Homegrown Terror. Eric D. Lehman
that “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, defines the term, as a person who attacks his own countrymen.32 Treason, parricide, war crimes, homegrown terror: no general phrase can be completely accurate in describing Arnold’s actions, because what he did was so singular.
Moral evil was and is a difficult concept to codify in a democratic society, but it begins with broken trust. In a democracy we must put trust in people. We must assume others will hold our ideals and will be good. The idea of homegrown terror is so frightening for that very reason—because it is homegrown: the neighbor you thought was a war hero coming back to burn you down, the mass murderer in your high school class, the spy at your office, the sociopath down the street, building a bomb in the cellar.
Many of the conversations and actions of the founding generation after Arnold’s betrayal echo time and time again, with incidents like the bombings at the Boston Marathon and Oklahoma City and the assassinations of William McKinley and John F. Kennedy. Patriotic talk soars. Politicians call for stricter laws. Anger, despair, and confusion fuel attacks and arrests. Kidnapping plans are put into action. Spies are mobilized. Ordinary citizens debate the concept of a just murder. And finally, a free democratic society survives the worst type of threat.
The story of Benedict Arnold and the burning of New London will hopefully draw attention to a regrettably overlooked incident and its profound effects and help reassess Arnold and his place in American history. It will also, I hope, shine light on how Americans have responded and continue to respond to betrayal and terror.
Acknowledgments
I must first express my appreciation for Marian O’Keefe, local historian of Norwich, with whom I discussed the original idea for this book and who gave me help with sources on Benedict Arnold. I also want to thank Jim Campbell, Ed Surato, and Frances Skelton at the New Haven Museum’s Whitney Library; Karen DePauw, Sierra Dixon, and Diana Ross McCain at the Connecticut Historical Society; and Alice Dickenson, Tricia Royston, and Marilyn Davis at the New London County Historical Society. Jeannie Sherman and Mel Smith were particularly helpful in guiding me through the extensive Connecticut State Library Archives.
I also want to thank Mary Witkowski and Elizabeth Van Tuyl at the Bridgeport History Center and Hamden Public Library’s Phil Scott for his tireless work at the interlibrary loan on my behalf. The University of Bridgeport’s Magnus Wahlstrom Library held a surprising number of published primary sources, as did many other Connecticut libraries. The Library of Congress, the New York Historical Society, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania also held many important documents.
I am particularly grateful for the help from Parker Smathers, David and Trena Lehman, Michelle Calero, Alexis Dias, Katelyn Wall, Christopher Collier, and Thomas Juliusburger, as well as Carolyn Smith, Helen Vergason, Evan Andriopoulos, Edward Baker, Walter Powell, and other historians who have kept the burning of New London and Battle of Groton Heights alive in recent years. Also, thanks to Hans van der Geissen and Stephen Healey of the University of Bridgeport for suggesting and granting a sabbatical during which I completed the project.
And special gratitude as always to my wife, Amy Nawrocki, who taught me the meaning of home.
Homegrown Terror
On the Edge of Spring
FROM THE SMALL TOWN green of Norwich, Connecticut, paths ran in many directions. But when Benedict Arnold was born in January 1741, deep, suffocating snow snuffed all travel, shutting down the entire state and jailing all but the most foolhardy indoors. Bitter cold gripped the whole country, and every river from Connecticut’s Thames to Virginia’s York froze solid. Ice crackled out from the bays and coves of the coast, permitting one reckless man to travel by sleigh from Cape Cod to New York City. Half the sheep, two-thirds of the goats, and countless cows and horses simply gave up and died, despite families risking starvation to feed their terrified livestock. “God has sealed up the hand of every man,” wrote John Bissell of Bolton in near despair, noting that no one had suffered this much privation since the early settlers a century before. By March three feet of snow still sheathed the countryside, and on April 1 the rivers could still be crossed on foot.1
Everyone must have been happy to see the spring through their leaded glass windows and to come out of their clapboard saltboxes into the mud. The work of the year could begin. Soon ox teams would plough up the soft earth, and the smell of baking rye bread in the house and odor of horse manure in the fields would replace burning tallow and beeswax. Built on five hills between the Yantic and Shetucket Rivers, Norwich had been granted by the Mohegan chief Uncas to the English settlers, whom he hoped would help him against his enemies, the Narragansett. Since 1667 it had grown from a few houses in a “pleasant vale” to one of the larger towns in eastern Connecticut, becoming a “half-shire town” in 1734, taking a long-desired share of the county court sessions from its neighbor New London. This required building a new jail and town house, as well as a whipping post and pillory.2 Well-traveled roads ran east to Providence, west to Hartford, and north along the two rivers, following old Indian trails through sandy pine forests and rocky dells.
The road south to New London was a barely widened Indian trail, just broad enough to cart goods back and forth in a half-day’s walk. It was far easier to make the journey by boat. The U-shaped glacial harbor that stretched between the two towns was the best in the colony; at seven miles long, one mile wide, and six fathoms deep, it was sufficient to hold a small navy.3 Docks and landings dotted the length at the bottom of a series of low, sloping hills at Gale’s Ferry, Groton, Smith Cove, and all the way south to the bights at New London. Once called “Pequot Plantation” or “London” by the first European settlers, it had become part of the Connecticut Colony in 1646 and, because of its protected harbor at the east end of Long Island Sound, had quickly developed into one of its largest towns.
It had one disadvantage: its land routes to other colonial population centers were dreadful. So why not sail another seven miles up the harbor and save a half day of cart work? That is one reason why Norwich began to take some, though not all, of its neighbor’s shipping business. Merchants could sail a few large ships to the new docks at the Chelsea waterfront where the Yantic and Shetucket Rivers met, a mile and a half from Benedict Arnold’s house. And now, with spring in the air and the harbor open, men could go to sea and make their fortune in trade.
One of those men was Benedict Arnold Sr., who served as a captain for richer men, such as Hezekiah Huntington on the ship Prudent Hannah.4 Arnold Sr. had come to Norwich from Rhode Island and met a widow named Hannah King, formerly Waterman. He may in fact have been one of her late husband’s shipmates, but that did not stop him from marrying her.5 They had named their first son Benedict after his father, but the child died at the age of eight months, along with a half sister named for her mother, both on the same day. In the custom of the times, the grieving parents named their next two children the same. The first Benedict Arnold Jr. was buried on the green, by the First Church of Norwich, where the deeply religious Hannah found comfort and faith.
The previous year, the “Great Awakening” had swept across New England, revitalizing the Christian church, which had waned in influence somewhat in the early decades of the century. During high summer of 1741 Jonathan Edwards preached his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon in Enfield, Connecticut, explicating Deuteronomy 32:35: Their foot shall slide in due time. With both reason and wrath he proclaimed that people “are liable to fall” and that “he that stands or walks on slippery ground needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down…. He cannot stand alone, when he is let go he immediately falls and is lost.” The congregation was thrown into disarray, with “shrieks and cry” from the parishioners fearing they would go to hell.6
But despite