Colonel Benedict Arnold by Thomas Hart, 1776.
Benedict Arnold was an American military officer who served during the American Revolution. He fought with distinction in the American Continental Army and rose to major general before defecting to the British in 1780.
Benedict Arnold was born in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1741, the second of six children of his father, Benedict Arnold III, and Hannah Waterman King Arnold. He was the great-grandson of the Rhode Island governor of the same name. Only he and his sister Hannah survived to adulthood; his other siblings died from yellow fever in childhood.
Arnold’s father was a successful businessman, and the family belonged to the upper echelons of Norwich society. At ten, he enrolled in a private school in nearby Canterbury, Connecticut, with the expectation of eventually attending Yale College. However, the deaths of his siblings two years later may have contributed to a decline in the family’s fortunes since his father took up drinking. By the time he was 14, the family had no money for private education. His father’s alcoholism and ill health kept him from training Arnold in the family mercantile business. However, his mother’s family connections secured him an apprenticeship with her cousins Daniel and Joshua Lathrop, who operated a successful apothecary and general merchandise trade in Norwich. He apprenticed with the Lathrops for seven years.
As a young man during the French and Indian War, he enlisted in the New York Militia twice. Still, he deserted each time, pressured by his family to complete his apprenticeship as an apothecary under his uncles at home.
Arnold was very close to his mother, who died in 1759. His father’s alcoholism worsened after her death, and the youth took on supporting his father and younger sister. His father was arrested several times for public drunkenness, refused communion by his church, and died in 1761. He then moved himself and his sister to New Haven, Connecticut, where he opened a small store. He became one of the coast’s most successful merchants, owning ships that sailed from the Caribbean to Canada.
Mt. Pleasant, Benedict Arnold’s mansion, in Philadelphia, by Detroit Photographic, 1900.
In 1767, he married Margaret Mansfield, with whom he had three sons.
In 1775, when the American Revolution began, he was a merchant operating ships in the Atlantic Ocean. He joined the growing American army outside Boston, Massachusetts, and distinguished himself through acts that showed intelligence and bravery. Arnold rode as captain of his Connecticut Militia Company to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to address what had just happened at Lexington. There, he proposed a counterattack against the British. In 1775, he was granted permission to lead a force in capturing British Fort Ticonderoga in New York. Along the way, he encountered Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont on the same quest. After much argument, the two decided to share command; on May 3, they captured the fort with little alarm, as the commander had few guards patrolling the grounds that night. Arnold’s party then proceeded from Fort Ticonderoga to Crown Point and captured it much the same way. If that wasn’t enough, the men captured Fort George (also in the Champlain Valley) by the end of June 1775. Arnold’s wife died that same month.
Although this success was significant, Arnold believed he was forced from command of these new American posts. This did not hinder his ambition. In September 1775, Arnold participated in the American invasion of Canada, per orders of General George Washington. Though the attempt to add a “Fourteenth Colony” failed with a desperate attack on Quebec, most considered Arnold to have served valiantly as a brilliant tactician and hero after he was wounded in the leg during the battle. For this, he was promoted to brigadier general.
General Horatio Gates.
In the summer of 1776, Arnold’s skills as a strategist were once again called upon when he was placed in charge of a new American naval fleet on Lake Champlain. General Horatio Gates ordered him to defend the area and attack only if attacked. Upon learning that a British naval force under Guy Carleton was settling in the lake’s northern end, Arnold took his fleet and stationed it near Valcour Island in October. Several days of battle ensued. Arnold did little to damage the veteran British fleet. He only saved many of his men after grounding and burning their ships. Yet, in Gates’ eyes, he had disobeyed orders by conducting an offensive maneuver.
Now at odds with his superiors and Congress over promotions he did not receive, Arnold made 1777 his year to prove himself. The first chance came in August when General Philip Schuyler ordered him to march West from Albany to prevent a force under British commander Barry St. Leger from overwhelming the beleaguered troops at Fort Schuyler. Arnold turned St. Leger’s superior force against him by blackmailing a Loyalist man into spreading rumors among the Indians about his impending arrival. St. Leger’s allies retreated, leaving him without support; he ordered his regular force to retreat before Arnold arrived on August 21.
As Arnold returned to Albany, the Northern Army, now under Gates’ command, was bearing down to defend against John Burgoyne to the North near Stillwater, New York. After the battle at Freeman’s Farm and an argument with Gates about whether or not to attack the shaken British force, Arnold was relieved of command. On October 7, Burgoyne struck again, closer to the American lines. Seeing the enemy entrenched, Arnold rode to the battlefield to lead an American attack that captured an enemy stronghold, all against Gates’ orders. This minor victory led the Americans to gain the position they needed to force a British surrender. Arnold was wounded in the same leg that he had suffered an injury in Canada. Scorned by Gates but officially thanked by Washington and Congress, he was promoted to Major General and sent to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to recuperate, as he could not command in the field.
Color guard of the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, during morning exercises. U.S. Army Photo, courtesy Britannica.com
Arnold mingled with Loyalist sympathizers in Philadelphia and married into a Loyalist family when he married Peggy Shippen. The couple would eventually have four sons and a daughter. She is best known for introducing him to the British commanders with whom he later sided. As allegations of his loyalties and conduct surfaced, he requested a change of command that would put him back in New York in command of West Point, a well-fortified American stronghold along the Hudson River, which he would later try to deliver into the hands of the British.
General George Washington greatly admired Arnold and appointed him to command West Point in July 1780. Arnold schemed to surrender the fort to the British. However, the plot was exposed in September 1780 when the Revolutionary militia captured British Major John Andre carrying papers that revealed it. The British promised to pay Arnold £20,000 for his capture. Arnold escaped to the British lines, but Andre was hanged.
West Point’s capture would have been a significant blow to the Americans. Although Arnold could not deliver this prize, the British rewarded him with a commission as a brigadier general in the British Army, a pension, funds for lost property, and command of deserters and Tories. Later in the conflict, Arnold was placed in command of the American Legion. He led the British army in battle against the soldiers he had once commanded, after which his name became synonymous with treason and betrayal in the United States.
The reasons for his change of sides have been, and will continue to be, the subject of much speculation, conversation, and numerous books.
The capture of John Andre.
In the Winter of 1782, he and his family moved to London, England. He was well received by King George III and the Tories but frowned upon by the Whigs and most Army officers. In 1787, he moved to Canada to run a merchant business with his sons Richard and Henry. He was highly unpopular there and returned to London permanently in 1791.
In January 1801, Benedict Arnold’s health began to decline. He had suffered from gout since 1775, and the condition attacked his unwounded leg to the point where he could not go to sea. The other leg ached constantly, and he walked only with a cane. His physicians diagnosed him as having dropsy, and a visit to the countryside only temporarily improved his condition. He died after four days of delirium on June 14, 1801, at the age of 60. He was buried at St. Mary’s Church in Battersea, England. His funeral procession consisted of “seven mourning coaches and four state carriages”; the funeral was conducted without military honors. Because of a clerical error in the parish records, his remains were moved to an unmarked mass grave during church renovations a century later.
Benedict Arnold’s name became synonymous with “traitor” soon after his betrayal became public. Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Judas sold only one man, Arnold, three million,” and Alexander Scammell described his actions as “black as hell.” In Arnold’s hometown of Norwich, Connecticut, someone scrawled “the traitor” next to his birth record at city hall, and all of his family’s gravestones have been destroyed except his mother’s.
Compiled and edited by Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated October 2026.
Also See:
Scoundrels Across American History
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