Part 52 (1/2)
This Monument was erected under the patronage of the State of Connecticut, A.D. 1830, and in the 55th year of the Independence of the U. S. A., In Memory of the Brave Patriots who fell in the ma.s.sacre of Fort Griswold, near this spot, on the 6th of September, A.D. 1781, When the British, under the command of the Traitor, BENEDICT ARNOLD, burnt the towns of New London and Groton, and spread desolation and woe throughout this region.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BENEDICT ARNOLD.]
Westminster Abbey could not blot out that arraignment. Dr. Johnson did not know Benedict Arnold when he said, ”Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” An American school-boy, if asked to name the greatest villain the world has produced, would unhesitatingly reply, ”The traitor, Benedict Arnold.” The sentence which history has pa.s.sed upon him is eternal. Some voice is always repeating it.
Shortly after the peace of '83 Arnold was presented at court. While the king was conversing with him, Earl Balcarras, who had fought with Burgoyne in America, was announced. The king introduced them.
”What, sire,” exclaimed the haughty old earl, refusing his hand, ”the traitor Arnold!”
The consequence was a challenge from Arnold. The parties met, and it was arranged they should fire together. Arnold fired at the signal, but the earl, flinging down his pistol, turned on his heel, and was walking away, when his adversary called out,
”Why don't you fire, my lord?”
”Sir,” said the earl, looking over his shoulder, ”I leave you to the executioner.”
The British attack on New London was not a blind stroke of premeditated cruelty, but a part of the only real grand strategy developed since the campaign of Trenton. Sir Henry Clinton had been completely deceived by Was.h.i.+ngton's movement upon Yorktown, and now launched his expedition upon Connecticut, with the hope of arresting his greater adversary's progress. Arnold was the suitable instrument for such work.
The expedition of 1781 landed on both sides of the harbor, one detachment under command of the traitor himself, near the light-house, the other at Groton Point. Fort Trumbull, being untenable, was evacuated, its little garrison crossing the river to Fort Griswold.
Encountering nothing on his march except a desultory fire from scattered parties, Arnold entered New London, and proceeded to burn the s.h.i.+pping and warehouses near the river. In his official dispatch he disavows the general destruction of the town which ensued, but the testimony is conclusive that dwellings were fired and plundered in every direction by his troops, and under his eye.[318]
The force that landed upon Groton side was led by Lieutenant-colonel Eyre against Fort Griswold, which then contained one hundred and fifty men, under Lieutenant-colonel William Ledyard, cousin of the celebrated traveler. The surrender of the fort being demanded and refused, the British a.s.saulted it on three sides. They were resisted with determined courage, but at length effected an entrance into the work. Eyre had been wounded, and his successor, Montgomery, killed in the a.s.sault. Finding himself overpowered, Ledyard advanced and offered his sword to Major Bromfield, now in command of the enemy, who asked, ”Who commands this fort?”
”I did,” courteously replied Ledyard; ”but you do now.”
Bromfield immediately stabbed Ledyard with his own sword, and the hero fell dead at the feet of the coward and a.s.sa.s.sin.[319] This revolting deed was reserved for a Tory officer, of whom Arnold officially writes Sir H. Clinton, his ”behavior on this occasion does him great honor.”
The survivors of the garrison were nearly all put to the sword, and even the wounded treated with incredible cruelty.[320]
Fort Griswold is a parallelogram, having a foundation of rough stone, on which very thick and solid embankments have been raised. It is the best preserved of any of the old earth-works I have seen since Fort George, at Castine. The position is naturally very strong, far stronger than Bunker Hill, which cost so many lives to carry. On all sides except the east the hill is precipitous; here the ascent is gradual, and having surmounted it, an attacking force would find itself on an almost level area of sufficient extent to form two thousand men. In consequence of the knowledge that this was their weak point of defense, the Americans constructed a small redoubt, the remains of which may still be seen about three hundred yards distant from the main work.
Groton was the seat of the Pequot power, the royal residence of Sa.s.sacus being situated on a commanding eminence called Fort Hill, four miles east of New London. This was his princ.i.p.al fortress, though there was another about eight miles distant from New London, near Mystic, which was the scene of the memorable encounter which all our historians from Cotton Mather to Dr. Palfrey have related with such minuteness. The conquest of the Pequots, with whom, man against man, no other of the red nations near their frontiers dared to contend, was heroic in the little band of Englishmen by whom it was effected. The reduction to a handful of outcasts of a nation that counted a thousand warriors was a stroke of fortune the English owed to the a.s.sistance of Uncas, a rebel against his lawful chieftain, Sa.s.sacus, and of Miantonimo, whose alliance had been secured by Roger Williams.[321]
[Ill.u.s.tration: STORMING OF THE INDIAN FORTRESS.]
Captain John Mason, who had served under Fairfax in the Netherlands, is the ideal Puritan soldier. Before leading his men on to storm the Pequot stronghold, they knelt together in the moonlight, which shone brightly on that May morning, and commended themselves and their enterprise to G.o.d. Report says that the accompanying Narragansets and Mohegans were much astounded and troubled at the sight. Satisfied that he could not conquer the Pequots hand to hand with his little force, Mason himself applied a fire-brand to the wigwams. His own account of the Pequot war, reprinted by Prince in 1736, is the best and fullest narrative of its varying fortunes.
Mason relates that he had but one pint of strong liquors in his army during its whole march. Like a prudent commander, he carried the bottle in his hand, and ingenuously says, when it was empty the very smelling of it would presently recover such as had fainted away from the extremity of the heat. Among the special providences of the day he mentions that Lieutenant Bull had an arrow shot into a hard piece of cheese he carried, that probably saved his life; ”which may verify the old saying,” adds the narrator, that ”a little armor would serve, if a man knew where to place it.”[322] Fuller, in one of his sermons, has another and a similar proverb: ”It is better to fight naked than with bad armor, for the rags of a bad corselet make a deeper wound, and worse to be healed, than the bullet itself.” Mason ultimately settled in Norwich, and died there.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SILAS DEANE.]
Silas Deane was a native of Groton. Of the three men to whom Congress intrusted its secret negotiations with European powers, Franklin was the only one whose character did not permanently suffer, although he did not escape the malignity and envy of Arthur Lee. The Virginian's enmity and jealousy, aided by the influence of his brothers, were more successful in sullying the name and fame of Silas Deane. Yet Arthur Lee was a patriot and an honest man, whose public life was corroded by a morbid envy and distrust of his a.s.sociates. A more disastrous appointment than his could hardly have been made, as his temperament especially unfitted him for a near approach to men who, with all the world's polish, were, in diplomatic phrase, able to cut an adversary's throat with a hair.
John Quincy Adams, who may perhaps have inherited his father's dislike of Deane, once said, in the course of a conversation with some friends:
”A son of Silas Deane was one of my school-fellows.[323] I never saw him again until last autumn, when I recognized him on board a steamboat, and introduced him to Lafayette, who said, 'Do you and Deane agree?' I said, 'Yes.' 'That's more than your fathers did before you,' replied the general.
”Silas Deane,” continued Mr. Adams, ”was a man of fine talents, but, like General Arnold, he was not true to his country. After he was dismissed from the service of the United States he went to England, lived for a long time on Lord Sheffield's patronage, and wrote a book which did more to widen the breach between England and America, and produce unpleasant feelings between the two countries, than any work that had been published. Finally he determined to return to America, but, in a fit of remorse and despair, committed suicide before the vessel left the Thames. His character and fate affected those of his son, who has lived in obscurity.”[324]
It is possible that Silas Deane's patriotism was not proof against the ingrat.i.tude he had experienced, and that he became soured and disaffected; but it is scarcely just to his memory to call him traitor, or compare him with such an ign.o.ble character as Arnold. Deane was the friend of Beaumarchais; he was also his confidant. He was the means of securing the services of Lafayette for America. There is little doubt that he exceeded his powers as commissioner, involving Congress in embarra.s.sments, of which his recall was the solution. The malevolence of Lee and the crookedness of French diplomacy did what was wanting to consign him to obscurity and poverty. The controversy over Deane's case produced a pamphlet from Thomas Paine, and caused John Jay to take the place resigned by Mr. Laurens as president of Congress. Deane and Beaumarchais were the scape-goats of the French alliance.[325]
John Ledyard was another monument of Groton. His first essay as a traveler exhibits his courage and resource. He entered Dartmouth as a divinity student; but poverty obliging him to withdraw from the college, and not having a s.h.i.+lling in his pocket, he made a canoe fifty feet long, with which he floated down the river one hundred and forty miles to Hartford. He then embarked for England as a common sailor, and while there, under the impulse of his pa.s.sion for travel, enlisted with Captain Cook as a corporal of marines. He witnessed the tragical death of his captain. In 1771, after eight years' absence, Ledyard revisited his native country. His mother was then keeping a boarding-house at Southhold. Her son took lodgings with her without being recognized, as had once happened to Franklin in similar circ.u.mstances.
Ledyard's subsequent exploits in Europe, Asia, and Africa bear the impress of a daring and adventurous spirit. At last he offered himself for the more perilous enterprise of penetrating into the unknown regions of Central Africa. A letter from Sir Joseph Banks introduced him to the projectors of the expedition. ”Before I had learned,” says the gentleman to whom Sir Joseph's letter was addressed, ”the name and business of my visitor, I was struck with the manliness of his person, the breadth of his chest, the openness of his countenance, and the inquietude of his eye. Spreading the map of Africa before him, and tracing a line from Cairo to Sennaar, and thence westward in the lat.i.tude and supposed direction of the Niger, I told him that was the route by which I was anxious that Africa might, if possible, be explored. He said he should consider himself singularly fortunate to be intrusted with the adventure. I asked him when he would set out. His answer was, 'To-morrow morning.'”[326]