Treacherous Beauty

by Stephen Case

  Now a major serving as the full-fledged adjutant general, André was far too important to be sneaking around on risky espionage missions, but he was doing it anyway. Frustrated that his second attempt at a face-to-face with Arnold had come to nothing, André waited aboard the Vulture for a third chance, writing Clinton that another failure would “infallibly fix suspicions” on Robinson as a person attempting to sabotage the mission.

  Clinton had very explicit orders for how his favorite protégé was to safely execute this assignment. André was not to assume a disguise. He was not to cross into American-held territory. And he was not to accept documents. Any of those three actions would turn André from an emissary into a spy.377

  While André waited anxiously aboard the Vulture, a low comedy was being performed on the western shore of the Hudson by the men to whom Arnold was entrusting his life and his career. Smith, who had failed to persuade one of his tenants to row him out to get André the night before, was at his home in Haverstraw when Arnold arrived by horse. Arnold arranged for a boat to be available for him, explaining to his military underlings that Smith had a chance to obtain important intelligence downriver.

  Smith and Arnold then summoned a cow tender, Samuel Colquhoun, the tenant who had refused to help Smith fetch André the night before. Colquhoun said he was afraid of gunboats and was unwilling to go by himself, so he was sent to fetch his brother Joseph. Instead, Colquhoun returned alone, explaining that his wife had forbidden him to go.378 Arnold thundered that if he refused to row the boat, he would be considered “a disaffected man,” a traitor to the cause of independence. This time Colquhoun returned with his brother. They said they were willing to perform any task for Smith and Arnold—except rowing the boat to the Vulture.

  More wrangling ensued. Smith emphasized that they would be traveling with passes signed by Arnold. The brothers questioned why a meeting with the British under a flag of truce was happening under the cover of night. Joseph took Arnold aside and told him he would prefer to make the trip the next morning. Arnold threatened to put Colquhoun under guard if he did not go that night.

  The brothers sat on the stoop of Smith’s house while Arnold and Smith conferred inside. Smith came out with whiskey for the brothers and a promise of fifty pounds of flour apiece. Finally, with vital hours wasted and midnight approaching, they agreed to row Smith to the Vulture.

  Arnold gave them pieces of sheepskin to wrap around the oars to muffle the sound. The night was clear and moonless as Smith and the Colquhoun brothers approached the Vulture in their longboat. “I was heartily assailed with a variety of oaths,” Smith recalled, “all in the peculiarity of sea language, by the officer commanding the watch on the quarter-deck, and commanded instantly to haul alongside, or he would blow us out of the water.”379

  Smith came aboard, leaving the Colquhoun brothers to float nervously alongside. André was awakened, and he and Beverley Robinson greeted Smith. Arnold’s passes mentioned only Smith, two servants, and one man accompanying him, so Robinson and André agreed that both of them could not go. The adjutant general heeded his commanding officer’s orders against wearing a disguise, but pulled a large blue greatcoat over his regiment’s uniform, effectively cloaking his identity. Smith said later that he initially thought “John Anderson” was a civilian.

  Meanwhile, one of Smith’s slaves led Arnold by horse to a remote dock two miles south of Haverstraw to await André’s arrival, which came around 1 a.m. on Friday, September 22, 1780. Smith escorted André to the woods where Arnold awaited. And there Peggy Shippen’s husband and her old friend met for the first time.380

  Arnold wanted André to accompany him to Smith’s house for their negotiations; André insisted on staying in that secluded spot along the Hudson shore, in an area that could be considered a no-man’s-land. Arnold relented. They agreed that the price for bagging West Point with at least three thousand prisoners would be twenty thousand pounds. But they were in dispute over the price of failure. Arnold wanted ten thousand pounds guaranteed even if the scheme went sour; Clinton was willing to pledge six thousand. (Arnold insisted later that André had promised to urge his commander to pay the full ten thousand, but by that time André wasn’t around to confirm or deny Arnold’s claim.)

  Their conference under the dark treetops lasted about three hours. Undoubtedly, they discussed the logistics of an attack on West Point and reached a general agreement. It’s unknown whether they found time to talk about Peggy. There is little doubt she was thinking about them.

  At about 4 a.m., Smith warned them that daylight was coming. But by then it was too late to get André back to the ship. The Colquhoun brothers insisted they were too tired for a return trip to the Vulture, and it may have been inadvisable anyway, because day was dawning. André agreed to ride with Arnold to Smith’s house, to wait out the day and go back to the Vulture when night fell. He would later testify that he did not know he would have to cross a rebel checkpoint. But now he was behind enemy lines, with his uniform hidden. This did not bother Arnold, and was in fact what he had suggested all along. But it would prove to be disastrous for André.381

  Unbeknownst to Arnold, a rebel colonel who was annoyed by the Vulture’s presumptuous position in the river had moved artillery within range of the ship. That morning at daybreak, the enterprising colonel ordered the firing to begin. The ship suffered no major damage and only one casualty (the ship captain was cut in the nose by a flying splinter). The real casualty was André, because the attack inspired the ship to flee south, out of the range of both the rebel cannon and—as it turned out—the British army’s adjutant general.

  André and Arnold watched the attack from an upstairs window at Smith’s house. André still hoped he might be able to reach the Vulture, but the odds were getting longer. Arnold wrote three passes, one allowing André to be taken by boat downriver and the other two naming Smith and Anderson individually and allowing them to travel toward the British lines by land.

  Smith, who had returned home separately from Arnold and André, arranged breakfast for them in an upstairs bedroom. When André took off his greatcoat, he revealed that he was wearing a British uniform. Smith later professed to be shocked by this, but said he believed Arnold’s explanation that Mr. Anderson was a civilian who had borrowed the uniform from a New York acquaintance and liked to wear it now and then purely out of vanity.

  This was not entirely out of the ordinary. Because clothing was in short supply during the war, civilians sometimes wore military clothing, even the clothes of opposing armies. But it remains difficult to understand how Smith, a lawyer, could have accepted such a ridiculous story, or could have believed that a person providing vital help to the Continental Army would be delivered by a British warship. In fact, Smith’s role remains murky to this day. Given Smith’s ultimate acquittal in court despite his deep involvement in the Arnolds’ plot, some students of history wonder whether he might have been some sort of double agent, working for both the rebels and the crown. But there is no solid proof that he was anything more than a dupe. Guilty of either stupidity or treachery, Smith pleaded stupidity, and a military court agreed.382

  Now John André was being left in the care of the stupid. As Arnold prepared to leave, he turned over a set of papers to André, including an accounting of West Point’s troops and military supplies, information about the forts’ weak points, and minutes from a recent council of war held by Washington. Arnold told André he might need to return to New York City overland. “I objected much against it,” André wrote, “and thought it was settled that in the way I came I was also to return.”383

  Arnold departed for Robinson House, where Peggy would be eager to hear about his meeting with her friend André. Arnold had every reason to think that their plot would proceed apace, and that he and Peggy were only days away from a triumph that would make them prosperous and heroic subjects of the king.

  André’s confidence, however, was waning. De
spite his demand to be taken back to the Vulture, Smith insisted that they would travel by land to British-held territory. And while André waited for the arrival of nightfall so that they could leave, Smith proved stunningly indiscreet. When a man stopped by to drop off two cows, Smith told him he wouldn’t leave the house to inspect the bovines because he was busy hiding a secret confederate of General Arnold’s upstairs.384

  André finally resigned himself to making his way back to New York City by land. But such a journey would be doomed if he were dressed as a British officer. So he tossed off his scarlet coat and replaced it with a claret-colored one borrowed from Smith, covering it with the same blue greatcoat he had worn the night before. He topped off the outfit with the kind of round hat a civilian would wear. In his boots, he hid the papers he had received from Arnold. André had now disobeyed all three of Clinton’s orders: He was in disguise, behind enemy lines, and carrying secret papers.

  Smith and André waited for nightfall to set out by horse, accompanied by one of Smith’s slaves, the same one who had guided Arnold to the western shore to meet André. Although this slave was a key witness to a disputed series of historical events, he was never publicly identified nor officially questioned.385

  The three crossed the Hudson by ferry. As further proof of his lack of common sense, Smith decided to visit the same colonel whose artillery had chased away the Vulture. André waited on the road under the cover of night while Smith paid his respects, and they soon resumed their trip.

  Later that night they were stopped by militiamen who demanded to see their passes. “Mr. Anderson seemed very uneasy,” Smith recalled, “but I cheered him by saying our passes would carry us to any part of the country to which they were directed, and that no person dare presume to detain us.”386 While the militia leader accepted their passes, he urged them to stop for the night. The area, he reminded them, was infested with rival bands of highwaymen—Loyalist-leaning raiders known as Cowboys, and those with rebel sympathies known as Skinners. Both groups were more likely to shoot farmers or steal their cattle than to become engaged in a debate over the rights of man.

  André wanted to push on until he reached the British lines, but Smith decided to heed the warning. At a nearby farmhouse, they found a bed to share. The apprehensive André kept his boots on. “I was often disturbed by the restless motions and uneasiness of mind exhibited by my bedfellow,” Smith recalled. “He appeared in the morning as if he had not slept an hour during the night.”387

  In thick morning fog they set off again, but were soon stopped by a militia captain, who suggested they seek an escort from a nearby military unit. They declined and continued on their way, passing a rebel colonel going in the other direction. André recognized the colonel as a former prisoner of war in New York City. But the colonel seemed not to recognize André, and rode on.

  Smith found André sullen at times, but as they rode through the beautiful countryside and enjoyed the arrival of autumn, his worries seemed to lift. “The pleasantry of converse and mildness of the weather so insensibly beguiled the time . . . and I now had reason to think my fellow traveler a different person from the character I had first formed of him,” Smith wrote.388 While they rode, they talked about music, painting, poetry, and the prospects for peace.

  They stopped at a home along the road, where they found a Dutch housewife willing to offer them a meal. A group of Cowboys had robbed the family the day before, and all she had to offer was a mush made of Indian corn. New Yorkers called the dish suppon, while New Englanders knew it as hasty pudding and the English and Irish called it stirabout. In a poem André had written that year, he had mocked suppon, but now he ate it with gusto.389

  After paying the housewife, Smith surprised André by declaring that he and his slave would accompany him no farther. The British officer was not alarmed. After all, they were near Tarrytown, New York, close to the informal border separating territories controlled by the British and the rebels. And so they parted pleasantly, after André borrowed a few Continental dollars and offered his gold watch as a sign of good faith. Smith let him keep it, asking only that he deliver a message to Smith’s brother William, the chief justice, when he got back to New York City.

  André expected to be in Manhattan soon to tell his comrades about the final arrangements for Arnold’s betrayal, and then to join an invasion force to seize West Point and, if all went well, to end the war.

  CHAPTER 13

  A Capture and an Escape

  The weekend arrived at Robinson House with a Saturday warm and fair.390 Joshua Hett Smith arrived there, too, and was both warmly received and fairly despised. Smith brought encouraging news for Arnold: He had escorted Mr. Anderson past hundreds of rebel soldiers and delivered him to the doorstep of British-held territory.

  Peggy and her husband knew their conspiracy was coming to a head. General Washington, who was expected at Robinson House shortly, sent word that he was delayed a few days but still planned to stop by to inspect West Point. The timing of the attack on West Point was undoubtedly discussed by Arnold and André in their middle-of-the-night meeting, but the details have been lost to the ages.

  Smith’s visit posed a problem for Peggy, who had led Franks and Varick to believe that the general would have nothing further to do with the “scoundrel.” The tension culminated at a dinner featuring all the antagonists, plus some of the same officers who had witnessed the mealtime fracas a week earlier between Varick and Smith over whether Britain had offered an honorable peace.391

  This time, the point of argument was more petty. There was a shortage of butter on the table, and Peggy asked a servant to bring more. The servant told her they were out, but Arnold offered a solution. “Bless me,” he said, “I had forgot the oil I bought in Philadelphia. It will do very well with salt fish.” Arnold remarked that it cost eighty dollars. “Eighty pence,” quipped Smith, suggesting that a Continental dollar was worth no more than a penny. Varick told him he was wrong, and said it in as insulting a manner as he could summon. He later testified that he had been looking for an opportunity to be “cavalier with Smith.”

  The two began arguing bitterly, and Franks jumped in on Varick’s side. Seeing Arnold become increasingly angry, Peggy “begged that the dispute might be dropped, as it gave her great pain,” a witness recalled. A truce was declared. But after Smith left, Arnold argued furiously with his aides. “He declared that if he asked the devil to dine with him, the gentlemen of his family should be civil to him,” Varick recalled. The fiery Franks declared that if Smith had been at a table other than Arnold’s, Franks would have thrown a bottle at his head. Franks challenged Arnold to fire him, and he stormed out of the house, saying he was off to a nearby town on business.

  Varick, who was more judicious, warned Arnold that associating with Smith would hurt his reputation. “Arnold then told me that he was always willing to be advised by the gentleman of his family, but, by God, would not be dictated to by them,” Varick said. Later that night, Varick and Arnold talked further and seemed to make peace. “He gave me assurances of his full confidence in me,” Varick said, “of a conviction of the rectitude of my conduct, of Smith’s being a rascal, and of his error in treating me with such cavalier language, and that he would never go to Smith’s house again and be seen with him but in company.”

  Like Peggy, Arnold was stalling for time. It might have worked but for the events now unfolding about twenty-five miles south of Robinson House, near Tarrytown.

  While it was a bad night for Peggy and Arnold, it was a far worse one for John André. After parting company with Smith and his slave that morning, André had proceeded across Pine’s Bridge, only fifteen miles from the British army’s outpost at White Plains. He was in the so-called Neutral Ground of Westchester County, territory that was often patrolled by roving bands of Cowboys. Such irregulars would treat a British officer well, and André later said he thought he was “far beyond the points described
as dangerous.” 392

  He stopped at a well and took a cup of water from a twelve-year-old-girl, giving her sixpence in exchange. He then proceeded to a wooden bridge over a small creek, where he was challenged on the other side by three young men with muskets.393 The biggest of them was outfitted in a green Jaeger coat, the kind worn by Hessian soldiers. André apparently took him for a Cowboy and sought to confirm that the three were members of “our party.” The man in the Jaeger coat asked: which party? “The lower party,” André said, using the slang term for the British in New York City.

  When the man indicated that was the case, André felt confident enough to identify himself as a British officer and explain that he was on important business for General Clinton. He pulled out his fancy gold watch, a possession much more likely to belong to a British officer than an American.

  The man in the Jaeger coat was rebel militia sergeant John Paulding, who had escaped from a British prisoner of war camp in Manhattan earlier that month. Paulding had acquired the Jaeger coat to help him get out of the city and return to his militia. He now seemed to be using it to fool enemies he met on the road, such as André.

  Paulding ordered André to get down from his horse, and André realized he had guessed wrong. “My God, I must do anything to get along!” he said, and forced a laugh as if he had only been joking about being a British officer. He showed them the pass written by Arnold, and explained that he was on that general’s business, not Clinton’s.