Benedict Arnold Quotes

“No longer an American, Benedict Arnold was never accepted as an Englishman, either.”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“It would be the twentieth century before the opening of the British Headquarters Papers at the University of Michigan proved what the eighteenth century refused to believe that a young and beautiful woman was capable of helping Benedict Arnold plot the greatest conspiracy of the American Revolution and then completely fooling the astute warriors around her.”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“By 1778, British peace commissioners were offering to rectify all the American grievances of 1776, ignoring only the demand for independence.”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“in August 1777 that "no public or private injury or insult shall prevail on me to forsake the cause of my injured and oppressed country until I see peace and liberty restored or nobly die in the attempt."2”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“The fiercely independent Arnold did not need the encouragement of Loyalists: he may have thought of changing sides as early as the seniority controversy two years earlier”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“even in the Loyalist press inside British-occupied New York City by February 1779. The Royal Gazette, praising Benedict Arnold for being "more distinguished for valor and perseverance" than any other American, including Washington, wondered why the enemy was wasting his "military talents" and had permitted him "thus to fall into the unmerciful fangs of the executive council of Pennsylvania."1”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“Envy and malice are indefatigable. Where they have not invention enough to frame new slanders, or the slanders newly framed are found totally inadequate to their purpose, they will call in the feeble aid of old calumnies”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“I daily discover so much baseness and ingratitude among mankind that I almost blush at being of the same species, and could quit the stage without regret, was it not for some gentle, generous souls like my dear Peggy. Benedict”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“When you ask for a frigate, they give you a raft. Ask for sailors, they give you tavern waiters. And if you want breeches, they give you a vest.  Benedict Arnold to David Hawley, August 1776 In”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“Prudence, policy and a true Christian spirit will lead us to look with compassion upon their errors without insulting them. While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men and to him only, in this case, they are answerable.16 When”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“General Arnold's affection for me is unbounded. He is the best of husbands. Peggy Shippen Arnold to her father, February 1786 Twenty-five”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“He claimed as a loss that "in consequence of his loyalty and engagements with Sir Henry Clinton he refused the command of the American Army in South Carolina, offered him by Washington, which was afterwards given to Greene, who [the memorialist is informed] has been rewarded . . . with the sum of 20,000 pounds . . . which would probably have been given to [Arnold] had he accepted the command."78”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“seventy to eighty former members of their secret police that the British left behind undetected in Philadelphia.”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“British lottery for the relief of the poor,”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“He had decided, almost hysterically it seems from the tone of this desperate letter to Washington, to turn his back on the people who had so rejected and wounded him, and make his peace with the British.”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“Return enraptur'd Hours, When Delia's heart was mine; When she, with wreaths of flowers, My Temples wou'd entwine. When Jealousy nor care Corroded in my Breast, But Visions, light as Air, Presided o'er my Rest— Now Nightly round my Bed No airy Visions play; No Flowers crown my Head Each Vernal Holyday‑ For far from those sad Plains My Lovely Delia flies, And rack'd with Jealous Pains, Her wretched Lover dies.34”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“Come then, ye generous citizens, range yourselves under the standard of General Liberty, against which all the force and artifice of tyranny will never be able to prevail. General”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“he often did at a moment of great crisis, Arnold threw a party for the congressmen in the mansion”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor

“against which all the force and artifice of tyranny will never be able to prevail. General”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor