ARNOLD, Benedict, American general, commonly known as b. Nor wich, Conn., 14 Jan. 1741; d. London, Eng., June 1801. He descended from a leading Rhode Island family; was fairly educated. He was early noted for athletic prowess, reckless daring and resource, and as a man displayed a proud, passionate, uncontrolled nature, quickly responding to affection or resentment. He be carne a druggist and bookseller in New Haven at 21; prospered, and embarked in the West India trade. At the news of the battle of Lexington he armed a body of 60 volunteers, marched to Cambridge and proposed the cap ture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress gave him supplies therefor, a commission as colonel and authority to raise troops; but finding at his recruiting ground that an expedition had al ready started, he hastened after it and claimed command under his commission. As the com mander was Ethan Allen, both Allen and the troops declined to pay any attention to it ; and Arnold under protest accompanied it as a vol unteer and entered Ticonderoga beside Allen. Four days later he was joined by a band of his own, and at once sailed down Lake Champlain and captured Saint John's.
Refused the command of the captured forts, he returned to Cambridge, proposed to Wash ington an expedition against Quebec, and on 11 September left for the Kennebec with 1,100 men, to cross the divide between its head waters and the early Chaudiere. After a fearful march through sleet storms, frozen lakes, rapids and forests, he reached Quebec 13 No vember, scaled the heights to the Plains of Abraham and dared the garrison of thrice his numbers to come out and fight. They refused, and reinforcements from Sir Guy Carleton com pelled him to fall back. On the arrival of Montgomery the two undertook an assault (31 December) in which the latter was killed and Arnold's leg shattered, but he still blockaded the place till relieved by Wooster in April. Mean time he had been commissioned brigadier-gen eral and given command of Montreal. On the expplsion of the United States troops from Canada, the British planned an invasion by way of Lake Champlain, and Arnold went to Ti conderoga and spent the summer building a fleet to bar their way. On 11 October he fought one of the most obstinate •and heroic naval battles in our history, near Valcour Island off Plattsburg. Hopelessly outnumbered, he never theless escaped with the most of his boats and all of his men. The British retired to Montreal, and the Americans sent Washington the 3,000 men which enabled the battles of Trenton and Princeton to be fought.
One of Allen's men, whose promotion had been opposed by Arnold on the ground that he had plundered officers' baggage in Canada, brought counter-charges of malfeasance against him in December, which the board of war pro nounced °cruel and groundless.° But Congress in making five new major-generals, 19 Feb. 1777 passed over Arnold, the senior brigadier, on the ground that Connecticut had two already, and appointed Stirling, Mifflin, St. Clair, Stephen and Lincoln, all of whom together had not a tithe of Arnold's abilities or achievements. He had a right to be enraged; but he contented himself with asking to be made ranking officer as before; offered to serve under his juniors for the present; and in Tryon's invasion of Connecticut in April, did such splendid deeds that Congress for very shame gave him the major-generalship, but still left him at the foot. Meantime he was in pressing need of having his claims against Congress settled. Pay and supplies were hard to extract from that body, and Arnold, in his Canadian expedition and elsewhere, had used his own money freely and pledged his credit repeatedly to keep the move ments from utter collapse for lack of them. But the claims were large, Congress was suspicious and dilatory, Arnold's business was half ruined and he needed the money. He was at Philadel phia, seeking restoration of his rank, and, his patience exhausted at the refusal of Congress to act in his behalf, had asked permission to resign, when Burgoyne's invasion of 1777 loomed up imminent, and Washington wrote urgent and repeated requests to Congress to send Arnold north to oppose him. Soothed by this flattering request, he withdrew his resigna tion and hastened north. In this crisis, it is to him that the country owed its salvation. By a decoy messenger he scattered St. Leger's army in a panic, its Indian allies turning against it and butchering the whites as they retreated. He then foiled Burgoyne's flanking attemp•at Freeman's farm 19 September, unsupported by Gates, and in the final battle of 7 October, took command without official right and routed Bur goyne's army. This victory gained for the United States the French alliance, and ulti mately the surrender at Yorktown. During the engagement Arnold's leg was shattered and he remained in Albany disabled till spring. On 20 Jan. 1778, Congress restored him his senior rank.