Lieutenant Colonel John Jameson, who commanded the unit that had captured the British spy Major John Andre, ordered an aide to take word to General Benedict Arnold about Major John Andre’s capture. He sent another aide to find and inform General George Washington as well.

In June 1780, Benedict and Peggy Arnold asked two old acquaintances who were congressmen from New York, Robert Livingston and Phillip Schuyler, to request that General George Washington give Arnold the command of Fortress West Point. Unaware of Arnold’s true motives and wanting to help their friend, both congressmen complied. Arnold was now certain West Point would soon be his to give away.

Benedict Arnold’s betrayal of the United States followed a series of disappointments and slights, both real and imagined. The final chapter in this sad story was the offer to hand over Fortress West Point to the British in September 1780, but the saga began in the Spring of 1779.

The Benedict Arnold who was named military commander of the Philadelphia region in 1778 was not the same man whose battlefield exploits had made him an early American legend. When Arnold had led his contingent of New Haven militiamen to the siege of Boston in April 1775, he was a wealthy, incredibly athletic man intent on helping the United States gain its independence.

The most successful battlefield commander in the American army during the early years of the American Revolution was Benedict Arnold. Between 1775 and 1777, Arnold helped capture a fort, led a miraculous trek, besieged a foreign city, fought a naval battle, led a relief force to lift a siege, and saved a battle that led to the surrender of a British army.

Benedict Arnold was one of the most complex men in American history. His meteoric rise from merchant to war hero and the subsequent fall from war hero to arch traitor is unparalleled in our nation’s history.