Reflections on the anniversary of the execution of John Andre:
Major John Andre was an Englishman by birth, but a European by heritage – his father was Swiss and his mother was French. A proud native-born Englishman himself, though, after a solid classical education, he happily joined the British army in 1771, when he was 21.
He was sent to the Americas in 1774, and was serving with the redcoats in Canada when Britain found itself in the early stages of war with the American colonies. Andre participated in the defense of St. Johns, was captured in battle in 1775, and was brought to Pennsylvania as a prisoner of war.
Following a year as a well-cared-for POW (he was an officer, and the American side treated captive officers well, when they could), he was released in a prisoner exchange, and turned over to British General Howe in New York.
Promoted to captain, John Andre served alongside British Major-General Charles Gray in some particularly bloody campaigns in 1777 and 1778. Andre became well-known and highly respected among the loyalist community in occupied Philadelphia and New York, and was promoted to major when General Henry Clinton took command and put Andre in charge of certain espionage activities.
Amazingly, in May of 1780, the commandant of West Point, American General Benedict Arnold, one of the colonists’ best generals but an increasingly bitter man, offered to turn traitor – by turning over the fortress at West Point to the Redcoats, for a princely sum of 20,000 pounds (about four or five million dollars today).
Communications were difficult, but arrangements were concluded by September. Arnold met Andre behind American lines to hammer out the final details; Arnold gave him the plans to West Point along with safe passage documents under an assumed name – John Anderson – so that Andre could travel safely as if an American civilian.
On the night of September 22-23, 1780, thinking himself out of danger, Major Andre, in civilian clothes with the plans to West Point in his boot, was noticed at a forest checkpoint by a trio of minutemen. When questioned, this “John Anderson” was somehow not quite as believable as he’d thought he’d be. The trio detained him, discovering the shocking papers in his boot. They immediately raised the alarm.
Coincidentally, American General George Washington was nearby, planning a visit to Arnold. When he put two and two together, the order went out to capture Arnold. Arnold escaped just in time, and Andre was investigated and tried by a court of fourteen generals.
Found guilty of spying, and more importantly in retrospect, of participating in a plot to help one of our own generals turn traitor, he was immediately sentenced to death. General Washington offered him to the English in exchange for Arnold, but the English turned down the offer. John Andre had to die so that Arnold could complete his treason.
And so it was that on October 2, 1780, Major John Andre, age 30, was hanged as a spy at Tappan, New York, mere days after being captured for the incident that has ever since been the primary example of treason in the American mind.
But the story of John Andre isn’t the lesson for us today.
Andre was a mere vehicle, the one whom Arnold approached when he and his wife, Peggy Shippen, conceived his idea of switching allegiance. Any other Englishman in the position of spymaster would have similarly accepted the deal and might have been just as likely to be caught.
But what is interesting is why this act of treason was worth 20,000 pounds to the British. Arnold, after all, was a talented general – one of the Colonists’ best – but the Americans weren’t making full use of his talents anyway. What made the redcoats salivate over this deal was the opportunity to take over West Point.
We think of West Point as a college today, and that’s exactly what it’s been for two hundred years now; the premier university for training young officers for service in the United States Army.
But in the 1770s, West Point was a fort, a military base with a garrison of soldiers based there. What Arnold had sold Andre was the opportunity to not only get the services of Arnold himself, but also to capture West Point and everything in it in one fell swoop.
Carefully designed by Polish Engineer Tadeusz Kosciusko, West Point was a well-fortified installation that would be costly and difficult to conquer in a fair battle. This was an opportunity to get both a functioning fort and a batch of POWs, taking these soldiers out of the fight while gaining their barracks for England. Now, that would indeed be a coup, if that were all the deal provided.
But there was still more.
At the time that Arnold planned to turn over West Point to the English, General Washington was in the process of arriving with his high command for a routine visit. If things had gone as Arnold and Andre intended, the British would also have captured the colonists’ commander-in-chief, along with plenty of other high ranking American officers. To say this would have decapitated the Continental Army is putting it mildly.
And there is still more.
We think of West Point as an army location today, but back then, it had a much more important function as a naval location.
West Point is located on the Hudson River, just north of New York City; it’s the gateway to upstate New York. In those days, there were massive steel chains across the Hudson, controlled by the fortress at West Point. They would remove this barrier when friendly vessels approached, and leave them in place when hostiles were nearby. No British ship could pass West Point and take over upstate New York while the colonists controlled those enormous chains.
Remember, the British already occupied the city of New York at this time; it was a loyalist enclave. The British could not penetrate the patriot-controlled majority of New York without control of the Hudson River. The ability to control those chains across the Hudson was the main reason that Clinton and Andre would have paid whatever Arnold wanted.
So that’s why it matters. That’s why the Arnold treason – and the Andre hanging – feature in our history books; it was an almost-successful attempt to facilitate the conquest of upstate New York.
But the story of West Point isn’t the lesson for us today.
The lesson worth noting today is how West Point, and upstate New York too, were saved in September, 1780.
When John Andre and Benedict Arnold finished their meeting, they were in colonist-held territory, north of British-held New York City. Andre, dressed in civilian clothes, was therefore a British spy behind enemy lines, one single man in the midst of forests and farms, rivers and sparse villages. He might have been easily able to stay hidden on foot, but he needed to ride a horse to meet his commitments, and this meant he could be noticed by the minutemen patrolling the vague border between those with loyalist sympathies and those on the side of the patriots.
Major Andre was spotted by three minutemen – John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart – during the night of September 22-23, 1780. These three men weren’t just toll collectors or sidewalk crossing guards at an intersection; they were thoughtful patriots who understood what was at stake.
So they grilled this “John Anderson” – and heard some inconsistencies in his answers. They searched him – and they found Benedict Arnold’s documents and plans – and a map of West Point! – in his boots.
And they had the presence of mind to analyze all this.
An honorable man might have correspondence in his pocket. A merchant might have contracts or notes with him. But a simple merchant would not have a map of a military base on him, and even if he did, such documents sure wouldn’t be stored in his boot!
Paulding, Williams, and Van Wart immediately alerted American Major Benjamin Tallmadge, who similarly recognized the danger and immediately sent word to General Washington, which ensured that the effort to compromise West Point – and the Hudson River – would be stillborn.
Now, who were these young men?
John Paulding was a 21 year old farmer and militiaman who had already spent time as a POW in New York’s “Sugar House” prison, from which he escaped by jumping out a high window, and disguising himself in Hessian mercenary costume until he could return to patriot-held land. He was reportedly wearing his Hessian coat when he and his colleagues caught Andre, which may have given Andre a false sense of security during questioning.
David Williams was a 25 year old farmer and former Continental Army soldier whose feet had been permanently disabled by frostbite the year before. A true patriot, he was still helping the local militia however he could, despite his disability.
Isaac Van Wart, at just 17, was the youngest of the trio, a local farmer and militia volunteer, active in his Dutch Reformed parish.
All three were rewarded for their critical thinking and quick action; at General Washington’s urging, the Confederation Congress awarded all three men the first striking of a new “Fidelity Medallion,” and gave them each a pension of $200 per year. In addition, the state of New York gave each of the three a parcel of farmland. Twenty years later, when the new state of Ohio won statehood, each one of the three had a county along its western edge named after them.
One English officer, a foreign agent, traveling alone in the United States, planned great harm to our nation that night. If allowed his freedom, he could have cost us a fortress, our high command, a river, even an entire state. His operation, had it succeeded, may have delivered the victory to Great Britain.
But this one foreign agent was stopped – caught in his tracks and prevented from completing his plan – because three border guards were there. These three young men were empowered to make decisions, and they had the judgment to detain the prisoner.
We cannot overstate the good that was accomplished by Paulding, Williams and Van Wart that night… and even now, two and a half centuries later, we can hardly overstate the value of such service today.
We are now a nation of over 300 million citizens, with another 30 or 40 million non-citizens among them. Our borders are constantly overrun by gatecrashers – many of whom are just seeking an easier life, but many others of whom are terrorists, criminals, and operatives of crime gangs, terror organizations or foreign governments.
We have thousands of able agents along our borders, but their hands are tied today; they are ordered to “process and release” rather than detain and prosecute. And our nation is much the worse for it, as thousands and thousands of burglars and brawlers, drug dealers and pimps, rapists and thieves, gang recruiters and killers, pour into the country unchecked amidst the steady flow of illegal aliens.
The story of the capture of John Andre – the empowerment of our patriotic border guards and the value of their service – is the lesson of the day.
May Divine Providence help us to relearn this lesson and return to this wise practice, before it’s too late.
Copyright 2024 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.
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