Arnold, Benedict

Arnold, Benedict (1741–1801), Revolutionary War general who, with Ethan Allen, captured Fort Ticonderoga (1775) and marched through the Maine woods in an attempt to seize Quebec. As commander of Philadelphia in 1778 he got in trouble with civil authorities and was sentenced to court‐martial. At this time he began to make treasonable reports to Clinton, the British general. In 1780 he accepted the command of West Point, and plotted to deliver the garrison to André. When the plot failed because of André's capture, Arnold fled to the British army, later leading devastating raids against Virginia and his native Connecticut. The latter part of his life was spent in England and New Brunswick. He appears as a character in Brackenridge's play The Death of General Montgomery, dealing with the Quebec campaign, and in such plays on the affair of André as those by William Dunlap, Samuel Woodworth, W.W. Lord, and Clyde Fitch; and also in D.P. Thompson's novel The Green Mountain Boys, and F.J. Stimson's novel My Story, ostensibly an autobiography, and Harold Sinclair's Westward the Tide, Source materials concerning his expedition to Quebec were edited by Kenneth Roberts as March to Quebec (1938) and employed in the same author's novel Arundel (1930).