Question: The play Andre is a fictionalized account of whether to spare or hang Major John Andre for his role in treason of which person who was a general in the American Revolutionary War that later defected to the British Army? 

Context articles: Battle of Bull's Ferry
Lt. Col. John Robinson
Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor
History of the United States Army
Joshua Hett Smith House
André (play)
Nicholas Haussegger
Newburgh Conspiracy
Benedict Arnold
Thomas Hickey (soldier)

The Battle of Bull's Ferry on 20 and 21 July 1780 saw two American brigades under Brigadier General Anthony Wayne attack a party of Loyalist Americans led by Thomas Ward.
 The Loyalists successfully defended a blockhouse against an ineffective bombardment by four American artillery pieces and a failed attempt to storm the position by Wayne's infantry.
 During the action, American light dragoons under Major Light Horse Harry Lee drove off a large number of cattle that were kept in the area for the use of the British army in New York City.
 The clash inspired British Major John André to write a satirical ballad entitled "The Cow Chace".
 The skirmish was fought at Bulls Ferry, New Jersey in the Northern theater of the American Revolutionary War after Saratoga.
 At this stage of the conflict only raids and minor actions occurred in the north.
John Robinson (July 24, 1735 – June 13, 1805) was a Massachusetts militia and Continental Army officer from Westford, Massachusetts during the American Revolutionary War.
 On April 19, 1775, during the Battle of Concord, Robinson was the second highest-ranking officer in the field after Colonel James Barrett.
 Robinson marched next to Major John Buttrick at the head of the American column which advanced on and defeated the British Regulars at the Old North Bridge that day.
 Robinson would later fight at the Battle of Bunker Hill, serve under General George Washington during the Siege of Boston and, in 1786, would take part in the agrarian insurrection known as Shays' Rebellion.
Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor is a 2003 American television film directed by Mikael Salomon and starring Aidan Quinn, Kelsey Grammer, Flora Montgomery and John Light.
 It portrays the career of Benedict Arnold in the American Revolutionary War and his dramatic switch in 1780 from fighting for American Independence to being a Loyalist trying to preserve British rule in America.
 Arnold's relationships with his wife Peggy Shippen and the British officer John Andre are focused on.
 The friction between Arnold and General Horatio Gates, portrayed near the beginning of the film (for example, in one scene when Arnold derisively refers to him as "Granny Gates"), was historically accurate.
 The movie points out that, before his treason, Arnold was considered a patriot and a hero.
 A letter from General Washington is read at the beginning where he enthusiastically recommends Arnold for promotion saying that there is no general in the army more deserving and even comparing him to Hannibal.
 The movie briefly documents Arnold's final years of exile in England in which he laments his treasonous acts, realizing that he is despised and that people compare him with Judas and Lucifer.
The history of the United States Army began in 1775.
 From its formation, the United States Army has been the primary land based part of the United States Armed Forces.
 The Army's primary responsibility has been the fighting of land battles and military occupation.
 The Corps of Engineers has a major role in controlling rivers inside the United States.
 The Continental Army was founded in response to a need for professional soldiery in the American Revolutionary War in order to fight the invading British Army.
 Until the 1940s, the Army was relatively small in peacetime.
 In 1947, the Air Force became completely independent from the Army Air Forces.
 The Army was under the control of the War Department until 1947, and the Defense Department since then.
 The U.S. Army fought the War of 1812 (1812–15), American Civil War (1861–65), Spanish–American War (1898), World War I (1917–18), World War II (1941–45), Korean War (1950–53) and Vietnam War (1965–71).
 After the Cold War ended in 1991, the U.S. Army has focused on Western Asia, and was involved in the 1991 Gulf War and war in Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan.
Joshua Hett Smith House (demolished), also known as Treason House, was a historic house in West Haverstraw, New York.
 It stood on a hill overlooking the King's Ferry at Stony Point, an important crossing of the Hudson River.
 During the American Revolutionary War, General Benedict Arnold met at the house with British Major John André, while plotting to surrender the fort at West Point.
 Later, the house had a brief tenure as headquarters for General George Washington.
André; a Tragedy in Five Acts is a play by William Dunlap, first produced at the Park Theatre in New York City on March 30, 1798, by the Old American Company, published in that same year together with a collection of historic documents relating to the case of the title character, Major John André, the British officer who was hanged as a spy on October 2, 1780, for his role in the treason of Benedict Arnold.
 The play does not go into the historic details, but rather presents a fictionalized account of the American debate over whether to spare or hang him.
 Only three characters in the play are historic: André himself, George Washington (referred to throughout the text, except once in a passage inserted between the first two performances, simply as "The General"), and Honora Sneyd, who had been briefly engaged to André ten years earlier under the auspices of Anna Seward, who had done much to romanticize the affair in her Monody on Major André of 1781.
 (Actually, Honora Sneyd had died of consumption some months before André's death, and never went to America.)
Nicholas Haussegger (1729 – July 1786) was born in Switzerland and fought in the British army during the French and Indian War.
 After the war he became a leader in the Pennsylvania German community.
 At the beginning of the American Revolutionary War he joined the 4th Pennsylvania Battalion as a field officer.
 He was placed in command of the German Battalion, a unit of ethnic Germans from Pennsylvania and Maryland.
 He led his battalion effectively at Trenton in late December 1776.
 A week later, he was captured at Assunpink Creek under questionable circumstances.
 He apparently defected to the British and George Washington had him watched after he was sent home on parole.
 He was stricken from the Continental Army in March 1777.
 Evidence suggests that he was in contact with the British during the war.
 In 1782 he was declared a traitor and his property forfeited.
 He died in July 1786.
The Newburgh Conspiracy was what appeared to be a planned military coup by the Continental Army in March 1783, when the American Revolutionary War was at its end.
 Possibly instigated by political actors in the Congress of the Confederation, an anonymous letter was circulated in the army camp at Newburgh, New York, on March 10, 1783.
 The letter suggested that the army, whose soldiers were discontented over pay that was in arrears and a lack of funding for promised pensions, should take unspecified action against Congress to resolve the issue.
 The letter was written by Major John Armstrong, aide to General Horatio Gates, although the authorship of its text and underlying ideas is a subject of historical debate.
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.
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.