A., as a spy taken in the act, was liable, according to the rules of war, to be hanged at once. But considering the rank of the prisoner,.and the circumstances, Washington resolved on referring the case to a board of general officers, to report the facts, with their opinion of the light in which the prisoner ought to be considered, and the punishment that ought to be inflicted. The board found that he ought to be considered as a spy from the enemy, and punished with death. Strenuous efforts were made by the British commander to save him. It was represented to Washington that A. could not be regarded as a spy, because-1. Ile entered the American lines under a flag of truce; 2. That all his movements within the lines were directed by the general. The first plea, on A.'s own authority, was contrary to the fact; and to the Americans it rightly appeared that the point of the offense lay in the communication with the base traitor Arnold. All the efforts of Clinton failed to move the American commander. A. was sentenced to death. On one condition only would Washington spare him—that the British should surrender Arnold. But this they could not think of doing; the sense of honor which, yielding to the spirit of war, offered no opposition to a bar,giun with Arnold for the blood and liberties of his compatriots, made it impossible to deliver up the runaway traitor to the death that otherwise awaited the soldier who only went too far in his zeal for his country.
A. suffered death by hanging at Tappan, in the state of New York, on the 2t1 Oct., 1780, in his 29th year. His death everywhere excited the deepest sympathy. The whole British army went into mourning for him; a monument was erected to his memory in Westminster abbey, and in 1821 his remains were disinterred at Tappan, and conveyed to a grave near his monument.
Much has been written on the subject of A.'s execution. It has often been main tained, and recently by lord Mahon, in his History of England (vol. vii.), that his sentence was unjust. But a simple narrative of the circumstances, even as they are to be gathered from lord Mahon's own pages, shows that the American general had no alter native. Indeed, the circumstances cited to show that A. was not a spy, in the ordinary sense, all go to prove that lie was a spy of the worst sort. The success of the treachery of Arnold would have been the destruction of the American cause; and it is bard to see how the agent who went secretly within the American lines, and was captured returning in disguise with the information that was to insure that success, is to be held in a better case than the common soldier who steals his way into the enemy's camp of a night, to see the extent of his preparations and forces.
A. was a handsome and amiable man, of considerable accomplishments; he was a good artist, and appears, when in England, to have been known to certain literary circles of his time. These circumstances naturally heightened the feeling with which his fate was regarded.
See Biographical Dietion.ary of the society for the diffusion of useful knowledge, vol. ii.; also, in vol. vi, of the Memoirs of the 11i+r]ericul Society of Pennsykxania, 1858, The Case of Major A., with a Review of the Statement of it in Lord Mahon's History of England, by Charles J. Biddle—an essay containing a full narrative of the case, with a, discussion of all the question of law and duty raised in connection with it.