Harper's New Monthly Magazine: No. XVI.—September, 1851—Vol. III.Various
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine: No. XVI.—September, 1851—Vol. III.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
The traitor, though unsuccessful, received ten thousand guineas from the
British treasury, and the commission of a brigadier from the king. He
served his new master faithfully. With the spirit of a demon he
desolated, with fire and sword, the beautiful country near the mouth of
the Thames, in Connecticut, almost in sight of the roof which sheltered
his infancy; and with augmented ferocity he spread distress and ruin, to
the extent of his power, upon the Virginia shores of the Chesapeake, and
along the fertile borders of the James and the Appomattox. Hated and
despised by his new companions in arms, and insulted and contemned in
public places after the war, Arnold became an outcast like Cain, and
like Esau he found no place for repentance, though he sought it
diligently with tears. He died in obscurity in the British metropolis,
in 1801, and who knows the place of his grave?
[Illustration: PAULDING'S MONUMENT AND ST. PETER'S CHURCH.]
The captors of Andrè were highly applauded by the people, and honored
and rewarded by Congress. That body awarded to each a silver medal,
having on one side the word FIDELITY, and on the other, VINCIT AMOR
PATRÆ; "the love of country conquers." They were also allowed each an
annual pension of two hundred dollars, during their lives. Public esteem
for their services has erected monuments over the remains of two of
them. Paulding's mortality sleeps beneath a chaste marble cenotaph in
the old St. Peter's church-yard, two miles eastward of Peekskill; and
over the dust of Van Wart, in the Greenburgh church-yard, near the banks
of the beautiful Nepara, in Westchester county, stands a plain monument
of white marble. The former was erected by the corporation of the city
of New York; the latter by citizens of Westchester county. No public
memorial yet marks the place of rest of David Williams in the
church-yard at Livingstonville, in Schoharie county.
[Illustration: VAN WART'S MONUMENT.]
The traitor and his victim, the captors, judges, and executioner, have
all gone to the spirit-land whither the ken of the historian and the
moralist may not follow; and the myriads of hearts which beat with
sympathy or indignation, as the sad intelligence of the tragedy at
Tappan winged its way over our land, or sped to the abodes of
intelligent men in the Old World, are pulseless and forgotten. Charity
would counsel tenderly respecting each,
"No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his father, and his God."
GRAY.
Yet it is well, occasionally, to lift the vail from past events, though
they may be dark and forbidding in aspect, for to the wise and
thoughtful they convey lessons of wisdom, and to the foolish and
inconsiderate, the wayward and the wicked, they may speak a word of
warning in season to curb an evil spirit and promote righteousness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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