gold watch, and said, "this will convince you that I am a gentleman, and if you will suffer me to pass, I will send to New York, and give you any amount you shall name, in cash, or in dry goods; and," pointing to an-. adjacent wood, "you may keep me in that wood till it shall be delivered to you." All his offers, however, were rejected with disdain, and they declared that ten thousand guineas, or any other sum, would be no temptation. It is to their virtue, no less glorious to America than Arnold's apostacy is disgraceful, that his detestable crimes were discovered.

The militia-men, whose names were John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Vanwert, proceeded to search him. They found concealed in his boots, exact returns, in Arnold's hand-writing, of the state of the forces, ordnance, and defences of West Point and its dependencies; critical remarks on the works, and an estimate of the men ordinarily employed in them, with other interesting papers. Andre was carried before lieutenant-colonel Jameson, the officer commanding the scouting parties on the lines, and, regardless of himself, and only anxious for the safety of Arnold, he still maintained the character which he had assumed, and requested Jameson to inform his commanding officer that Anderson was taken. An express was accordingly despatched, and the traitor, thus becoming acquainted with his danger, escaped.

Major Andre, after his detection, was permitted to send a message to Arnold, to give him notice of his danger; and the traitor found opportunity to escape on board the Vulture, on the 25th of September, 1780, a few hours before the return of Washington, who had been absent on a journey to Hartford, Connecticut. It is supposed, however, that he would not have escaped, had not an express to the commander in chief, with an account of the capture of Andre, missed him, by taking a different road from the one which he travelled.

Arnold, on the very day of his escape, wrote a letter to Washington, declaring that the love of his country had governed him in his late conduct, and requesting him to protect Mrs. Arnold. She was conveyed to her husband at New York, and his clothes and baggage, for

which he had written, were transmitted to him. During the exertions which were made to rescue Andre from the destruction which threatened him, Arnold had the hardihood to interpose. He appealed to the humanity of the commander in chief, and then sought to intimidate him by stating the situation of many of the principal characters of South Carolina, who had forfeited their lives, but had hitherto been spared through the clemency of the British general. This clemency, he said, could no longer, in justice, be extended to them, should major

Andre suffer.

When Arnold's treason was known at Philadelphia, an artist of that city constructed an effigy of him, large as life, and seated in a cart, with the figure of the devil at his elbow, holding a lantern up to the face of the traitor, to show him to the people, having his name and crime in capital letters. The cart was paraded the whole evening through the streets of the city, with drums and fifes playing the rogue's march, with other marks of infamy, and was attended by a vast concourse of people. The effigy was finally hanged for the want of the original, and then committed to the flames. Yet this is the man on whom the British bestowed ten thousand pounds sterling as the price of his treason, and appointed to the rank of brigadier-general in their service. It could scarcely be imagined that there was an officer of honour left in that army, who would debase himself and his commission by serving under or ranking with Benedict Arnold!

Arnold preserved the rank of brigadier-general throughout the war.

Yet he must have been held in contempt and detestation by the generous and honourable. It was impossible for men of this description, even when acting with him, to forget that he was a traitor, first the slave of his rage, then purchased with gold, and finally secured by the blood of one of the most accomplished officers in the British army. One would suppose that his mind could not have been much at ease; but he had proceeded so far in vice, that perhaps his reflections gave him but little trouble. "I am mistaken," says Washington, in a private letter, "if at this time, Arnold is undergoing the torments of a mental hell. He wants

feeling. From some traits of his character, which have lately come to my knowledge, he seems to have been so hacknied in crime, so lost to all sense of honour and shame, that while his faculties still enable him to continue his sordid pursuits, there will be no time for remorse."

Arnold found it necessary to make some exertions to secure the attachment of his new friends. With the hope of alluring many of the discontented to his standard, he published an address to the inhabitants of America, in which he endeavoured to justify his conduct. His address did not produce the effect designed, and in all the hardships, sufferings, and irritations of the war, Arnold remains the solitary instance of an American officer, who abandoned the side first embraced in the contest, and turned his sword upon his former compaAions in arms.

He was soon despatched by sir Henry Clinton, to make a diversion in Virginia. With about seventeen hundred men he arrived in the Chesapeake, in January, 1781, and being supported by such a naval force as was suited to the nature of the service, he committed extensive ravages on the rivers and along the unprotected coasts. It is said, that while on this expedition, Arnold inquired of an American captain, whom he had taken prisoner, what the Americans would do with him if he should fall into their hands. The captain at first declined giving him an answer, but upon being repeatedly urged to it, he said, "Why, sir, if I must answer your question, you must excuse my telling you the plain truth: if my countrymen should catch you, I believe they would first cut off that lame leg, which was wounded in the cause of freedom and virtue, and bury it with the honours of war, and afterwards hang the remainder of your body in gibbets." The reader will recollect that the captain alluded to the wound Arnold received in one of his legs, at the attack upon Quebec, in 1776.

After his return from Virginia, he was appointed to conduct an expedition, the object of which was the town of New London, in his native county. The troops employed therein, were landed in two detachments, one on each side of the harbour. The one commanded by lieu

tenant-colonel Eyre, and the other by Arnold. He took fort Trumbull without much opposition. Fort Griswold was furiously attacked by lieutenant-colonel Eyre. The garrison defended themselves with great resolution, but after a severe conflict of forty minutes, the fort was carried by the enemy. The Americans had not more than six or seven men killed, when the British carried the lines, but a severe execution took place afterwards, though resistance had ceased. An officer of the con

quering troops inquired, on his entering the fort, who commanded. Colonel Ledyard, presenting his sword, answered, “I did, but you do now;" and was immediately run through the body and killed. Between thirty and forty were wounded, and about forty were carried off prisoners. On the part of the British, forty-eight were killed, and one hundred and forty-five wounded. About fifteen vessels loaded with the effects of the inhabitants retreated up the river, and four others remained in the harbour unhurt; but all except these were burned by the communication of fire from the burning stores. Sixty dwelling houses and eighty-four stores were reduced to ashes. The loss which the Americans sustained by the destruction of naval stores, of provisions, and merchandise, was immense. General Arnold having completed the object of the expedition, returned in eight days to New York. At the close of the war, he accompanied the royal army to England. "The contempt that followed him through life," says a late elegant writer, "is further illustrated by the speech of the present lord Lauderdale, who, perceiving Arnold on the right hand of the king, and near his person, as he addressed his parliament, declared, on his return to the commons, that, however gracious the language he had heard from the throne, his indignation could not but be highly excited, at beholding, as he had done, his majesty supported by a traitor." "And on another occasion, lord Surry, since duke of Norfolk, rising to speak in the house of commons, and perceiving Arnold in the gallery, sat down with precipitation, exclaiming, "I will not speak while that man, (pointing to him,) is in the house,

As the treason and treachery of Arnold, and the capture of Andre, by three American militia-men, excited

great interest and feeling, from the circumstance that Arnold was the only instance of an American officer basely turning against his country in that doubtful contest, and the contrast so striking, between Arnold and those virtuous private soldiers, we deem it proper to refer to the journals of the old congress, for authentic facts in relation to this most important transaction.

On the 30th of September, 1780, we find in the journals, the following facts connected with this affair: "A letter, of the 26th, from general Washington, was read, confirming the account given in the letter of the 25th, from major-general Greene, of the treasonable practices of major-general Benedict Arnold, and his desertion to the enemy. On the 4th of October, 1780, congress adopted the following resolution: Resolved, That the board of war be, and hereby are directed to erase from the register of the names of the officers of the army of the United States, the name of BENEDICT ARNOLD."

BIDDLE, NICHOLAS, captain in the American navy, during the revolutionary war, was born in the city of Philadelphia, in the year 1750. Among the brave men who perished in the glorious struggle for the independence of America, captain Biddle holds a distinguished rank. His services, and the high expectations raised by his military genius and gallantry, have left a strong impression of his merit, and a profound regret that his early fate should have disappointed, so soon, the hopes of his country.

Very early in life he manifested a partiality for the sea, and before the age of fourteen he had made a voyage to Quebec. In the following year, 1765, he sailed from Philadelphia to Jamaica, and the Bay of Honduras. The vessel left the bay in the latter end of December, 1765, bound to Antigua, and on the second day of January, in a heavy gale of wind, she was cast away on a shoal, called the Northern Triangles. After remaining two nights and a day upon the wreck, the crew took