People tell fantastic tales about him, just as they did about Schuyler. They call him a horse-jockey, though he was a gentleman. They say he was arrogant and a braggart, but he was not. They call him a pirate for owning shares in privateers, but they sometimes fail to remember that Washington and Knox, too, owned shares in privateers. They tell how his soldiers hated him, even though no general, aside from Washington, was so admired by the soldiers of the whole army.

His generosity to friends and relatives was extraordinary. Joseph Warren was a great man and Arnold’s friend. When he was killed at Bunker Hill, he left four motherless children. Arnold eventually persuaded Congress to pay for their education; but while Congress quibbled and wrangled and tried to evade its responsibilities, Arnold gave the money—though he himself had received no pay for four years. He is falsely said to have been sordid and avaricious—to have descended so low that he stole from his soldiers. I have heard a maudlin tale of how he robbed a poor old sergeant of five thousand dollars. The truth is that wealthy men in our colonies were rich in land and goods: not in specie. A man with five thousand dollars in hard money was a Crœsus and possibly a general of militia: never a sergeant. If any sergeant had such a sum, it was struck off on the printing press of Congress, would buy next to nothing, and wasn’t worth stealing. Yet witless folk repeat that tale, and always find stupid people to believe it: they insist, too, that Arnold must have been dishonest since Congress refused to settle his accounts. It is true that Congress did refuse, up to the very end, to reimburse him for the sums he so lavishly spent in the service of his country. If such a refusal is a mark of dishonesty, then every man of the many who have advanced money to America and looked to Congress for reimbursement has been dishonest; for never has Congress repaid a private loan during the lifetime of the man who made it, and never will it do so, since no votes are to be gained by paying debts of honor.