Question: John André (2 May 1750 – 2 October 1780) was a British Army officer, hanged as a spy by the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War for assisting with the attempted surrender of the fort at West Point, New York to the British, assisting which general during the American Revolutionary War, who fought for the American Continental Army, and later defected to the British Army?

Context articles: United States Army
List of Continental Army units
Henry Jackson (general)
Benedict Arnold
Elijah Churchill
John André
Siege of Yorktown
Benjamin Lincoln
Thomas Hickey (soldier)
2nd Virginia State Regiment

The United States Army (USA) is the largest branch of the United States Armed Forces and performs land-based military operations.
 It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States and is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution, Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 and United States Code, Title 10, Subtitle B, Chapter 301, Section 3001.
 As the oldest and most senior branch of the U.S. military in order of precedence, the modern U.S. Army has its roots in the Continental Army, which was formed (14 June 1775) to fight the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)—before the United States of America was established as a country.
 After the Revolutionary War, the Congress of the Confederation created the United States Army on 3 June 1784 to replace the disbanded Continental Army.
 The United States Army considers itself descended from the Continental Army, and dates its institutional inception from the origin of that armed force in 1775.
The Continental Army was the national army of first the Thirteen Colonies, and then the independent United States, during the American Revolutionary War, established by a resolution of the Congress on June 14, 1775, three days before the Battle of Bunker Hill, where it saw its first action under that title.
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 The Continental Congress took a number of steps in the spring of 1775 to create the army in response to the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April and the seizure of Fort Ticonderoga in May.
 The units composing the Continental Army changed frequently, especially in the first two years of the war.
 From 1777 to the close of the war, the organization of the Continental Army became progressively more systematic and sophisticated.
 The Continental Army that served at Yorktown in 1781 bore very little resemblance to the Continental Army that blockaded Boston in 1775.
Henry Jackson (bapt.
 October 19, 1747 – January 4, 1809) was a Continental Army officer from Boston, Massachusetts during the American Revolutionary War.
 For most of the war he was colonel of Jackson's Additional Continental Regiment, which was redesignated the 16th Massachusetts in 1780.
 He commanded the last regiment of the Continental Army, the 1st American, which was disbanded in 1784.
 Jackson was a lifelong friend of Henry Knox another Continental Army officer, whose business affairs he was also heavily involved in.
Benedict Arnold (January 14, 1741 [O.S. January 3, 1740] June 14, 1801) was a general during the American Revolutionary War, who fought for the American Continental Army, and later defected to the British Army.
 While a general on the American side, he obtained command of the fortifications at West Point, New York (which after 1802 would become the site of the U.S. Military Academy), overlooking the cliffs at the Hudson River (upriver from British-occupied New York City), and planned to surrender them to British forces.
 This plan was exposed in September 1780.
 He was commissioned into the British Army as a brigadier general.
Elijah Churchill (1755–1841), was a soldier for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.
 Born in Enfield, Connecticut, a carpenter, he entered the 8th Connecticut Regiment as a private on 7 July 1775.
 On 7 May 1777, he re-enlisted for the duration of the war as a corporal in the 2nd Continental Light Dragoons, later the 2nd Legionary Corps, and was promoted to sergeant on 2 October 1780.
 He was cited for gallantry in action at Fort St. George near Brookhaven, New York on Long Island, in November 1780, at Tarrytown, New York, in July 1781, and at Fort Slongo (now known as Fort Salonga, also on Long Island) on October 2, 1781.
 He was awarded the Badge of Military Merit for his actions, one of only three soldiers to receive the award that later became the Purple Heart.
John André (2 May 1750 – 2 October 1780) was a British Army officer hanged as a spy by the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War for assisting Benedict Arnold's attempted surrender of the fort at West Point, New York to the British.
The Siege of Yorktown, also known as the Battle of Yorktown, the Surrender at Yorktown, German Battle or the Siege of Little York, ending on October 19, 1781, at Yorktown, Virginia, was a decisive victory by a combined force of American Continental Army troops led by General George Washington and French Army troops led by the Comte de Rochambeau over a British Army commanded by British peer and Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis.
 The culmination of the Yorktown campaign, the siege proved to be the last major land battle of the American Revolutionary War in the North American theater, as the surrender by Cornwallis, and the capture of both him and his army, prompted the British government to negotiate an end to the conflict.
 The battle boosted faltering American morale and revived French enthusiasm for the war, as well as undermining popular support for the conflict in Great Britain.
Benjamin Lincoln (January 24, 1733 (O.S. January 13, 1732) – May 9, 1810) was an American army officer.
 He served as a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.
 Lincoln is notable for being involved in three major surrenders during the war: his participation in the Battles of Saratoga (sustaining a wound shortly afterward) contributed to John Burgoyne's surrender of a British army, he oversaw the largest American surrender of the war at the 1780 Siege of Charleston, and, as George Washington's second in command, he formally accepted the British surrender at Yorktown.
Thomas Hickey (hanged on June 28, 1776) was a Continental Army soldier in the American Revolutionary War, and the first person executed for treason against what would become the United States.
 Born in Ireland, he came to America as a soldier in the British Army and fought as personal assistant to Major General William Johnson in the Seven Years' War, but deserted to the other side when the Revolution broke out.
 He became part of the Life Guard, which protected Gen. George Washington, his staff and the Continental Army's payroll.
 Hickey was jailed for passing counterfeit money in New York, tried and executed for mutiny and sedition, and he may have been involved in an assassination plot against George Washington in 1776.
The 2nd Virginia State Regiment was a regiment of the Virginia Militia that fought during the American Revolutionary War.
 The regiment was authorized by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia in December, 1776 as a force of regular troops for the Commonwealth's defense.
 In January, 1778, with low recruitment to the Virginia line of the Continental Army and in the wake of heavy losses to Virginia regiments at the Battle of Germantown, the 2nd Virginia State Regiment was sent by Governor Patrick Henry (per an act of the General Assembly) to join the Continental Army in the Philadelphia Campaign.
 By May, 1778, the regiment was in Valley Forge training with the Continental Army.
 The regiment camped at Middlebrook in the winter of 1778-79 and participated in the Battle of Monmouth.
 The regiment remained in the service of the Continental Army until late 1779 when called back to Virginia.
 In April and May 1780, most of the regiment was discharged.
 The remaining companies of the Virginia state regiments were organized under Colonel Charles Dabney in the summer of 1781 and were under his command at the siege of Yorktown.