H A Andrews, BENEDICT ARNOLD: TRAGIC PATRIOT

BENEDICT ARNOLD: TRAGIC PATRIOT

Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor (2003) (TV)

Director * Mikael Salomon
Writer * * William Mastrosimone

Arnold moaned that he wished he had been killed at Saratoga rather than crippled. His friend George Washington would later come to agree.

Dark Eagle: A Story of Benedict Arnold and the American Revolution

based on the book Dark Eagle

Dramatis Personae

Aidan Quinn .... Benedict Arnold
Kelsey Grammer .... George Washington
Flora Montgomery .... Peggy Shippen

Aidan Quinn is Benedict Arnold: Barnes & Noble.com.

The Traitor's Curse

The Benedict Arnold Story:
A Review of the Traitor's Cause
A Question of Honor

Many Americans who kicked off the War for Independence with a rousing "God Save the King" ended the war with "God Bless America." Benedict Arnold went the other way. The hero of Quebec, Valcour Island and Saratoga, twice wounded in combat, a soldier's soldier adulated in the ranks, Arnold would pick the wrong moment in 1780 to jump from the winning side to the losers. For 223 years, Americans have shaken their heads in wonder.

Irish actor Aidan Quinn delivered a masterful performance in the role of the American paradox, the unspoken of hero who made all that followed possible but never received a share in it.

The movie Arnold follows the familiar pageant of Shakespearean story line handed down through 13 generations to Generation X. In the movie version, Peggy Shippen, Arnold's young second wife is a resolute schemer who seduces the hero disaffected by Congress' refusal to pay the expenses Arnold incurred in the service of the Cause and impresses the tragic hero into British ranks. "What have I done?" Arnold asks himself.

Just how did this remarkable metamorphosis occur? Sent to recaptured Philadelphia as Military Governor, Arnold has instructions from Washington to keep the peace between Whig and Tory. Inside the US Capitol, Joseph Reed, the President of Pennsylvania (Governor) is prancing around with the well-trained Pennsylvania Militia to run off Tories and hang those who can't be scared away.

Arnold tired of years in the field, grievously wounded in the decisive battle for Saratoga, would have demured from Washington's request to return to the colors. But Washington (Kelsey Grammar) persists.

The gold leaves of command fit well on Kelsey Grammar's shoulders. Rising above his prior roles as the straight man in situation comedy, Grammar plays the father of his country with an elegance honoring the man who had to treat with two vicious wars, one with pompous US congressman consumed in an inflated idea of their own importance and the other with the British Red Coats and their Hessian hirelings.

Yet if Kelsey Grammar does not reach Washington's reported height of six foot, Kelsey Grammar exudes all Washington's charm. Kelsey Grammar as Washington needs all the finesse in his arsenal of simple earthiness and cabinet of Madera to cajole the wounded hero Arnold to take the post.

Following orders, Arnold breaks up a lynch mob and incurs the wrath of Reed.

The importance of Arnold's task was not as the movie suggests a peace keeping mission borne of pristine motives and humanitarianism. The movie does not treat with the international implications of Arnold's assignment. In the wake of Arnold's victory over the British at Saratoga and Washington's at Monmouth, the French had entered the War. To keep the war from widening, a parliamentary commission headed by the Earl of Carlisle met with Congress to discuss a negotiated peace. Violence between Whig and Tory could have given the British an excuse to refuse to withdraw the Red Coats as part of a prospective settlement.

What better way to broker the peace between Whig and Troy than to invite the bitter enemies to a party? Arnold reasons. Independence Day ought to be a fine occasion! However due to an intemperate exchange with Reed, the Patriots walk out of their own celebration.

Regrettably, the role of Joseph Reed played by Stephen Hogan was uncredited.

Arundel
Arundel

Rabble in Arms

Kenneth Robert's Books on the Revolution all speak of the courage of Arnold and the insiduousness of his critics. Roberts never published a version of Arnold's treason, but Arnold reemerges in Oliver Wiswell as a British Loyalist Commander.

The real life Joseph Reed, Arnold's nemesis, differs greatly from the movie's version of him as an Imitation Patriot, a cross between the insidious Bill Clinton and the bumbling Dopey Dan Quayle. An American lawyer trained in England, Reed returned to America when remonstrations between England and her colonies started to erupt into civil strife. Appointed to the insurrectionist committee of correspondence, the patriot Reed gained prominence in Pennsylvania's provincial convention and in the Continental Congress.

One of two Congressmen to serve in the Army, Reed acted as General Washington's aide-de-camp and personal secretary. Contrary to the movie, Reed's courage served Washington well in the Holiday battles at Trenton and Princeton and later at Brandywine, White Marsh and Monmouth.

Reelected in 1778 to Congress, Reed, a signator to the First Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, rejected a bribe of Ł10,000 sterling offered by the parliamentary commission headed by the Earl of Carlisle to promote Anglo-American reconciliation.

Reed answered the Irish peer in that whimsical manner best understood by Carlisle's own compatriots:

" I am not worth purchasing; but, such as I am, the King of Great Britain is not rich enough to do it."

Unanimously elected president of the supreme executive council of Pennsylvania, Reed suppressed the mutiny of `Mad' Anthony Waynes' troops in the Pennsylvania line.

Reed's biographers claim for him the honor in detecting early the weaknesses of Arnold's character, notwithstanding strong support for Arnold on the floor of Congress and among Pennsylvania's magnificent troops. Although acknowledging his inflexible patriotism, the Reed's descendants would label him a "moderate" among the Whig party. Moderate is a much bandied term by the milquetoast set. The American Revolution was like all other upheavals a violent, divisive affair; what moderates there were stayed with the Crown. While the movie sacrifices Reeds' character to heighten Arnold's personal dilemma, true to the blue, Reed was never caught on the fence in the pained self-doubt of a milquetoast or moderate. An irrevocably committed patriot, Reed was very capable of all the deprecations on the hold-out Tories that the movie claimed for him. The Tories, Reed would have said, are the enemy; if they leave the King cannot be restored.

Unacclaimed actor Stephen Hogan did justice to the fierce determination of Joseph Reed and Reed's unswerving dedication to the Rebel cause, albeit at Arnold's expence.

Benedict Arnold

Traitor: The Case of Benedict Arnold

Finishing Becca: A Story about Peggy Shippen and Benedict Arnold

Lack of Representation is tyranny! said the Rebels. Wouldn't they have a legitimate beef with Hollywood where `The Glorious Cause' is virtually forgotten. Literature has been far kinder. Many writers keep the tradition alive.

Arnold's gall won the attention of the beautiful Tory Lass, Peggy Shippen, who though once wooed by enemy British Captain John Andre is willing to shuck Royal Red for Republican Blue for the moment. In the movie version, Arnold's marriage does lose him much credibility with the Rebels and the Army. I suspect the Rebels had plans to marry the real life Arnold, America's most eligible batchelor, to a more mature woman from the Revolution's own circles. Shortly after the marriage, Arnold, ruined by Congress' failure to bring his pay up to date, enters into treasonous correspondence with the British and his defection from the cause.

Flora Montgomery who played Peggy Shippen with a calculated diabolic cunning that has always been Peggy's place of legend. Yet, while I do believe Peggy was pivotal in the betrayal, I don't think she was as smart or as cunning as either she or the legend makers who followed might have thought.

Arnold was lonely. His wife had died. He had young boys to raise. He had spent three long years in the field. He needed a friend.

Eighteen year old Peggy, wasn't that friend. She had that party girl's frolicksome nature: acquisitive and materialistic, but without utterly substance. Peggy could fit into an Independence Day picnic as easily as into a soiree for the King's birthday.

A general's wife in the American Army of the time enjoyed the life of an unpaid head nurse who organized the other wives in caring for the wounded. Along the Hudson River in Arnold's tenure, the British and Americans skirmished everyday. Pregnancy was no excuse. The colonel's wives would have chirped, "Every woman in this camp is with child or recently delivered."

The glamourless life of an unpaid head nurse in field operating tents did not hold much appeal to the frivilous Peggy. The daily parties and soirees of the Imperial hierarchy in occupied New York City would seem to have slightly more charm.

And the General? The General was probably drunk most of the time to relieve the suffering from his painful wounds. Did Arnold wallowing in the bottle and in self-pity deceive himself that legions of US soldiers would defect with him to the British? That may be the message from the movie. Does it hold true to life?

The real life Arnold ordered Rebel soldiers to row him to the waiting British warship appropriately named Vulture. When the oarsmen refused to join Arnold in defection, they were taken as prisoners of war. On arrival in New York, Arnold insisted on being paid a bonus for having captured American Rebels. Sir Henry Clinton ordered the release of the oarsman and contemptuously paid Arnold the bounty out of his own pocket.

The movie correctly shows that few joined Arnold in returning to the Cross of St George, but does not explain that of that small number many were counterfeit traitors sent with instructions to assassinate Arnold.

Kelsey Grammar delivers the news to grief-stricken Patriots with a look of contained anguish well worthy of Washington: "Arnold .... Arnold has betrayed us..." The hangings would soon follow.

Oliver Wiswell

Kenneth Robert chronicled the Glorious Cause in historical fiction. His Arundell and Rabble in Arms track Arnold's career as the American Hannibal from his march on Quebec to Victory at Saratoga. In Oliver Wiswell, Robert takes a bold stride: retelling the Revolution from the Tory point of view. Lost from view in Robert's work after he is carried off the battlefield at Saratoga, Arnold joins loyalist ranks in the bitter tale of Oliver Wiswell.

Arnold according to this story did offer to return to American ranks to face the sentence of the Continental Army: leg cut off for Christian burial followed by a hanging from the nearest tree.

Sir Henry, the British CiC, refuses. "There is a cruel rule of war: Never return a deserter." Nick Dunning a British bit part actor excelled in his creation of a hard nosed British commander.

Major John Andre who paid for Arnold's sins would have said of John Light who played the part as magnificently as Michael Wilding's portrayal in Scarlet Coat (1955), "jolly good but it would have been more proper if the other John got my rank right." In this version, Major Andre's promotion is not properly recorded. This ranks among the film's many slight historical lapses.

In a thaw in Anglo-America relations a full 44 years later in 1824 John Andre's body was exchanged for American General Montgomery's remains and reinterned in Westminister Abbey.

Arnold of course following the Treaty of 1783 went to England with other displaced Tories to embark upon several fruitless business ventures.

Ironically in short order, Arnold would be joined there by his nemisis Reed. Reed had fallen ill beyond the care of the primitive state of colonial medicine. Reed died in London in 1784.

Interestingly enough, around the same time, in 1784 Peggy returned to America ostensibly to care for her aging parents. Peggy remained two years during the height of civil disorders of the Critical Period. As the country began to settle into normalcy in 1787, she was asked to leave for good.

What of Arnold's legacy in the country he helped create? I alone say he has truly never departed. I see him everywhere, in every person who quits before the great task is complete, in every person who wallows in self-pity instead of beaming with pride, in every person who accepts the critical opinions of others rather than seeking stock in self-worth. By my count, Arnold has 250 million descendants.

Cheerio!

Benedict Arnold: Tragic Patriot © 2003 by H A ANDREWS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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