Infamous America - BENEDICT ARNOLD Ep. 2 | “The American Revolution”

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

War between the American colonies and the British Empire erupts in Massachusetts. Benedict Arnold quickly joins the fight and sees intense action. He shows leadership qualities at Fort Ticonderoga and Quebec, and he performs heroically at Lake Champlain and Saratoga. He is injured in battle, but the deeper wounds come from the Continental Congress and the Continental Army. Cracks begin to form in his loyalty to the colonial cause. Thanks to our sponsor, Simplisafe. Get free security camera and a 60-day risk free trial at SimpliSafe.com/infamous Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials : blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On October 7, 1777, the forest of Bemis Heights, just south of Saratoga, New York, clattered with the sounds of battle. A wounded Hessian soldier, fighting for the British General John Burgoyne, made his way through the woods. He was in a column on the right-hand side of a three-pronged attack. The plan was for the center and left-hand columns to distract the American forces, and then the right-hand column would flank the colonial soldiers. It was a solid plan, but Bergoin hadn't accounted for the hot tempers of the Americans. The British commander thought the sight of two of his columns would paralyze the Colonials,

which would allow the third column to slip around the end and attack. But instead of staring in fear at the British forces, the Americans sprang out of their camps and confronted the British directly. Now things were in disarray, and there was one American in particular who was called causing trouble. The wounded Heshen soldier didn't know who the American was, but the American rode wildly through the woods, sometimes firing the rifles of his comrades, sometimes riding straight into battle using his sword.

The Heshen collapsed, but in the distance he could see the unruly American thundering through the woods on a great black horse. With the last of his strength, the Heshen raised his musket and fired and hit the horse. Then, maybe from the Hessian, another shot rang out and hit the American in the left leg. The American commander, Benedict Arnold, crashed to the ground with his horse. He was pinned beneath the animal, but he waved his comrades on and continued to urge them into battle. It was a defining moment in Arnold's early career. From Black Barrel Media, this is infamous America.

I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling a four-part story about what we're telling a four-part story about what one of the most infamous people in American history, Benedict Arnold. This is episode two, the American Revolution. I'll bet most people listening to this have heard the phrase, The shot heard round the world. It's been used to describe the gunshot that assassinated Austria's Archduke Ferdinand, which began World War I.

It's also been applied to a lighter moment in American baseball history. The three-run home run hit by Bobby Thompson of the New York Giants, that beat the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the 1951 National League pennant. But the phrase comes from American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. On July 4th, 1837, he helped dedicate a battlefield monument at North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. The small wooden bridge over the Concord River was the site of the first, or one of the first, shots fired in the American Revolution.

The phrase is the fourth line of a short poem that Emerson read during the dedication. By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flagged to April's breeze unfurled. Here once the embattled farmer stood and fired the shot heard round the world. It's disputed which side fired the first shots of the Revolutionary War, and whether those shots were fired and conquered or in the neighboring town of Lexington. But what is certain is that on April 19, 1775, violence broke out in both Massachusetts towns that marked the beginning of armed conflict between 13 colonies and the British Empire. In Concord, the British set fire to a cache of American weapons.

In Lexington, the British killed eight American militiamen. The next day, Benedict Arnold was outraged when he learned of the violence. Wasting no time, he raised a militia, supplied them with weapons and gumpowder from the local depot, and marched to Massachusetts to provide support. And while he and his men were stationed in Cambridge, Benedict Arnold hatched a plan. Two forts, Ticonderoga and Crown Point, sat on the southern end of New York's Lake Champlain. Both were rich in artillery, and both were manned by light British crews. Taking the forts now, before the British Army had time to reinforce them, would give the Americans a much-needed head start. The Boston Committee of Safety agreed.

In early May, they gave Benedict Arnold a colonel's commission and approved the mission. Benedict's now Colonel Arnold and two lieutenants marched west to the Berkshire Mountains, where Massachusetts meets New York. But once there, Arnold encountered a problem. There was already an American expedition headed to the forts. He rode ahead alone, leaving his lieutenants to raise a new militia. And just over a hundred miles north, in Castleton, Vermont, Arnold met the leader of the other expedition. His name was Ethan Allen, and he was the commander of a militia from Vermont called the Green Mountain Boys. Like Arnold, Allen was a proud man, and he probably didn't take kindly to a strong

stranger showing up and demanding to be put in charge. Commissioner no, Colonel Arnold didn't have any men with him. Allen did, so they struck a compromise. Arnold could come along, and he would have some authority, but he would have to share it with Alan. Arnold and Alan agreed, and that night they continued to Fort Ticonderoga. They captured the fort quickly. Alan and Arnold had just 80 men at their disposal, but they easily opened. overwhelmed the fort's skeleton crew. After the quick success, the Green Mountain Boys raided the

fort's liquor supply and began celebrating. Alan boastfully wrote to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress that he and his men alone captured the fort. Arnold told the Boston Committee for Safety that the Green Mountain Boys lacked discipline, decorum, and that they were in a state of disarray. Then the Green Mountain Boys started trickling out of the fort as Arnold's newly recruited men arrived. The Green Mountain Boys had also seized Fort Crown Point. Now, with two forts on Lake Champlain, the Americans had access to an important waterway. That's when Arnold got another idea. He and his forces seized two armed vessels, one that was owned by the British and one that was owned by a British loyalist. Now the Americans had an armed presence in the southern half of Lake Champlain,

and Arnold was, at least in part, to thank for it. But even after receiving high praise for the capture of Ticonderoga, he encountered trouble with Congress, and that's where his real problems began. In June of 1775, less than a month after Arnold helped capture Fort Ticonderoga, he was replaced as commander by another colonel. Two days after the new colonel's arrival,

a three-man committee showed up. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress sent them to investigate the conditions at the fort, as well as Arnold's conduct. It seemed to Arnold that no one trusted him. In the eyes of the young Continental Congress, the campaigns that captured Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and the two ships were prematurely offensive. And additionally, the Massachusetts Congress summoned him for a hearing on his public expenses during the expedition.

In response, Arnold resigned his commission and headed home. He appeared before the committee, in part to demand repayment for personal expenses that had not yet been reimbursed. He stopped in Albany, New York to deliver a report on his commission, and that's when he learned that while he was away, his wife Margaret died. Arnold went to Connecticut to be with his family, but he scarcely had time to mourn before he was set to appear in Massachusetts. That August, the committee painstakingly went over all of Arnold's expenses and refused to reimburse him. But it wasn't all bad. Later that month, he went to Cambridge to talk to the American Army's commander-in-chief, George Washington. The two men talked about a new frontier for the war, Canada.

Like Fort Ticonderoga, Arnold believed that British held Canada could soon be a problem for the Americans. With well-fortified cities like Montreal and Quebec, the British had key positions from which to attack and possibly capture the American colonies in the north. If the Americans could take the two Canadian cities, they could force the British back. Washington agreed with Arnold, and he said the Continental Army was already planning an invasion of Canada. Arnold then proposed his own strategy. A major force would move on Montreal to both. both take the city and provide a distraction. Meanwhile, a second force would move north through the colony of Maine and covertly attack

Quebec City while the British were focused on defending Montreal. Washington liked the plan, and he told the commander of the North Department, Philip Schuyler, that Benedict Arnold would be in command of the secret expedition to Canada. And there was another reason the Americans were interested in Canada. The system of government in Canada was complicated, thanks to the divided responsibilities of the French and the British. The Americans sought to exploit the long-standing cultural tensions between the British and the French, and to make allies out of the Canadians.

If the Americans could do that, then the British would have all the more difficulty defending their position. So it was settled. Schuyler would march to Montreal and Arnold would march to Quebec. expedition required that he navigate his forces through Maine's waterways. So in addition to raising his men, he also ordered 200 small flat-bottom boats. And that added an additional layer of complexity to a plan that was already complicated. And on top of all the moving pieces, there was a problem with time. Summer was fading fast. The autumn months were coming on soon, and as the forces moved north,

they would soon face howling winds and blankets of snow. Making it all the way to Quebec would take toughness. Arnold and his men were about to be tested. Unfortunately for Arnold, the Quebec mission was off to a difficult start almost immediately. When he placed the order for the 200 boats, he stressed that they were urgently needed for an upcoming operation and they had to be delivered by early September. The contractor was in a bind.

It was mid-August. There was virtually no way he could build 200 boats in just a couple weeks. When Arnold arrived to pick up the boats, he found they were of low quality. The boats had been built with green, uncured timber. They were heavy with moisture, and they would only get heavier as they went into the water. But there was no more time, and Arnold had no choice but to take the boats. Arnold and his men, just over a thousand in total, started up the Kennebec River in mid-September of 1775. The river was shallow and lined in some places with rocks, and the rocks quickly damaged the boats.

The rocks broke holes in the sides of the boats, which led in water and warped the timber. Then, the river was so rapid in some places that the boats couldn't handle the speed. The men had to pull them out of the water, sometimes with hundreds of pounds of supplies in them, and haul them over land for miles at a time. And worse still, the men were unfamiliar with this type of boat. In Arnold's letters to Washington along the way, Arnold noted that the men were unaware that the boats needed to be pushed along with poles instead of paddles, and that was the cause of some of the worst delays.

and the list of problems still wasn't done. The cherry on top was that Arnold himself wasn't fully sure which way to go. The route they took through Maine had been charted by a British engineer, and it was, at the time, the only available map of the Kennebec River. No one in Arnold's army knew the area, and few had the wilderness experience necessary to navigate it safely. According to one biographer, it almost cost us. Arnold his life. Arnold and a small company went ahead in a few boats, and they only noticed

an upcoming waterfall because one of Arnold's men was walking on shore beside the river and called it out. If they hadn't had a man on shore, it might have been the end of Benedict Arnold and the expedition. In late October 1775, the expedition reached its low point. Arnold's men were sick, and many were on the brink of starvation. Provisioned had been lost, either spoiled or to the hazards of the river. To survive, some of the men ate boiled shoes and soap. One of Arnold's officers completely lost confidence in the mission and ordered his company to turn back.

Eventually, in early November, Arnold and his men reached Quebec. But now came maybe the ultimate insult. They couldn't take the city. They'd lost so much gunpowder on the trip that their only option was to wait for reinforcements outside the city. And the wait lasted a month. In early December, Richard Montgomery arrived with reinforcements. Philip Schuyler, who was supposed to lead the Montreal mission,

had passed the mission to Montgomery. Montgomery had successfully captured the city while Arnold's men were slogging through the wilderness of Maine. The combined American force ordered Quebec to surrender three times, and they were rejected each time. So, in mid-December, Arnold and Montgomery finally settled on taking the city by force. The attack was planned for December 31, 1775, nearly two months after Arnold's army arrived at Quebec. The two American armies formed four separate columns to attack the city from all sides. The day of the attack brought high winds and blinding snow.

The men could barely see where they were going, but they moved forward anyway. And almost immediately, the assault suffered a significant loss. As Richard Montgomery and a group of his men attempted to storm a set of barricades, a cannon fired a volley of grape shot, which is basically a load of shrapnel that shreds everything in its path. Montgomery was killed almost instantly. Arnold was fighting on the other side of the city. He was leading a charge, sword in hand,

when he called for the men to bring out a cannon. They did, but before the cannon could be of use, the British opened fire. Arnold was hit with a musket ball in his left leg. He could no longer put any weight on it, and he had to be taken to a nearby hospital. The Americans were quickly defeated. They kept the mission alive for a few more months,

by staying in a camp outside the city, but the effort was futile. The British sent reinforcements in the spring of 1776, and the Americans abandoned Quebec. The Quebec campaign was largely unsuccessful, but George Washington promoted Benedict Arnold to Brigadier General nonetheless. Washington liked Arnold's leadership, in spite of the failure. In the fall of 1776, the promotion paid off, as Arnold a take care. attempted another daring mission. The British succeeded in holding Quebec, and the danger that Arnold worried about the previous year, British troops moving down into New York from Canada,

still loomed large. But a naval battle in the fall of 1776, one of the first in American history, presented an opportunity to keep the British out for the time being. A couple months before the battle, Arnold proposed the construction of a Navy to patrol upstate New York. The British Navy was the best in the world at the time, but if the Americans had an agile fleet, they could at least stall British expeditions into New York. The plan was quickly approved, and Arnold was placed in charge because of his experience as a sailor. The fleet saw its first action that fall. In September of 1776, it was clear the British were planning a journey south, directly through Lake Champlain.

The attack would likely happen the next month in October, so Arnold needed to mobilize the American fleet. But to call the collection of boats and ships a fleet was generous, especially when compared with the real fleet of the British. The British had ships that boasted 22 guns each. The Americans had a few larger ships, but then mostly rowboats. Even when they were all outfitted with guns, they were no match for the British, and Arnold knew it. So he had to use the terrain of the battlefield to his advantage, in this case Lake Champlain.

Half a mile off the western shore, there was a small island called Valcourt Island, and on the southern end of the channel between the island and the shore, there was a spot of deep water. The spot wasn't visible to ships heading south on the long, narrow line. lake, so Arnold parked his fleet in the deep spot. If all went according to plan, the Americans would wait for the British to pass them and then attack from behind. It would force the British to turn their larger, slower ships, which would give the Americans a temporary advantage. It was a gamble. If the British sent scouts ahead, then the Americans were done for. But that didn't happen, and the Americans retained the element of surprise.

On the morning of October 11th, the Americans opened fire. It was a furious battle, and it raged for hours, but the British Navy's firepower was overwhelming. By nightfall, things looked bad for the Americans. Dozens were dead, many others were wounded, and they'd used most of their ammunition. For now, the fighting had stopped, but defeat the next day seemed certain. The Americans looked for a way to escape. The water on the northern end of the channel was too shallow for Arnold's fleet to navigate, but the British, now parked on the southern end, left a gap in their line, a gap just wide enough for Arnold's ships.

There was no moon that night. Each of Arnold's ships lit just two lanterns, one on the bow and one on the stern, or in layman's terms, the front and the back of each boat. They moved wounded soldiers below decks, and silently rode through the gap. The next morning, the British looked into the channel and saw that the Americans were gone. But it didn't take long for the British to notice that the Americans had slipped by them in the night and were now behind them.

The British chased the Americans and opened fire when they caught up. The American ships took serious damage. The Americans stayed on the water. They would be defeated. Arnold knew there was a rocky shore coming, coming up, and he ordered his men to run aground near the spot. When they reached it, the Americans jumped off their boats, carried their wounded ashore,

and set fire to their ships. Fort Ticonderoga was nearby. If the men could just make it there, then they would be protected from an oncoming attack. They reached the fort several days later, but they were confused by the fact that the British stopped following. As it turned out, the British made a decision. not to attack. Winter was coming, and it would be difficult for the British to maintain supply lines this far from Canada. And, having been caught off guard at Valcour Island, the British fleet

decided to retreat to Quebec for the time being. The British would have to start the invasion over again the next year. Benedict Arnold's American fleet was destroyed, but it succeeded in its mission. It stopped the enemy advance. The following following spring, Arnold would be back in action, this time on horseback, charging into battle. Arnold returned to New Haven, Connecticut early the next year to great fanfare. His sister, his children, the locals, and the men from the Quebec expedition lined up to greet him. Local newspapers had written of his bravery at Valkor Island, and now he received a hero's welcome. But his accolades didn't translate into further success, as he probably

expected. Congress voted to give itself the authority to grant promotions to the military, and in late February or early March of 1777, General George Washington learned from reading a newspaper that Congress had passed up Arnold for a promotion to Major General. Washington wrote to Arnold and assured him it must be a mistake, and he would look into it. But it wasn't a mistake. Arnold was indeed passed up by five younger officers. But there wasn't much time to brood over the insult. A British invasion of Danbury, Connecticut that April, 25 miles from Arnold's home in New Haven, called him back into service. But the invasion was short-lived and Arnold helped push it back. As a reward, he was finally promoted to Major General, but it didn't make up for the initial slight.

That summer, in July 1777, Arnold resigned from the Continental Army. But George Washington still needed him. The British were once again trying to take New York, but this time with a new strategy. They still intended to force their way through upstate New York, but now their goal was to completely cut off New England from the rest of the colonies. So they went for a three-pronged attack across the entire colony of New York. British General John Bergoin took Fort Ticonderoga back from the Americans. The Americans sent Arnold to nearby Fort Stanwicks, which he succeeded in defending from an oncoming British invasion late in August.

When Arnold returned to the North Department's camp, he discovered that his commanding officer had been replaced by General Horatio Gates. Arnold's in Gates famously didn't get along. Where Arnold was aggressive and focused on offense, Gates was cautious and preferred a defensive strategy. The battle that loomed on the horizon would be known as the Battle of Saratoga, but it was actually two battles. The first was the Battle of Freeman's Farm, fought on September 19th. It was hot and fierce. The British lost hundreds of men and then waited weeks for reinforcements.

Cold weather began to set in. and the situation grew desperate. In the American camps, the situation was just as bad, if not worse. Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold got into a screaming match. In response, Gates took Arnold's men and put them under the command of a different general. When that general arrived, Arnold made a scene, at which point Gates said that Arnold would be arrested for interfering. Arnold confined himself to his tent.

But then, on October 7, 1777, the Battle of Bemis Heights began. In defiance of General Gates' orders, Arnold rushed out of his tent and charged into battle on horseback. He darted in and out of the enemy lines and led a push against the British Army. And then, at the northern end of the battlefield, he charged toward a group of Hessian soldiers, who were German mercenaries fighting for the British. One of them raised a gun and fired and killed Arnold's horse. Then Arnold was shot in the left leg, the same leg where he'd been shot during the Quebec assault two years earlier.

Now, like before, he urged his comrades on. And the Americans prevailed. British General John Bergoin recognized that he had been outmaneuvered, and between the two battles, he lost enough men that he was now outnumbered. He couldn't fight his way out, so he withdrew. drew his wounded army in the dead of night. On October 17th, Burgoyne surrendered, and the American victory was complete. Across the Atlantic Ocean, the French took notice of the American victories that were

collectively known as the Battle of Saratoga. Now it looked like the fledgling Continental Army just might win, and France committed openly to send help in the form of soldiers, money, supplies, and guns. Previously, the French had been helping in secret, but now they made it official. But the news didn't help Benedict Arnold. Again, he didn't get the credit he deserved. His leadership on the battlefield was critical to the American's success at Bemis Heights, but a claim went to the man who was technically in charge, Horatio Gates,

who had stayed in his camp during the battle. Afterward, Arnold uttered a line that became a famous part of his life. legacy. When a Continental Army captain asked Arnold where he had been hit during the battle, Arnold answered, in the same leg, I wish it had been my heart. Next time on infamous America, Benedict Arnold returns to civilian life, but he hasn't forgotten the slights against him. He courts a young woman whose family has loyalist leanings toward the British crown, and their relationship changes the course of his life forever. Arnold's list of anything. grows and he begins secret communication with the British government.

Next week on Infamous America. And members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week. They receive early access in the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This season was co-produced. was co-produced by Stephen Walters in association with ritual productions.

Research and writing by Dante Flores. Original music by Rob Valier. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrel Media on Twitter. and you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America podcast.

Thanks for listening.