page_title: Peggy Shippen
section_title: Espionage between the Arnolds and Major John André
hierarchical_section_title: Peggy Shippen / Espionage between the Arnolds and Major John André
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a reproduction of one of Benedict Arnold's coded communications with the British while he was negotiating what eventually became a failed attempt to surrender the fort at West Point in 1780. Lines of text written by his wife, Peggy Shippen Arnold, are interspersed with coded text (originally written in invisible ink) written by Arnold.
context_page_description: Margaret "Peggy" Shippen was the highest-paid spy in the American Revolution, and was the second wife of General Benedict Arnold.
  Shippen was born into a prominent Philadelphia family with Loyalist tendencies. She met Arnold during his tenure as military commander of the city following the British withdrawal in 1778. They were married in the Shippen townhouse on Fourth Street on April 8, 1779, and Arnold began conspiring with the British to change sides soon after. Peggy played a role in the conspiracy which was exposed after British Major John André was arrested in September 1780 carrying documents concerning the planned surrender of the critical Continental Army base at West Point.
  Arnold escaped to New York City and Peggy followed. They traveled together to London at the end of 1781, where she established a home and Arnold rebuilt a trading business. In 1787, she joined him in Saint John, New Brunswick, where his difficulties with local businessmen forced them to return to London in December 1791. Arnold died in 1801, after which she had to settle his business affairs and pay off his debts. She died in 1804, having borne five children who survived infancy.
context_section_description: As a newlywed, Peggy may have had contact with her "dear friend" Major André, who had become General Clinton's spy chief. She and Arnold also had close friends who were either actively Loyalist or sympathetic to that cause. Some historians believe that Peggy Shippen instigated the correspondence between Arnold and André and sent military secrets to the British before her wedding. Other suspects in Arnold's subsequent espionage ring with André were Loyalists Rev. Jonathan Odell and Joseph Stansbury.
  Arnold hired Joseph Stansbury to initiate communications in May 1779, offering his services to the British not long after he married.  General Clinton gave Major André orders to pursue the possibility, and secret communications began between André and Arnold.  The messages that they exchanged were sometimes transmitted through Peggy's actions; letters written in her hand also include coded communications written by Benedict Arnold in invisible ink.
  Enraged by his treatment in Philadelphia, General Arnold resigned his command there in March 1779. Pursuant to the secret communications with the British, he sought and obtained the command of West Point, a critical American defense post in the highlands of the Hudson River.  Peggy and their infant son Edward Shippen Arnold (born 19 Mar 1780) joined him there in a home on the Hudson two miles south of West Point. General Arnold systematically weakened the defenses of West Point with the intent of making it easier for the British to capture.
  On Thursday, September 21, 1780, General Arnold met with André on the shores of the Hudson River and gave him documents and maps about the fortifications at West Point in anticipation of the British capture of that site. On Saturday, September 23, André was arrested as he rode towards British territory, the documents were discovered, and the plot was exposed.  On Monday, September 25, Arnold received a note announcing André's capture and possession of treasonous papers and maps. That same morning, General George Washington was planning to meet Arnold at his home, two miles south of West Point. Arnold first dashed upstairs to Peggy, then fled, eventually reaching HMS Vulture on the Hudson River.
  Peggy Shippen Arnold was then dressing in anticipation of hosting a breakfast for Washington and his party. Possibly based on a brief discussion with her husband, she pretended hysteria in order to falsely convince General Washington and his staff that she had nothing to do with her husband's betrayal.  The delay caused by her histrionics may have allowed Arnold time to escape, leaving Peggy with their infant son.  Fearing for her safety, she traveled to Philadelphia to stay with her family.  She also played the innocent when asked about her husband, even though she knew his whereabouts.  Philadelphia authorities soon found a letter from André to Peggy written from British-occupied New York—the so-called "millinery letter"—and seized upon it as proof that Arnold's wife had been complicitous in the treason. That led the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania to banish her from Philadelphia. In November 1780, her father escorted Peggy and her infant son to the shores of the Hudson where she boarded a boat to New York City to join Arnold.
  After a military trial, Major André was condemned to death as a common spy and was hanged at Tappan, New York.  He was later re-interred in London's Westminster Abbey.
caption: Image of a coded letter: Peggy Shippen Arnold's handwriting is interspersed with coded writing in Benedict Arnold's hand; Arnold's writing would have been in invisible ink
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