A British officer is caught near Tarrytown with Arnold's plans for West Point sewn into his boot
George Washington had trusted Benedict Arnold with command of West Point, the fortress guarding the Hudson River, just two months earlier. On September 21, 1780, American militiamen stopped a rider near Tarrytown who called himself John Anderson. Inside his boot they found papers detailing the fort's defenses in Arnold's own hand, along with passes Arnold had signed for him. The rider was Major John André, head of British intelligence in New York, and the papers proved Arnold had agreed to hand the Americans' most important river fortress to the British.
West Point's near-loss shook Washington badly, and Arnold's name became shorthand for betrayal. Washington's decision to place the fort under a military academy in 1802 traces directly back to the vulnerability exposed that day. Two centuries later, calling someone "a Benedict Arnold" is still an insult.
QWhat happened to the three militiamen who caught André after the war?
Congress voted John Paulding, Isaac Van Wart, and David Williams silver medals and lifetime annual pensions of $200 each, a substantial sum for men of modest means in the 1780s. The award recognized that they had refused a bribe far larger than any ordinary reward, choosing to hand André over rather than pocket his offer. Their names were later engraved on a monument near Tarrytown marking the capture site. Van Wart and Williams both lived into the 1820s, long enough to be honored as aging heroes of the Revolution. Paulding died in 1818. None of the three ever held military rank above militia private, yet their roadside decision outlasted the careers of most generals in the war.
QDid Arnold's wife Peggy Shippen face any consequences for her role?
Peggy Shippen was allowed to leave American-held territory unmolested after the plot collapsed, despite her prewar friendship with André and her presence at Arnold's headquarters the night he fled. She staged a convincing display of hysterics in front of Washington's own officers, feigning ignorance of her husband's treason so completely that even Alexander Hamilton, who witnessed it, was moved to sympathy. She was escorted to her family in Philadelphia and later rejoined Arnold in London. Loyalist Philadelphia had already marked her as a favorite of the British occupation before the war ended, and she died in England in 1804, three years after her husband, without ever being formally charged.
QWhat specific reward had André offered his captors before they refused it?
André offered the three militiamen his gold watch, his horse, and any sum of money they named if they would let him pass, on top of what British payroll records suggest could have exceeded the value of his entire military kit. He even produced a pass signed by Arnold under the name John Anderson, hoping the paperwork alone would end the encounter. Paulding, who had recently escaped a British prison himself and recognized a captured British officer's coat beneath André's civilian clothes, pressed the search that turned up the incriminating papers. The refusal of a bribe that size, from a man clearly desperate, is what convinced the militiamen something was badly wrong.
