Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold Show Two Ways an American Officer Could Choose

Connecticut sent two officers to the Revolution, and one of them was the better soldier. That is the uncomfortable fact at the center of this story. The man who is remembered with a statue and a schoolbook line was not the more talented, and the man whose name became a synonym for betrayal was, for a time, one of the best combat commanders the American cause possessed.

If talent decided things, the roles would be reversed. They are not reversed, and the reason is the whole lesson. Let me set the two men side by side, give you the table, and then argue what it shows.

The Two Men at a Glance

The table is a summary. The people are in the details.

Nathan Hale: The Schoolmaster Who Volunteered

Hale was a Yale man, a good athlete and a teacher, who had been working as a schoolmaster in New London when the war began. After Lexington and Concord, which I describe in Why Lexington Green and Concord Bridge Started a War on April 19, 1775, he joined the militia, and in 1776 he became a captain in Thomas Knowlton's Rangers, a hand-picked unit of scouts attached to Washington's army.

In September 1776 the army had just been driven off Long Island and was holding Manhattan, and Washington had no idea what the British would do next. He needed intelligence, and he asked for a volunteer to go behind the lines. Officers hesitated. Spying was considered a dishonorable trade for a gentleman, an attitude that has since been corrected by several agencies and most novelists, and the penalty if caught was death. Hale stepped forward.

The record of what he did next is thin, but the outline is clear. He crossed into British-held Long Island, apparently posing as a schoolteacher, and gathered information about British positions. He was captured around September 21, 1776, at about the time New York City was burning in a fire of unknown origin. He had incriminating notes on him. He was questioned by the British commander, General Sir William Howe, and hanged the next morning, September 22, without a trial, as the custom of war allowed for a spy.

The Last Words, Handled Carefully

Everyone knows the line: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." It is carved on statues. But the sourcing is not first-rate. The best contemporary account is by a British officer, Captain Frederick Mackenzie, who wrote in his diary that Hale behaved with composure and said it was the duty of every good officer to obey the orders of his commander in chief. The famous sentence appears in later recollections and is probably a paraphrase of what was said. Call it attributed. What is not in dispute is that a twenty-one-year-old walked to the gallows because his commander had asked a favor of him.

His mission had not succeeded. The information he gathered did not reach Washington. He made mistakes that a trained agent would have avoided, such as carrying incriminating papers. By the standard of results, it was a failure. By the standard of character, it was a model.

Benedict Arnold: The Brilliant Commander

Now the other man, because the story is not fair to him if I tell it only as a villain's. Arnold was a natural soldier. When the war began he raised a company from New Haven and marched to the siege of Boston. In May 1775 he took part in the seizure of Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, which gave the Americans the cannon they used to force the British out of Boston.

In the autumn of 1775 he led about eleven hundred men on a brutal march through the Maine wilderness to attack Quebec, an expedition that suffered terrible losses to hunger, cold and desertion. On December 31, 1775, in the assault on the city, he was shot in the leg. In October 1776 he commanded a small improvised fleet on Lake Champlain at Valcour Island, which lost the battle but delayed a British invasion from Canada for a full year. At Saratoga in 1777, he rode into the fighting at Bemis Heights on October 7 without any formal command and helped break the British line, and was wounded again, in the leg. The victory at Saratoga was the turning point that brought France into the war, as I explain in Valley Forge Was a Winter of Hunger That Turned Farmers Into an Army.

You could hardly ask for a better record. The Americans later put up a monument at Saratoga, with a boot carved in stone and no name on it, perhaps the only monument in America that is a joke and a rebuke at once, to honor the leg of the officer whom the country could not bring itself to name.

What Went Wrong

Arnold had grievances, and some of them were real. In February 1777 Congress promoted several junior brigadier generals to major general and left him off the list, though he had seniority and performance on his side. The promotion that eventually came was backdated, but the slight stung. After Saratoga he was left with a leg that never fully healed. In 1778 he was made military commander of Philadelphia, where he lived expensively, married a young woman from a prominent family with loyalist ties, Peggy Shippen, and fell into debt. Pennsylvania officials accused him of abusing his position. A court-martial in early 1780 found him guilty of two minor charges, and Washington, who still trusted him, issued a mild reprimand.

By then, Arnold had already started corresponding with the British. In the summer of 1780 he sought and obtained command of the fortress at West Point, on the Hudson, the strongest American post on the river and the key to communications between New England and the other states. He then arranged with a British officer, Major John André, adjutant general to the British commander in New York, to surrender it for money and a commission.

The plot unraveled by accident. On September 23, 1780, three New York militiamen stopped André on the road near Tarrytown, found papers on him and turned him in. The papers revealed the plan. Arnold, receiving word, fled down the Hudson to a British ship, the Vulture, as soon as he heard. André was tried and hanged on October 2. Arnold received a payment from the British, said to be a little over six thousand pounds, and a commission as a brigadier general. He then led British raids in Virginia and against New London, Connecticut, his own home state, in September 1781. He lived out his life in London and died in 1801, unwelcome in both countries.

The Constitution, drafted seven years later, would define treason in a single sentence: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Arnold did both. See Treason Is the One Crime the Constitution Defines, and It Defines It Narrowly for the history of that clause.

The Symmetry of Major André

There is a detail that sharpens the contrast. Four years after Hale, the Americans caught a British officer in nearly the same position. Major John André was in civilian clothes behind American lines with papers hidden on him, which made him a spy under the rules of war, and the penalty was the same one Hale had paid. Washington convened a board of officers, with Nathanael Greene presiding, which examined the facts, heard André's own account and recommended death. Washington approved the sentence. André asked to be shot as a soldier instead of hanged, and the request was refused.

Notice the contrast in procedure. Hale was hanged the morning after his capture, with no trial. André received a board of inquiry, a written finding and several days. The difference tells you something about how an army that was gaining discipline had come to treat even its enemies, and something about the standards the Americans wanted the world to see. The same war's rules applied to both men, and the rules were enforced even against a charming and popular officer whom many Americans wanted to spare. The cause was not tied to a man's rank or manner. That is also the lesson of the rule of law, in uniform.

The Strongest Objection

Here is the sympathetic case for Arnold, stated as fairly as it can be, since a reader who knows the history will raise it.

The objection says: Arnold was treated shamefully. He was passed over, slandered by political enemies and denied the credit he had earned, while men with less to show got the glory. Any proud man would have been bitter. His treason was a human response to injustice, and it is too easy to forget how much the country owed him.

Answer it in four points.

1. Concede the grievances. Some were genuine. Congress did mistreat him on rank, and his accusers were not all honest. A fair historian says so.
2. Everyone in the army had grievances. The soldiers at Valley Forge went unpaid and unfed. The officers at Newburgh in 1783, as I tell in George Washington Gave Up Power Twice and Changed What Leaders Could Be, had been promised pensions Congress could not deliver. They were furious, and the cause was just. They did not sell a fortress. Grievance explains a bitter heart; it does not explain a betrayal. The difference is what a man does with his bitterness.
3. The treason was not a flash of anger. It was planned over months, for money, and it put thousands of lives at risk. A man in a rage does not negotiate a price, and he certainly does not ask for it in installments.
4. The proof is in the comparison. Hale had no promotion, no pay, no recognition and no future, and he gave his life for the cause. Arnold had every reason to stay and every honor the country could give, and he sold it. The gap is not in their circumstances. It is in their characters.

What Decided Each Story

Ask what Arnold had that Hale did not, and the answer is almost everything: experience, courage under fire, a record of victories, rank and the confidence of the commander in chief. Ask what Hale had that Arnold did not, and the answer is one thing, though it is the thing that matters. He had a fixed sense of what he owed.

That is why I would argue that character, not talent, decided each story. Talent made Arnold powerful and useful. Character decided what he used the power for. Talent made Hale only a competent young officer who tried a hard job and failed. Character made him an example that outlived him.

It is a lesson that the Founders understood and wrote about constantly. They knew that a republic needs gifted people, and they also knew that gifts without integrity are the most dangerous thing in the world. The founders' fear of concentrated power, which runs through Federalist 47 Defines Tyranny as All Powers Gathered Into the Same Hands, was a fear of capable men with no restraint.

Four Questions the Two Men Pose

What do you owe, and to whom? Hale answered in advance, before anyone asked him. Arnold answered only when the price was right.

What do you do with a grievance? Every worthwhile institution disappoints its members at some point. The test is whether you leave, argue or betray.

Who are you when no one is watching? Spying is lonely work. There is no crowd and no medal, and the person doing it knows it. Both men were alone when they made their choices.

What does the country do with the story? It remembered Hale with statues, with statues at Yale and in New York, and it remembered Arnold by leaving his name off the Saratoga monument. A society teaches its children by what it honors and what it refuses to honor.

The Case in Brief

1. Hale and Arnold were both Connecticut men who served in the same war, and Arnold was by far the more accomplished soldier.
2. Hale, a twenty-one-year-old captain, volunteered to gather intelligence behind British lines on request of Washington and was hanged on September 22, 1776, having failed in his mission and kept faith with his duty.
3. Arnold, wounded at Quebec and Saratoga, turned to treason in 1780 when he arranged with Major André to surrender West Point, and the plot unraveled when André was captured on September 23.
4. Grievances explain bitterness but not betrayal, since thousands of unpaid and slighted soldiers kept faith.
5. Character, not talent, decided each story, and a free republic depends on citizens who know what they owe.

What you can do: read Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution on treason, then ask a student, or yourself, what the difference is between a grievance you argue about and a duty you abandon.