English army, and later issued "An Address to the Inhabitants of America." He offered himself in exchange for the captured André, but Sir Henry Clinton would not permit the exchange. Rewards were offered for his capture, and an attempt to kidnap him, planned by General Washington and Major Lee, was frustrated by an accident. In 1781 Arnold was sent by his new commander to conduct a raiding party into Virginia and later in the same year to make an attack on New London. Rewards being offered for his capture, his life was constantly in danger, and in December he was sent to England to confer with the ministers upon the conduct of the war. He was accompanied by his family, and had for a fellow voyager Lord Cornwallis, who had been exchanged. He was received with great favor by the king, at whose request he prepared an article headed, "Thoughts on the American War" (1782), which was a carefully considered plan for reconciliation. Arnold received £1315 to indemnify him for loss of property incurred by the step he had taken, and Mrs. Arnold was given a pension of £500 per annum and £100 per annum to each of her children. The system of preferment in the British army, and the opposition of the Whigs, prevented his employment in active service and he resumed mercantile occupations, and in 1787 removed to St. John, N. B., where he built ships and carried on trade with the West Indies. Arnold, who had been condemned for his extravagant way of living in Philadelphia, and had followed the same course in London, displayed great ostentation in St. John, where his hauteur and reserve made him personally disliked. In 1791 he returned to London. General Arnold rendered great service to the British government in the West Indies in 1794—'95, but appealed in vain to be put on active service in the war between France and England in 1796. In 1798 the king granted to General Arnold and his family 13,400 acres of land in Upper Canada. His four sons by his second marriage were educated at the Royal military college, and all received commissions in the British army. His life was written by Jared Sparks, in volume III. of his American Biographies, and more fully by Isaac Newton Arnold in his "Life of Benedict Arnold, his Patriotism and his Treason" (Chicago, 1880). He died in London, June 14, 1801. ARNOLD, George, author, was born in New York city, June 24, 1834. Before he arrived at school age his parents removed to Illinois, where he attended the public schools until his fifteenth year; they then settled at Strawberry Farms, N. J. Having a talent for drawing, he entered the studio of a painter in New York, but soon abandoned his purpose of becoming an artist and devoted himself to literature. His contributions to Vanity Fair and the New York Leader soon brought him into popular favor, and a series of articles, entitled the "McArone Papers," added to his reputation, and established his fame as a humorist. His poems are remarkable for their sweetness and delicacy of sentiment. His works were collected after his death by William Winter, and published in two duodecimo volumes. "The Jolly Old Pedagogue" is his best-known poem. He died Nov. 3, 1865. ARNOLD, Isaac Newton, statesman, was born at Hartwick, Otsego county, N. Y., Nov. 30, 1815, son of George W. Arnold, physician, who emigrated from Rhode Island in 1800 and settled in the wilderness of western New York. In 1835 he