Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/215

186 and there she stood ready with two buckets of water. Having noticed that the two cabin boys were heedless she had determined to keep watch herself over the magazine. This she did until the danger was passed. The captain took in his light sails, opened his ports, and stood upon his course. The privateer waited until the ship was within a mile, then fired a gun to windward and stood on her way. The ruse had saved the merchantman. The incident may serve to show the spirit of this woman, who bore her bitter part in the perils of the Revolution.

Defence as well as eulogy is occasionally necessary in reviewing the names of women who have been prominent in American history. Certainly explanation or investigation of fact is necessary in rightly judging the character of the wife of Benedict Arnold. John Jay, writing from Madrid when Arnold's crime had first become known, says, "All the world here curses Arnold and pities his wife." Robert Morris writes, "Poor Mrs. Arnold! Was there ever such an infernal villain!" But there are others who still believe in her complicity in her husband's plot to betray his country, and point to certain significant sentences in her correspondence with Andre as denoting that she knew at least something of her husband's treachery. The facts of her life would seem to support the theory that all her sympathy would naturally lie with the Loyalist's cause. She was Margaret Shippen of Philadelphia. Her father, Daniel Shippen, afterwards chief justice of Pennsylvania, was distinguished among the aristocracy of the day. He was prominent after the commencement of the contest among those known to cherish Loyalist principles—his daughters being educated in this persuasion and having their constant associations and sympathies with those who were opposed to American independence. Margaret was the youngest, only eighteen years of age, beautiful, fascinating and full of spirit, she acted as hostess of the British officers while their army occupied Philadelphia. This gay, young creature accustomed to the display of the "Pride of Life" and the homage paid to beauty in high station, was not one to resist the lure of ambition.

Her relatives, too, would seem to have passed their estimate upon the brilliant exterior of this young American officer, without a word of information or inquiry as to his character or principles. One of them writes boastfully in a letter, "I understand that General Arnold, a fine gentlemen, lays close siege to Peggy."

Some writers have taken delight in representing this woman who married Benedict Arnold as another Lady Macbeth, an unscrupulous and artful seductress whose ambition was the cause of her husband's crime. But there seems no real foundation even for the supposition that she was acquainted with his purpose of betraying his trust. She was not the person he would have chosen as the sharer of a secret so important, nor was the dissimulation attributed to her consistent with her character. It is likely, of course, that his extravagance was encouraged by his young wife's taste for display and she undoubtedly exercised no saving influence over him. Tn the words of one of his best biographers, "He had no domestic security for doing right—no fireside guardianship to protect him from the tempter. Rejecting, as we do utterly, the theory that his wife was the insti-