West Point: The Fort Benedict Arnold Nearly Surrendered

The Hudson River bends sharply at West Point, forcing ships to slow and turn in water within range of cannons on the heights above. Military engineers understood this from the moment the Revolution began. Whoever controlled West Point controlled the river. Whoever controlled the river could split the American colonies in half, cutting New England off from the middle and southern states. The fort at West Point was, strategically, the most important single position in North America.

In August seventeen eighty, the Continental Army appointed Benedict Arnold its commandant. Arnold was a decorated general, one of the heroes of Saratoga, and he was deeply aggrieved. He believed, not entirely without justification, that the Continental Congress had passed him over for promotion, had failed to reimburse his personal expenses for the Canadian campaign, and had treated him shabbily. He had been negotiating with the British for months by the time he arrived at West Point. His price was twenty thousand pounds sterling and a commission in the British Army.

Arnold prepared a package of documents describing West Point's fortifications, troop dispositions, and vulnerabilities. He passed them to British Major John Andre for delivery to General Henry Clinton in New York City. Andre was captured on September twenty-third, seventeen eighty, on the road to the British lines, carrying the documents concealed in his boot. Arnold received warning minutes before the arrest and escaped to a British ship on the Hudson. Andre was hanged as a spy nine days later. Arnold served as a British general for the remainder of the war and spent the rest of his life in Canada and England, despised by both sides.

The United States Military Academy was established at West Point in eighteen oh two. The reasoning was direct: the Revolution had demonstrated that civilian volunteers who were offered enough money could be bought. A professional officer corps, trained together, steeped in a shared code of honor, would not be so easily turned. The iron chain that Arnold had promised to weaken is still at Trophy Point on the Academy grounds. Most of it is original hardware.