by Stephen Case
Reed was no colonial radical early on. He was a loyal subject of the king who considered making his living in England, but he came home when his father’s drinking and erratic behavior endangered the family business. He built a successful law practice in Philadelphia and eventually brought over an Englishwoman as his wife. While many foreign visitors praised the women of Philadelphia, Esther Reed was unimpressed, finding her new companions “pretty but no beauties; they all stoop, like country girls.”217
Reed prospered and eventually owned land in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, plus a home equipped with a wine cellar and two slaves. Though not a delegate to the 1774 Continental Congress, he was an active host, taking prominent American politicians on sightseeing tours of Philadelphia.218 “This Mr. Reed is a very sensible and accomplished lawyer, of an amiable disposition, soft, tender, friendly, etc.; he is a friend to his country and to liberty,” wrote the future president John Adams.219
Reed also maintained strong contacts across the ocean, writing a series of letters to Lord Dartmouth, Britain’s secretary of state for the colonies. Though Reed was not yet in favor of independence, he warned Dartmouth that “this country will be deluged with blood before it will submit to any other taxation than by their own assemblies.”220
After blood started to flow at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Reed joined Washington’s army as his secretary, a position that some thought was beneath him because of his legal prominence and that others thought was beyond him because of his lack of military seasoning. Reed admitted that he was no more ready to be a general’s secretary than to be an interpreter of Native American languages. But he drafted vital correspondence for Washington, including the letter approving plans for Benedict Arnold’s march to Quebec.
In June 1776, Reed received an even more surprising post for a nonmilitary man. He joined Washington in New York as adjutant general, a job that required a deep and nuanced understanding of how an army operates. When the British pushed Washington’s forces out of the city, Reed saw battle, but his closest brush with death came from his own side. Reed confronted a Connecticut private who was fleeing the battlefield, and the soldier aimed his musket at Reed and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired, and when Reed grabbed a musket from another soldier and tried to shoot the private, his gun malfunctioned as well. Reed slashed the private with his sword and took him into custody. Court-martialed and sentenced to die, the private was saved only by Reed’s intercession.221
As Washington’s army conducted a desperate and disorganized retreat across New Jersey, Reed made a mistake that left a permanent stain on his reputation. He played politics, and got caught.
General Charles Lee, a former British officer who was second in command to Washington in the Continental Army, wrote a backbiting letter to Reed, complaining about the Patriots’ ragged withdrawal from New York. Reed wrote back, lamenting Washington’s indecisiveness and telling Lee that it was “entirely owing to you” that complete disaster was averted. In what seemed like a betrayal of Washington, Reed suggested that Lee “and others should go to Congress and form the plan of the new army.” Then Reed went on a mission to recruit reinforcements. While he was gone, a second letter from Lee to Reed arrived at headquarters, and Washington opened it. The commander explained later that he was simply eager for news about Lee’s forces, but skeptical historians have wondered whether Washington was even more curious about the motives of his rival Lee. In any case, Lee’s letter revealed that he was defying Washington’s orders on where to move his troops, and it also contained enough references to Reed’s letter to let Washington know that his adjutant was badmouthing him. Specifically, Lee agreed that “fatal indecision . . . is a much greater disqualification than stupidity or even want of personal courage.” Washington knew they were talking about him.
Reed’s relationship with his commander was badly wounded, though he partly repaired it through strong support for Washington’s battles at Trenton and Princeton. Lee, on the other hand, went from intrigue to ignominy: Suspected of visiting a woman of loose morals a few miles away from his army, he was captured by British horsemen tipped off to his whereabouts by local Tories.222 Reed, who slowly evolved into a strident advocate of independence, was offered the post of chief justice in Pennsylvania’s new government, but declined. Instead he was elected to Congress in September 1777, just before the British seized Philadelphia. A year later, with the city back in Patriot hands, Reed quit Congress to concentrate on Pennsylvania politics.
He became the area’s civilian leader, while Benedict Arnold was the military one. And they quickly found themselves in a war within the war. The two men were so different, and so ambitious, with roles so intertwined, it was like a cold front colliding with a warm front: thunder and lightning were inevitable.
Their disputes involved both style and substance, with one of the most heated battles erupting over a simple desire for hair care. On October 5, 1778, Arnold’s aide David Franks ordered a sergeant to fetch a barber for him. The sergeant did so but then began to wonder if it was proper for Franks to treat a volunteer in the great cause of liberty as his personal servant.223
The sergeant told his father—who happened to be Timothy Matlack, secretary to the Pennsylvania Council and a confidant of Reed. The elder Matlack, who was a leading promoter of cockfights and specialized in human skirmishing as well, penned a letter lecturing Arnold about how militiamen had more important things to do than arrange for barbers.224 “Freemen will be hardly brought to submit to such indignities,” he wrote.225
Never one to tamp down a fire, Arnold responded by explaining that citizens had rights but soldiers had duties, and one duty was to obey orders “without judging of the propriety of them.”226
Matlack threatened to pull his son out of the militia and go public with the reason. Arnold blasted back: “If the declaration that you will withdraw your son from the service and publish the reasons is intended as a threat, you have mistaken your object. I am not to be intimidated by a newspaper.”227
The Reed camp had indeed made Arnold an object—of scorn, anger, and suspicion. It didn’t help that Arnold was from Connecticut, since Reed seemed to have a special enmity for New Englanders. Colonel Joseph Trumbull, son of Connecticut’s governor, once wrote that Reed “has done more to raise and keep up a jealousy between the New England and other troops than all the men in the army beside. Indeed, his stinking pride . . . has gone so far that I expect every day to hear he is called to account by some officer or other.”228
Reed certainly raised a stink about Arnold’s social merriment in Philadelphia, especially his willingness to play host to guests with Loyalist leanings. In November 1778, Pennsylvania authorities ordered the execution of two Quaker men for conspiring with the enemy, and hanged them despite appeals by many prominent citizens, including Patriots. Reed was strongly in favor of “a speedy execution for both animals,” and was mightily annoyed by a party that Arnold held the night before the hangings, quite likely accompanied by Peggy Shippen.229 The day after the execution, Reed wrote: “Will you not think it extraordinary that General Arnold made a public entertainment the night before last, of which not only numerous Tory ladies but the wives and daughters of persons proscribed by the state, and now with the enemy in New York, formed a very considerable number?”230
Arnold heard the disapproving comments about his interest in Peggy and other politically impure ladies, and dismissed them. “Some gentlemen . . . were offended by my paying a polite attention to the ladies of this city without first discovering if they were Whigs at bottom,” Arnold wrote to a friend, General Nathanael Greene. “Those gentlemen who avow such illiberal sentiments I shall treat with the contempt which I think they deserve by taking no notice of them.”231 But whether he was indulging in hedonistic pleasures with Tories or with Whigs, he was indulging himself at a time of extreme crisis for the cause of liberty.
General Washington, in Philadelphia
that December, saw the Roman fiddling firsthand. While not singling out Arnold, the Continental commander wrote: “Our money is now sinking 50 percent a day in this city, and I shall not be surprised if in the course of a few months a total stop is put to the currency of it; and yet an assembly, a concert, a dinner, or supper will not only take men off from acting in this business, but even from thinking of it.”232
When Arnold complained about not receiving his military salary yet provided endless food and drink for Philadelphia’s social swans, hardheaded men like Reed were certain to wonder about the general’s business machinations. Collecting both evidence and rumors, Reed and his allies began building a case against Arnold.
Reed had strong suspicions but no solid proof about Arnold’s plot to buy up goods while Philadelphia’s stores were closed that first week after liberation. But he soon learned about the questionable use of government wagons in the Charming Nancy case. What Reed didn’t know was that Arnold had recently signed an agreement with those very same Charming Nancy partners to smuggle goods out of British-held New York, an activity that seemed uncomfortably close to trafficking with the enemy.
Reed was well aware of another maritime case involving Arnold. The Active was a seized British sloop whose cargo was the subject of intense legal wrangling. Arnold became involved in the case, saying that his only interest was in supporting a party to the case who was a fellow citizen of Connecticut. Reed suspected, but could not prove, that Arnold had a financial stake in the court case. Reed planted rumors to that effect in a newspaper called the Pennsylvania Packet. And in fact Reed was right: Arnold had reached a secret agreement with the fellow Connecticuter for half the proceeds if they succeeded in court.
Reed also knew about Arnold’s issuance of a pass allowing a woman named Hannah Levy to go to New York City, and he persuaded Congress to order Arnold to get any such passes countersigned by Pennsylvania authorities, which was an insulting public rebuke for Arnold. The general explained that the pass was intended to allow Levy to collect a debt owed to her blind, elderly mother. But Arnold’s enemies suspected that she planned to carry a message into the British-held city to further one of the general’s business schemes. The truth about Levy’s intentions remains a mystery to this day.233
Clearly, Reed had reason to question Arnold’s actions. But it is fair to ask whether Reed’s attacks on Arnold were motivated by patriotism, politics, or personal vendetta. Was he bringing integrity to the independence movement or crippling it by harassing its most gifted battlefield general? Was he helping or hurting the cause?
Reed was a stickler. He granted no genius exemptions. Instead he went for Arnold’s throat.
CHAPTER 7
The General’s Wife
It was marrying time in the Shippen household. In December 1778, Peggy’s favorite sister, Betsy, prepared to wed her first cousin Neddy Burd, the former prisoner of war. One of the bridesmaids, cousin Elizabeth Tilghman, recalled that Betsy experienced “quakes, tremblings and a thousand other quirks” as the wedding approached. Her nervousness frightened “poor Peggy and myself into a solemn oath never to change our state”—never to get married.234
A family friend, Continental general John Cadwalader, was about to get married, too—to one of the Meschianza ladies, Williamina Bond.235 Cadwalader bet Peggy a dozen pairs of gloves that a dozen of her acquaintances would be wed by the next Christmas. The winner of the wager is unknown, but as it turned out, Peggy would have been one of the dozen.236
Betsy went first, however, committing her future to the extremely popular Neddy in a large and joyous ceremony featuring twenty-five bridesmaids. The socializing lasted for three days and included “a little hop for our unmarried acquaintances,” wrote Peggy’s new brother-in-law. “This, with punch drinking etc., is all the entertainment that was given, and even this expense must have been considerable.”237
Peggy’s father reported to his own father: “I gave my daughter Betsy to Neddy Burd last Thursday evening, and all is jollity and mirth.” Then he went on to another looming issue: “My youngest daughter is much solicited by a certain general on the same subject; whether this will take place or not depends upon circumstances. If it should, I think it will not be till spring.”238
Arnold had declared his intentions in two September 1778 letters—the love note to Peggy that included recycled phrases from his letter to Betsy DeBlois, and a letter to Peggy’s father in which he asked for permission to pursue her, with the goal of marriage. “My public character is well known,” Arnold told Peggy’s father. “My private one is, I hope, irreproachable.” After stating simply that “my fortune is not large, though sufficient,” Arnold delivered some undoubtedly welcome news about a dowry: “I neither expect one nor wish one with Miss Shippen.” Arnold also addressed politics. “Our difference in political sentiments will, I hope, be no bar to my happiness. I flatter myself the time is at hand when our unhappy contests will be at an end, and peace and domestic happiness be restored to every one.”239
In fact, Arnold and his future father-in-law were not as divided in their political sentiments as some may have thought. Neither was a strident ideologue, and each was far more concerned with advancing the interests of himself and his family. Edward Shippen was a Shippenist; Benedict Arnold was an Arnoldian.
At first the idea of having Arnold as a son-in-law did not seem to appeal to Edward Shippen. Among the downsides was Arnold’s age—thirty-seven, to Peggy’s eighteen. And his leg was badly crippled, with the prospects for recovery uncertain. In addition, he already had financial obligations to his three sons and sister Hannah.
Certainly, Arnold was a celebrity, but the Shippens were not easily impressed by that. After all, they had already played host to George Washington for dinner. And fame could be fleeting. Shippens were supposed to marry people from mainline, established families; they weren’t supposed to marry mavericks like Arnold.
In the Shippens’ world, the matrimony of Peggy’s parents was the proper way to stitch together families. It was a marriage of both love and business, quite attractive to the father of the bride. It solidified the alliance of Edward Shippen and Tench Francis in Philadelphia’s legal profession, while keeping Tench’s daughter Margaret—Peggy’s mother—close to home.
A marriage of Peggy and Arnold would be nothing like that. He was from another world altogether, and seemed likely to take her far away from Philadelphia. No wonder Edward Shippen had misgivings.
At some point in the negotiations over Peggy, the Shippens rejected Arnold’s proposal. But Arnold, characteristically, would not give up. The chatty Elizabeth Tilghman wrote to Peggy’s sister Betsy: “The gentle Arnold, where is he, how does he, and when is he like to convert our dear Peggy? They say she intends to surrender soon. I thought the fort would not hold out long. Well, after all, there is nothing like perseverance, and a regular attack.”240 Despite Tilghman’s whimsy, the choice of marriage partners was often a frightening and risky decision—a “dark leap,” as a woman of the time put it.241 Under the common-law doctrine of coverture, a man and woman who married became one legal entity, meaning that the wife could not file a lawsuit, sign a contract, or purchase property. If the couple had children, legal custody went to the husband, automatically. And absolute divorce with a right to remarry was not allowed in Pennsylvania until enactment of a 1786 law.242
Because marital mistakes were permanent, decisions were rarely made individually and often required extensive consultation with family members.243 Some historians have speculated that Peggy fought with her family for permission to marry Arnold, but more likely it was a deliberative process, with Peggy’s growing love for the general factored in.
By January 1779, Peggy’s new brother-in-law, Neddy Burd, was referring to the Shippen family’s “refusal” of Arnold as a thing of the past, and gloating about his earlier prediction that Peggy’s engagement would ultimately be approved.244 Even then, however, the
re were conditions. The Shippens apparently were waiting to see if Arnold’s leg became healthier, a position that was untenable to Peggy, as Burd perceptively noted. “A lame leg is at present the only obstacle,” Burd wrote. “But a lady who makes that the only objection, and is firmly persuaded that it will soon be well can never retract, however expressly conditional an engagement may have been made. However, we have every reason to hope it will be well again, though I am not so sanguine as he is with respect to the time; but the leg will be a couple inches shorter than the other and disfigured.” Socialites monitoring the courtship of Arnold and Peggy focused on the leg, engaging in extended debates over its prospects for recovery. Determined to improve his bargaining position, Arnold tossed away his crutches in favor of a cane.245
But the leg was not really the only obstacle. The Shippens expected a dramatic financial gesture from Arnold to prove his sincerity. “He has acquired something handsome,” Burd wrote, “and a settlement will be previously made.” The greatest prospect for Arnold to achieve economic security seemed to come from his friends in upstate New York, where the general had risked his life repeatedly and had ultimately sacrificed his health to protect the colony from British invaders. The New Yorkers were interested in offering Arnold one of two large manors seized from Loyalists, with the idea that he would settle there with some of his soldiers, providing a frontier buffer against future British attacks. As a reward for his heroic sacrifices, New York would sell Arnold the land at a bargain price. The properties were Kingsland, a 130,000-acre estate in the Mohawk Valley, and Skenesboro, a 40,000-acre estate on Lake Champlain.246
By the first week of February, when Arnold said goodbye to Peggy and left on a trip to negotiate the New York deal, the two were officially engaged to be married. It was entirely plausible for Peggy to look forward to life in a fine home in the New York countryside as queen of the manor, with dominion over all the land as far as her eyes could see.
