Benedict Arnold was born in Norwich, Connecticut, January 3, 1740. He was in command of a volunteer company at the outbreak of the Revolution, and marched at once to Cambridge. He served with great bravery on Lake Champlain, in Canada, and at Stillwater. After his treason he received a brigadier-general’s commission in the British army. At the close of the war he went to England, where he resided most of the time until his death, June 14, 1801. The second battle of Stillwater (sometimes called Bemis’s Heights and sometimes Saratoga) was fought October 7, 1777. Of Arnold’s part in this battle George William Curtis says, in his Centennial Oration: “The British, dismayed, bewildered, overwhelmed, were scarcely within their redoubts, when Benedict Arnold, to whom the jealous Gates, who did not come upon the field during the day, had refused a command, outriding an aide whom Gates had sent to recall him, came spurring up: Benedict Arnold--whose name America does not love,--whose ruthless will had dragged the doomed Canadian expedition through the starving wilderness of Maine, who, volunteering to relieve Fort Stanwix, had, by the mere terror of his coming, blown St. Leger away, and who on the 19th of September had saved the American left. Benedict Arnold, whom battle stung to fury, now whirled from end to end of the American line, hurled it against the great redoubt, driving the enemy at the point of the bayonet; then flinging himself to the extreme right, and finding there the Massachusetts brigade, swept it with him to the assault, and streaming over the breastworks, scattered the Brunswickers who defended them, killed their colonel, gained and held the point which commanded the entire British position, while at the same moment his horse was shot under him, and he sank to the ground wounded in the leg that had been wounded at Quebec. Here, upon the Hudson, where he tried to betray his country; here, upon the spot where, in the crucial hour of the Revolution, he illustrated and led the American valor that made us free and great, knowing well that no earlier service can condone for a later crime, let us recall for one brief instant of infinite pity the name that has been justly execrated for a century.” Horatio Gates, who commanded the American forces at the battle of Stillwater, was an Englishman by birth, and had served under Braddock. He was made adjutant-general at the opening of the Revolution, and accompanied Washington to Cambridge when “the great Virginian” went thither to take charge of the army. Just before the battle of Stillwater Gates superseded General Schuyler in the command of the army of the north. He suffered a disastrous defeat at Camden, when at the head of the southern forces. His patriotism was undoubted, but he lacked the judgment of a great commander.