Part 13 (1/2)
Columbia! Columbia! to glory arise, The queen of the earth and the child of the skies.
_Timothy Dwight._
Far up the Hudson's silver flood I hear the Highlands call With whispering of leafy boughs And voice of waterfall.
_Minna Irving._
=Beverley House.=--Pa.s.sing Cohn's Hook, p.r.o.nounced Connosook, where Hendrick Hudson anch.o.r.ed on his way up the river September 14, 1609, we see before us on the right bank a point coming down to the sh.o.r.e marked by a boat house. This is Beverley Dock, and directly up the river bank about an eighth of a mile stood the old Beverley House, where Benedict Arnold had his headquarters when in command of West Point. The old house, a good specimen of colonial times, was unfortunately burned in 1892, and with it went the most picturesque landmark of the most dramatic incident of the Revolution. It will be remembered that Arnold returned to the Beverley House after his midnight interview with Andre at Haverstraw, and immediately upon the capture of Andre the following day, that Colonel Jamison sent a letter to Arnold, advising him of the fact. It was the morning of September 4th. General Was.h.i.+ngton was on his way to West Point, coming across the country from Connecticut. On arriving, however, at the river, just above the present station of Garrison, he became interested in examining some defenses, and sent Alexander Hamilton forward to the Beverley House, saying that he would come later, requesting the family to proceed with their breakfast and not to await his arrival.
Alexander Hamilton and General Lafayette sat gayly chatting with Mrs.
Arnold and her husband when the letter from Jamison was received.
Arnold glanced at the contents, rose and excused himself from the table, beckoning to his wife to follow him, bade her good-bye, told her he was a ruined man and a traitor, kissed his little boy in the cradle, rode to Beverley Dock, and ordered his men to pull off and go down the river. The ”Vulture,” an English man-of-war, was near Teller's Point, and received a traitor, whose miserable treachery branded him with eternal infamy on both continents. It is said that he lived long enough to be hissed in the House of Commons, as he once took his seat in the gallery, and he died friendless and despised. It is also said, when Talleyrand arrived in Havre on foot from Paris, in the darkest hour of the French Revolution, pursued by the bloodhounds of the reign of terror, and was about to secure a pa.s.sage to the United States, he asked the landlord of the hotel whether any Americans were staying at his house, as he was going across the water, and would like a letter to a person of influence in the New World.
”There is a gentleman up-stairs from Britain or America,” was the response. He pointed the way, and Talleyrand ascended the stairs. In a dimly lighted room sat a man of whom the great minister of France was to ask a favor. He advanced, and poured forth in elegant French and broken English, ”I am a wanderer, and an exile. I am forced to fly to the New World without a friend or home. You are an American. Give me, then, I beseech you, a letter of yours, so that I may be able to earn my bread.” The strange gentleman rose. With a look that Talleyrand never forgot, he retreated toward the door of the next chamber. He spoke as he retreated, and his voice was full of suffering: ”I am the only man of the New World who can raise his hand to G.o.d and say, 'I have not a friend, not one, in America!'” ”Who are you?” he cried--”your name?” ”My name is Benedict Arnold!”
Wayne, Putnam, Knox and Heath are there, Steuben, proud Prussia's honored son; Brave Lafayette from France the fair, And chief of all our Was.h.i.+ngton.
_Wallace Bruce._
Andre's fate on the other hand was widely lamented. He was universally beloved by his comrades and possessed a rich fund of humor which often bubbled over in verse. It is a strange coincidence that his best poetic attempt on one of Anthony Wayne's exploits near Fort Lee, ent.i.tled ”The Cow Chase,” closed with a graphically prophetic verse:
”And now I've closed my epic strain, I tremble as I show it, Lest this same Warrior-Drover Wayne Should ever catch the poet.”
By a singular coincidence he did: General Wayne was in command of the Tarrytown and Tappan country where Andre was captured and executed. It is also said that these lines were published by one of the Tory papers in New York the very day of Andre's capture. One of the old-time characters on the Hudson, known as Uncle Richard, has recently thrown new light on the capture of Andre by claiming, with a touch of genuine humor, that it was entirely due to the ”effects” of cider which had been freely ”dispensed” that day by a certain Mr. Horton, a farmer in the neighborhood.
In view of all he lost,--his youth, his love, And possibilities that wait the brave, Inward and outward bound dim visions move Like pa.s.sing sails upon the Hudson's wave.
_Charlotte Fiske Bates._
It is impossible even in these later years, not to speak of twenty-five or fifty years ago, to travel along the sh.o.r.es of Haverstraw Bay or among the pa.s.ses of the Highlands, without hearing some old-time stories about Arnold and Andre, and it would be strange indeed if a little romance had not here and there become blended with the real facts. Uncle Richard's account is undoubtedly the best since the days of Knickerbocker. ”Benedict Arnold, you know, had command of West Point, and he knew that the place was essential to the success of the Continental cause. He plotted, as everybody knows, to turn it over to the enemy, and in the correspondence which he carried on with General Clinton, young Andre, Clinton's aid, did all the writing.
Things were coming to a focus, when a meeting took place between Arnold and Clinton's representative, Andre, at the house of Joshua Hett Smith, near Haverstraw. Andre came on the British s.h.i.+p ”Vulture,”
which he left at Croton Point, in Haverstraw Bay. Well,” so runs Uncle Richard's story, ”it took a long time to get matters settled; they 'confabbed' till after daybreak. Then Arnold started back to the post which he had plotted to surrender. But daylight was no time for Andre to return to the ”Vulture,” so he hung round waiting for night.
”During that day, some men who were working for James Horton, a farmer on the ridge overlooking the river, who gave his men good rations of cider, drank a little too much of the hard stuff. They felt good, and thought it would be a fine joke to load and fire off an old disabled cannon which lay a mile or so away on the bank. They hauled it to the point now called c.o.c.kroft Point, propped it up, and then the spirit of fun--and hard cider--prompted them to train the old piece on the British s.h.i.+p ”Vulture,” lying at anchor in the Bay. The ”Vulture's”
people must have overestimated the source of the fire, for the s.h.i.+p dropped down the river, and Andre had to abandon the idea of returning by that means. He crossed the river at King's Ferry, and while on his way overland was captured at Tarrytown.
”Of course, the three brave men who refused to be bribed deserve all the glory they ever had; if it were not for them, who knows but the revolutionary war would have had a different ending. But they never would have had a chance to capture Andre if it had not been for James Horton's men warming up on hard cider. Hard cider broke the plans of Arnold, it hung Andre, and it saved West Point.” A boy misguided Grouchy _en route_ to Waterloo. On what small hinges turn the destinies of nations!