As word spread of Arnold’s betrayal, how did people make sense of it? In the late afternoon of September 30, 1780, seven days after Major André was captured and Arnold’s plot was revealed, an effigy of Arnold was paraded through the streets of Philadelphia and burned on High Street hill. A Philadelphia newspaper, The Continental Almanack, described the parade in detail: a stage was erected on a cart, upon which sat the figure of Arnold, dressed in his regimental uniform. Arnold’s effigy “had two faces, emblematical of his traitorous conduct.” In his left hand he held a mask, which he used to hide his evil character, and in his right hand he held a letter “from Belzebub, telling him that he had done all the mischief he could do, and now he must hang himself.” Behind Arnold stood the Devil, “dressed in black robes, shaking a purse of money at the general’s left ear, and in his right hand a pitchfork, ready to drive him into hell as the reward due to the many crimes which the thirst for gold had made him commit.” Written on transparent paper that was illuminated from behind by a large lantern was the charge against Arnold. The people who lined the way could see that this was “MAJOR GENERAL BENEDICT ARNOLD, late COMMANDER of the FORT WEST-POINT,” and that “THE CRIME OF THIS MAN IS HIGH TREASON.” Accordingly, the newspaper explained, “The effigy of this ingrate is therefore hanged (for want of his body) as a Traitor to his native country, and a Betrayer of the laws of honour.”
A row of Continental Officers and a guard of the City Infantry marched with the cart, as well as a line of men walking and on horseback, while fifes and drums played the Rogues March. When the procession ended on High Street hill, a number of speakers declared “their abhorrence to the Treason and the Traitor,” after which they committed the figure of Arnold “to the flames, and left both the effigy and the original to sink into ashes and oblivion.”
As this very public shaming demonstrates, Arnold was portrayed as a figure with two faces: one a virtuous patriot and general, the other a money-hungry traitor, with a mask to conceal this second, diabolical face. In this way it was easily understood how he could have received the esteem of his countrymen—and of Washington himself—while at the same time being profoundly corrupt. Arnold’s two faces provided a degree of moral separation from his countrymen: Arnold’s character contained a hidden, traitorous other, unlike his fellow revolutionaries, whose visages were straightforwardly virtuous and uncomplicated by duplicity. Furthermore, Arnold is portrayed as a servant of the Devil, while the Creator is leagued with the revolutionaries, giving them hope for a quick resolution to the war despite the military setbacks of 1780, and furthering the implicit suggestion that Providence would only side with a virtuous people. Arnold, on the other hand, has chosen self-interested gratification over virtue. In the parade of his effigy, before any clues surfaced about the motivation behind Arnold’s betrayal, it was money that the Devil held beside Arnold’s head. Not having Arnold himself to prosecute, nor his body to hang, Arnold’s countrymen vented their anger while consciously initiating a long, slow prosecution of a different kind: the damnation of the traitor’s fame.
Meanwhile, as we now know, General Washington had a plan to do better than burning Arnold in effigy. His secret mission, he hoped, would bring the traitor back to face a trial…and, most certainly, the gallows.
