709. Benedict Arnold: The Hero Who Became a Villain

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. So we've been talking a lot about unsung heroes of the Revolutionary War, but what about the villains? We're going to talk about a particular villain today who's kind of the villain or the first traitor that America likes to talk about, and his name was Benedict Arnold. So let's get into that.

Have you ever worked really hard for something and then felt like you didn't get the credit for it? I think all of us can relate to that feeling, and I know I went in a whole episode once about how I don't like group projects in school because a lot of times one person either gets all the credit or like two people do all the work and somebody else doesn't. And I know that that's an experience where I can relate to doing something really harder

than feeling like I didn't get the credit for something. And that's a very human feeling, right? All of us want to be acknowledged for the things that we do. So what does this have to do with Benedict Arnold? Well, this is going to come into play here on how he makes his villain transition. So as we're talking about Benedict Arnold, I want you to start thinking about when did

he become a villain or why did he become a villain because villains aren't born, right? Villains aren't. They don't just wake up one day and decide to be villains. Usually there's a series of events or a few things that happen that changes their worldview. And one thing I would highly recommend if you guys don't already have it, pick up this book, Tellwood's Guide to Modern Villains.

This is great. It dives into modern villains, but it talks about their personal stories and you can kind of pinpoint the moment that they started turning from regular people to villains or even heroes to villains. And that's exactly what's going to happen to Benedict Arnold. Before the Revolutionary War, Benedict Arnold is pretty successful, actually.

He's a Connecticut merchant. He owns ships. He, you know, is big on commerce. He's very successful. And he's known as being an ambitious and a courageous person and there's nothing wrong with that.

And I think many other people of the time, after Lexington and Concord, Benedict Arnold is going to be really inspired to join the revolution. And this is before Washington has even really formed the Continental Army. So he's jumping on the bandwagon pretty quick. Now, I don't know necessarily what kind of can guess. Was he super ideological?

Was he, you know, trying to protect what he's perceived as like his home? Or was he looking for, you know, some credit, some glory, which a lot of people join or become invested in a career and in military because of that, that happens. Actually, George Washington himself kind of did that. And there's nothing wrong with that either. But that's the kind of person he is.

So so far, so good, right? I don't see any problems. So as the war gets going on, Benedict Arnold is going to do something quite impressive. He's going to help the Continental Army secure what's called Fort Takundroga. I hope I said that correctly. It's kind of a confusing word.

And this is a huge moment for the Continental Army, even though this is an old fort and people don't understand its significance, it actually held a lot of cannons and some other weapons. So this is actually a big deal. So in this fort where the cannons at Henry Knox would eventually capture and he would use those cannons and the Continental Army would use those cannons to protect Boston

to get the Brits out of Boston. So this becomes a very significant moment later on. And so this is solidifying his, you know, beginning to actually becoming an American hero. Then comes the Battle of Saratoga, which is one of these big turning point moments in the war. And Benedict Arnold, he is reporting to a general who's general Horatio Gates.

I always love that name. It's one of my favorites. And General Horatio Gates is going to give him an order and he's actually not going to obey that order. And eventually a general Gates is going to be so annoyed with Benedict Arnold that he's going to send him to the back.

He's going to send him out of the way of active fighting and basically send him to the back of the line where he's not going to see any action. And as you can imagine somebody who really craves this glory and has this ambition is going to be very put off by this, he is not going to feel appreciated for this. So he disobeys a direct order, but in doing so ends up actually helping them win this battle. So this ends up being a big moment for the Continental Army.

And it all happened or was at least largely because Benedict Arnold disobeyed a direct order. But how do you think this is going to make General Gates feel? Actually, first let's talk about how is this going to make Benedict Arnold feel? Here you have this person who's told to stay back, they disobey orders and they save the day. And even though he argued with the general, I think in his mind he's thinking, okay, but like I just helped save the day, you guys should be honoring me, this is a huge deal.

And that praise never came. Why did that praise never come? So one thing that you'll see is a common theme in these villain stories and especially here is pride. And pride is an interesting feeling because pride is like when you're proud of something you do, but there's the opposite of that, right?

It is not wanting your perception or how you're perceived by others to be negative, right? If you do something you're embarrassed about, your pride might be hurt, right? You might feel a little ashamed. But if you do something you're proud of, your pride, you know, is kind of boosted, right? You have a lot of pride in the things you do. So there's two people's prides involved here.

You have Benedict Arnold, whose pride has hurt that he helped save the day and he's not getting recognition. But then you also have General Gates, who was proven wrong, right? He told Benedict Arnold to go to the back and to not be a part of active fighting. And his order was disobeyed and then you have victory coming as a result. So you have to imagine that General Gates is also having some wounded pride in this moment.

And two people with wounded pride is never a good sign. That's a lot of times how you get war and things like that. To make matters worse, during the Battle of Saratoga, Benedict Arnold is actually injured. He takes a musket ball to the leg. They want to amputate his leg, which means to cut off your leg because the wound is so bad. And he refuses, but it doesn't heal correctly.

And so he ends up with one leg shorter than the other. And for the rest of his life is going to walk with a limp. So when he returns to Valley Forge, he is met with a hero's welcome. He is praised. He is, you know, and he's wounded. So it's a pretty heroic scene, right?

He feels for a second that he's going to get this recognition. But remember, General Gates pride is also a little hurt in this moment. And so he, General Gates, is going to end up taking most of the credit for the victory. This is not going to sit well with Arnold. And I don't know if this contributed to this. So while serving in Philadelphia, he ends up making a lot of, we'll call them, questionable business decisions.

He's accumulating debt. He's, you know, accused of corruption. So his reputation is starting to get soiled and justifiably so. But a big part here is he also starts spending time with loyalists. And remember, a loyalist is someone who stayed loyal to the king. So even though they're living in the colonies, they still believe themselves to be British

subjects. And this is going to come into play here. So first, he gets all these charges from the things he's done, these questionable decisions. And he's actually, all the charges are dropped, although he is reprimanded by General Washington. But to be honest, he kind of comes out of this unscathed. So even though he made these bad decisions, he's kind of given a second chance by not being

severely punished. But because George Washington reprimanded him pretty publicly, what's going to happen? You guessed it, his pride is once again going to be wounded. And if you pick up a volume two of the title Twins American History book, you will learn that this was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back as they say. What does that mean?

That means there were lots of little things that happened, but this was the final little thing where it was like no turning back. We call this kind of a breaking bad moment where you, you, you were having your villain transformation. So around this time Benedict Arnold gets married and his wife had a friendly relationship with friends with a man named John Andre.

John Andre is a British intelligent agent. He is a very skilled spy and he's very charming and they're going to strike up a friendship. Remember the, you know, a theme of this episode is that these, these transformations from hero to villain don't happen all at once. It was small, small things. So as you're becoming friends with somebody who's on the opposite side, maybe, you know,

it starts with one small be trail to America and then maybe another small thing and then another small thing and then you're in pretty deep. So Arnold was given command of something called West Point, which is going to be near the Hudson River. So I want you to think, why do you think rivers are so important for countries to occupy space around?

Because rivers are how you're going to transport all your goods. And so they want to be near that, you know, that, that transfer point where they can get all these goods because you're shipping things back and forth all the time. There's no trains. There's no cars. This is how you do it.

So Benedict Arnold makes a secret agreement to give up, to surrender and give up West Point. And this is going to be a huge blow to the Continental Army and his plan almost worked. But guess what, America captures John Andre and they find all these documents on him and they find out that Benedict Arnold was selling them out that he was about to surrender West Point. And so he flees before he's able to be captured and reprimanded by the Continental Army.

That man is Washington angry when he hears about this. And you'd think maybe he'd feel a little bad about this or you think maybe he'd want to be apologetic, but no, this is the moment where he can choose to either own up to what he didn't changed or proceed with this villainous path. And he's going to choose the villainous path, which is a shame, but it happens all throughout history.

And what makes people feel particularly just angered by this is he's going to end up fighting with the Brits. He's going to end up launching attacks on the town where he grew up. So he's fighting against his own people and doesn't seem to feel that bad about it obviously because everybody has a choice and they can make a choice at any time to do the right thing.

And he is repeatedly choosing not to do the right thing. So that is how Benedict Arnold went from being a hero after the battle of Saratoga to the person. When you think of a traitor, that's the first thing you hear about if you're studying American history, because Benedict Arnold is this first major traitor. Here's the real kicker. At Saratoga, there's something called the boot monument.

And what is that? That is a monument to the soldier who lost a leg for heroically, you know, bringing the American army to victory at Saratoga, but there's no name on the monument. Now we, because we know the story, know that that monument is for Benedict Arnold, but his name is left off. Now imagine if he were alive today, somebody who we know has so much pride and that is

so important to him. I bet he would just be seething with anger because it's almost worse for America to now recognize what he did, but leave his name off. So that's kind of a funny part of the story. And I think that shows that history is complicated. There's a great quote from the Count of Monte Cristo movie from 2002, where the priest says

treason is just a matter of dates and I find that interesting because if you're looking only at one particular part of the Revolutionary War, Saratoga, you're going to see that he's actually a hero, but you look at another day, you look not too far in the future and he's a villain, right? He's a traitor. And so it's interesting how complicated history can be.

Somebody who's a hero can also be a villain and I'll be honest, that's kind of all of our stories. Maybe we're not big traders like Benedict Arnold, but at some point we will be a hero to someone and we might be a villain to someone else. We are siblings because we take their toy or we aren't very nice to them, something like that.

So it's really interesting. I think Benedict Arnold is not just a cautionary tale, but a good observation of just how human beings act because we are not all perfect. Benedict Arnold, of course, is the product of his decisions. He made bad decisions and instead of choosing to be a hero, he chose to take on the role of villains.

So we will leave it there. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, I will talk to you later.