Scores of officers who fought with him and thousands who fought under him know in their hearts that Benedict Arnold was a rare and solitary genius—one who, foreseeing the inevitable that was miraculously averted, had the courage to attempt what no other man dared. Other leaders said, “We’re beaten: let it be so; let Congress wreck us: let all our states dissolve in Civil War; let France come in to snatch us up again.” Arnold said, “No! This imbecile, coward Congress can not destroy the freedom we have fought to gain!”

I know, when I lie in my cabin with the screaking of the rudder and the gurgle of water in my ears to keep my mind on an even keel, that man’s understanding being what it is, Arnold is forever doomed to be cursed by the mass of those who still benefit from his bravery and foresight. Fortunately, since neither France nor England rules over us, it is a free country, and I am free to speak my mind. Those who wish may curse Arnold; but I shall never do it. I’ll curse the Congress that so nearly wrecked us: the human shrimps like Gates and Wilkinson, Easton and Brown, Hazen and Bedel, whose vision moved perpetually in a fog: the militiamen who ran off home and left us to fight at Saratoga. I’ll curse the quarter million men of military age who skulked behind while a pitiful twenty thousand of us anguished and sickened, starved and froze and fought. I’ll curse the merchants who trafficked and dickered and grew rich out of our wartime needs; but never, though I myself be damned for not doing it, will I curse Benedict Arnold.

There: that’s my say for him. I owe him much, and so, I believe, does this country; but there’s an ancient saying that republics are ungrateful—meaning, I suppose, that all nations, whatever their government, are ungrateful; and that is but a step from saying that they may be vindictive. School-children, for generations, will be taught to abhor the name of Benedict Arnold, nor will that be changed by any words that I can write here, or by anything that anyone anywhere can do. His mistake was tragic—most tragic of all in that it blackens his memory and makes his name the very name of dishonor. But I am an individual, and not privileged, as a country is, to be ungrateful. I followed him in war, loved him, and saw his figure as the leaping bright sword of America—ah, when America’s swords were few! I cannot think of him without remembering how Ellen and Nathaniel and I stood clinging together on the hospital veranda outside his room that day when we had read the paper that gave my brother back to life and honor once more.