The Coolidge examiner., 1933-10-20

emily wished to escape from the web which she
herself had helped to spin. Her family and rea-
tlons brought tremendous pressure to bear upon
her, as their letters show. Elizabeth Tilghman
writing to Peggys sister, Elizabeth says that
poor Peggy was Burgoyned' Into marrying Ar
mold
"In April, 1779 (the very month and year In
which the unhappy marriage took place) Sir
Henry Clinton was sure for the first time that
Arnold had become so deeply enmeshed In the
net Of intrigue that the conspirators had woven
about him that the great climax OF the consplr-
acy was at hand"
Arnold, influenced by his wife (according to
some hstorians) sought and after being re-
fused once, obtained command at West Point
the key to the whole Continental defense sys-
tenn. He corresponded in code with both Andre
and Clinton. His wife also continued to write
to Andre and TO receive letters from him.
Haines declares that the millinery letters"
which passed between Peggy and Andre, having
to do with the purchase of various articles of
clothing, were code messages relating to the
plans for handing West Point over to the Brit
ish. Randolph Adams from his researches
among the Clinton papers in the University of
Michigan library, says of this:
"A son had been born to Arnold and Peggy
Shipper just before the treason. We have actual
evidence of her desire to buy baby's clothing In
New York. for there were no shops In West Point
like those in lower Manhattan. Her list of de-
mands for pink ribbon and diaper clouting' is
among the other papers. sent by one of the Brit
ish spies to New York.
"The spectacle of the rejected suitor, Major
Andre, buying these articles for Benedict Ar
nolds baby does not usually figure In history
Yet the number of times that the wants of the
Arnold baby figure in the correspondence is sig
nificant of some knowledge on Mrs. Arnold's part
that her husband was engaging in rather IA
miliar correspondence with the British headquar-
ters."
Adams also declares that An examination of
Andres papers in the Clinton collection serves
only to blacken yet more the character of Bene-
dict Arnold" But Haines, who is convinced of
Peggy Shippers guilt, says of Arnold Traitor
he was but he was also betrayed, and by means
of an influence to which many of the great of
the earth have been susceptible-the lure of a
beautiful woman"
But whatever Peggy Shippen's part in the con-
spiracy, she paid bitterly for it in the end When
series of blunders resulted in the premature
exposure of the plot she found herself left be-
hind by her husband when he fed to the Brit
ish; she soon learned that Andre, her lover (if
he was her lover) was to die on the scaffold and
she went back to Philadelphia, only to be ex-
PEELED from her native city as dangerous to the
public safety" During the remaining years Of
the war she lived in New York with British and
Tory friends while her husband fought with the
British against his former comrades.
When the Revolution ended she went with him
to England and there she had brief taste of the
glory she had hoped for. She welcomed as
a national heroine, publicly thanked at the court
of King George and given a pension of 500
pounds a year and bonus of $50 pounds for
'meritorious services" But even though the Ar
nOlds the gratitude Of the British officials
the English public would have none Of them
They were slighted and insuted in society and
Peggys triumph was short-lived. The final
chapter is the dead ashes of disillusonment,"
writes Haines. "Arnold died in poverty Yet
after his death, as she herself wrote Peggy paid
off all his debt within four five hundred
pounds and still had left property and invest
ments of her own. She lived three years longer
than he, dying in 1904 at the early age of forty
four-too soon, by some decades, to sit to Thack
cray, she might well have done, for his por
trait of Becky Sharp
(9 by Western Newspaper Unlon.)