It was by a series of accidents that our stubborn, feeble states, three years later, agreed to a convention for the framing of a constitution that might again bind them together. By the grace of God the delegates, after months of squabbling, miraculously compromised on the form of government advocated by the Connecticut delegates; and by that compromise was created a Senate not elected, as was Congress, by the votes of the people—a Senate that therefore might, God willing, act forever as a brake on the dreadful and criminal follies always perpetrated by legislators whose positions depend on the votes of the masses. Twelve years after we had saved America from the British at Valcour Island, our new constitution took effect, and the states were again united. We elected General Washington President; the Supreme Court, the Senate and the House of Representatives came into existence; we had a government at last.

The danger of being wrecked by an uncontrolled Congress had been foreseen by many men—by Washington, by Franklin, by Arnold, by Silas Deane and scores of other Americans, as well as by Englishmen and Frenchmen. Repeatedly we had been on the verge of military destruction; and that, too, had been admitted by Washington and Deane and Franklin and others. But where so many leaders anticipated defeat and chaos, and the ultimate tyranny of the French, yet felt themselves unable to avert that end, Arnold, on becoming convinced of it, laid plans to avert it, that being his nature.

He had been the first to insist upon the value of Ticonderoga, Crown Point and St. John’s in 1775, and to plan their capture. He was the first to foresee the possibility of taking Quebec, and it was by his planning that the heroic march was made. It was he who foresaw the need of a fleet to stop the British; and he who planned the fleet and the battle that it fought. It was he who comprehended the need of a stronger American navy and the way in which it might be obtained, though his proposals were ignored. It was he who planned the sudden march that turned St. Leger back to Canada: he who with Kosciusko chose the battleground on which to make a stand against Burgoyne; he whose leadership dealt the blows that wrecked the schemes of England. Every military move he made was planned with masterly skill.

Knowing all this, I say it was impossible for Arnold, the brilliant soldier, the planner of campaigns, to formulate a sudden angry plan that might have boiled from the addled brain of any spleeny child or shrewish woman—a plan inspired, as the ignorant believe, only by revenge, and with no object save to betray. If he sought to give everything to England until we had regained our strength, it was done to fight a greater threat than England.