XXIV.—THE THREE WORDS—
WHICH FOLLOWED BENEDICT ARNOLD TO HIS GRAVE.
When we look for the Traitor again, we find him standing in the steeple
of the New London church, gazing with a calm joy upon the waves of fire
that roll around him, while the streets beneath, flow with the blood of men
and women and children.
It was in September 1781, that Arnold descended like a Destroying Angel
upon the homes of Connecticut. Tortured by a Remorse, that never
for a moment took its vulture beak from his heart, fired by a hope to please
the King who had bought him, he went with men and horses, swords and
torches, to desolate the scenes of his childhood.
Do you see this beautiful river, flowing so calmly on beneath the light of
the stars? Flowing so silently on, with the valleys, the hills, the orchards
and the plains of Connecticut on either shore.
On one side you behold the slumbering town, with the outlines of Fort
Trumbull rising above its roofs; on the other, a dark and massive pile,
pitched on the summit of rising hills, Fort Griswold.
All is very still and dark, but suddenly two columns of light break into
the star-lit sky. One here from Fort Trumbull, another over the opposite
shore, from Fort Griswold. This column marks the career of Arnold and
his men, that the progress of his Brother in Murder.
While New London baptized in blood and flames, rings with death-groans,
there are heard the answering shout of Murder, from the heights of
the Fort on the opposite shore.
While Benedict Arnold stands in the steeple, surveying the work of
assassins, yonder in Fort Griswold a brave young man, who finds all defence
in vain, rushes toward the British officer and surrenders his sword.
By the light of the musquet flash we behold the scene.
Here the young American, his uniform torn, his manly countenance
marked with the traces of the fight. There the British leader, clad in his
red uniform, with a scowl darkening his red round face.
The American presents his sword; you see the Briton grasp it by the
hilt, and with an oath drive it through that American's heart, transfixing
him with his own blade!
British magnanimity! Now it chains Napoleon to the Rock of St.
Helena, poisoning the life out of him with the persecutions of a Knighted
Tookey, now it hangs the Irish Hero Emmet, because he dared to strike
one blow for his native soil, now it coops a few hundred Scottish men and
women in the ravine of Glencoe, and shoots and burns them to death!
British mercy! Witness it, massacre ground of Paoli witness it, gibbet
of the martyred Hayne, hung in Charleston in presence of his son, witness
it, corse of Leydard stabbed in Fort Griswold with your own surrendered
sword!
Do not mistake me, do not charge me with indulging a narrow and contracted
national hatred. To me, there are even two Nations of England,
two kinds of Englishmen. The England of Byron and Shakspeare and
Bulwer, I love from my heart. The Nation of Milton, of Hampden, of
Sidney, I hold to form but a portion of that great commonwealth of freedom,
in which Jefferson, Henry, and Washington were brothers.
But there is an England that I abhor! There is an Englishman that I
despise! It is that England which finds its impersonation in the bloody
imbecile George the Third, as weak as he was wicked, as blind as he was
cruel, a drivelling idiot, doomed in his reign of sixty years, to set brother
against brother, to flood the American Continent with blood, to convulse a
world with his plunders, and feel at last the Judgment of God in his blighted
reason, his demoralized family, his impoverished nation.
Behold him take the crown, a young and not unhandsome man with the
fairest hopes blossoming round him! Behold him during the idiocy of
forty years, wandering along that solitary corridor of his palace, day after
day, his lip fallen, his eye vacant, his beard moistened by his tears, while
grasping motes with his hands he totters before us, a living witness of the
Divine Right of Kings.
And yet they talk of his private virtues! He was such a good, amiable
man, and gave so many half-pence to the poor; he even took a few shillings
from the millions wrung from the nation, to pamper his royal babes, and
bestowed them in charity, mark you, upon the—People whom he had
robbed!
I willingly admit his private virtues. But when the King goes up to
Judgment, to answer for his Crimes, will you tell me what becomes of
the—Man?
There is a kind of Englishman that I despise, or if you can coin a word
to express the fullness of honest contempt, speak it, and I will echo you!
Behold the embodiment of this Englishman in the person of George the
Fourth, who after a life rich only in the fruits of infamy, after long years of
elaborate pollution, after making his court a brothel the very air in which
he walked a breathing pestilence, went groaning one fine morning from his
perfumed chamber, to an unwept, a detested grave!
On that grave, not one flower of virtue bloomed; on that dishonored
corse, lying in state, not one tear of pity fell. The meanest felon, may
receive on his cold face one farewell tear—all the infamous tyrannies, enacted
beside the death-bed of Napoleon, could not prevent the tears of brave men
and heroic women, falling like rain, upon his noble brow. But will you
tell me, the name of the human thing, that shed one tear—only one—over
George the Fourth?
It is thoughts like these, that stir my blood, when I am forced, to record
the dastardly deeds, performed by British herelings in our Revolution.
That single corse of the heroic Leydard, stabbed with his own sword,
should speak to us with a vice, as eternal as the Justice of Heaven!
While he laid, cold and stiff, on the floor of the conquered fort, the flames
from the burning town spread to the vessels in the river and to the light of blazing
roofs and sails, Benedict Arnold looked his last upon his childhood's home.
Soon afterward he sailed from our shores, and came back no more. From
this time, forth wherever he went, three whispered words followed him,
singing through his ears into his heart—Arnold the Traitor.
When he stood beside his king in the House of Lords—the weak old
man, whispered in familiar tones to his gorgeously attired General—a
whisper crept through the thronged Senate, faces were turned, fingers extended,
and as the whisper deepened into a murmur, one venerable Lord
arose and stated that he loved his Sovereign, but could not speak to him,
while by his side there stood—Arnold the Traitor.
He went to the theatre, parading his warrior form, amid the fairest flowers
of British nobility and beauty, but no sooner was his visage seen, than the
whole audience rose—the Lord in his cushioned seat, the vagrant of London
in the gallery—they rose together, while from the pit to the dome
echoed the cry—“Arnold the Traitor?”
When he issued from his gorgeous mansion, the liveried servant, that ate
his bread, and earned it too, by menial offices, whispered in contempt, to
his fellow lacquey as he took his position behind his Master's carriage—
Benedict Arnold the Traitor.
One day, in a shadowy room, a mother and two daughters, all attired in
the weeds of mourning, were grouped in a sad circle, gazing upon a picture
shrowded in crape. A visitor now advanced; the mother took his card
from the hands of the servant, and the daughters heard his name. “Go?”
said that mother, rising with a flushed face, while a daughter took each hand
—“Go! and tell the man, that my threshhold can never be crossed by the
murderer of my son—by Arnold the Traitor.”
Grossly insulted in a public place, he appealed to the company—noble
lords and reverend men were there—and breasting his antagonist with his
fierce brow, he spat full in his face. His antagonist was a man of tried
courage. He coolly wiped the saliva from his cheek. “Time may spit
upon me, but I never can pollute my sword by killing—Arnold the Traitor!”
He left London. He engaged in commerce. His ships were on the
ocean, his warehouses in Nova Scotia, his plantations in the West Indies.
One night his warehouse was burned to ashes. The entire population of
St. John's—accusing the owner of acting the part of incendiary, to his own
property, in order to defraud the insurance companies—assembled in that
British town, in sight of his very widow, they hung an effigy, inscribed
with these words—“Arnold the Traitor.”
When the Island of Guadalope was re-taken by the French, he was
among the prisoners. He was put aboard a French prison-ship in the harbor.
His money—thousands of yellow guineas, accumulated through the
course of years—was about his person. Afraid of his own name, he called
himself John Anderson; the name once assumed by John Andre. He
deemed himself unknown, but the sentinel approaching him, whispered that
he was known and in great danger. He assisted him to escape, even aided
him to secure his treasure in an empty cask, but as the prisoner, gliding
down the side of the ship, pushed his raft toward the shore, that sentinel
looked after him, and in broken English sneered—“Arnold the Traitor!”
There was a day, when Tallyrand arrived in Havre, hot-foot from Paris.
It was in the darkest hour of the French Revolution. Pursued by the
blood-hounds of the Reign of Terror, stripped of every wreck of poverty
or power, Tallyrand secured a passage to America, in a ship about to sail.
He was going a beggar and a wanderer to a strange land, to earn his bread
by daily labor.
“Is there any American gentleman staying at your house?” he asked the
Landlord of his Hotel—“I am about to cross the water, and would like a
letter to some person of influence in the New World—”
The Landlord hesitated for a moment, and then replied:
“There is a gentleman up stairs, either from America or Britain, but
whether American or Englishman, I cannot tell.”
He pointed the way, and Tallyrand—who in his life, was Bishop, Prince,
Prime Minister—ascended the stairs. A venerable supplicant, he stood
before the stranger's door, knocked and entered.
In the far corner of a dimly lighted room, sat a gentleman of some fifty
years, his arms folded and his head bowed on his breast. From a window
directly opposite, a flood of light poured over his forehead. His eyes,
looking from beneath the downeast brows, gazed in Tallyrand's face, with
a peculiar and searching expression. His face was striking in its outline;
the mouth and chin indicative of an iron will.
His form, vigorous even with the snows of fifty winters, was clad in a
dark but rich and distinguished costume.
Tallyrand advanced—stated that be was a fugitive—and under the impression,
that the gentleman before him was an American, he solicited his
kind offices.
He poured forth his story in eloquent French and broken English.
“I am a wanderer—an exile. I am forced to fly to the New World,
without a friend or a hope. You are an American? Give me, then, I beseech
you, a letter of introduction to some friend of yours, so that I may be
enabled to earn my bread. I am willing to toil in any manner—the scenes
of Paris have filled me with such horror, that a life of labor would be Paradise,
to a career of luxury in France—you will give me a letter to one of
your friends? A gentleman like you, has doubtless, many friends—”
The strange gentleman rose. With a look that Tallyrand never forgot,
he retreated toward the door of the next chamber, still downcast, his eyes
still looking from beneath his darkened brows.
He spoke as he retreated backward: his voice was full of meaning.
“I am the only man, born in the New World, that can raise his hand
to God, and say—I have not one friend—not one—in all America.”
Tallyrand never forgot the overwhelming sadness of that look, which
accompanied these words.
“Who are you?” he cried, as the strange man retreated toward the next
room—“Your name?'
“My name—” with a smile that had more of mockery than joy in its
convulsive expression—“My name is Benedict Arnold.”
He was gone. Tallyrand sank into a chair, gasping the words—“Arnold
the Traitor.”
—Thus you see, he wandered over the earth, another Cain, with the
murderer's mark upon his brow. Even in the secluded room of that Inn,
at Havre, his crime found him out and faced him, to tell his name, that
name the synonomy of infamy.
The last twenty years of his life, are covered with a cloud, from whose
darkness, but a few gleams of light flash out upon the page of history.
The manner of his death is not distinctly known. But we cannot doubt
that he died utterly friendless, that his cold brow was unmoistened by one
farewell tear, that Remorse pursued him to the grave, whispering John
Andre! in his ears, and that the memory of his course of glory, gnawed
like a canker at his heart, murmuring forever, `true to your country, what
might you have been, O, Arnold the Traitor!'
In the closing scene of this wild drama. I have dared to paint the agony
of his death-hour, with a trembling hand and hushed breath, I have lifted
the curtain from the death-bed of Benedict Arnold.
