If Arnold's wound on the field of Saratoga had been a mortal wound, he would have been ranked, among the military heroes of the Revolution, next to Washington and Greene. Perhaps, however, in a far worse sense than is commonly conveyed by the term, it proved to be his death-wound, for it led to his being placed in command of Philadelphia. He was assigned to that position because his wounded leg made him unfit for active service. Congress had restored him to his relative rank, but now he soon got into trouble with the state government of Pennsylvania. It is not easy to determine how much ground there may have been for the charges brought against him early in 1779 by the state government. One of them concerned his personal honesty, the others were so trivial in character as to make the whole affair look somewhat like a case of persecution. They were twice investigated, once by a committee of Congress and once by a court-martial. On the serious charge, which affected his pecuniary integrity, he was acquitted; on two of the trivial charges, of imprudence in the use of some public wagons, and of carelessness in granting a pass for a ship, he was convicted and sentenced to be reprimanded. The language in which Washington couched the reprimand showed his feeling that Arnold was too harshly dealt with. If the matter had stopped here, posterity would probably have shared Washington's feeling. But the government of Pennsylvania must have had stronger grounds for distrust of Arnold than it was able to put into the form of definite charges. Soon after his arrival in Philadelphia he fell in love with a beautiful Tory lady, to whom he was presently married. He was thus thrown much into the society of Tories and was no doubt influenced by their views. He had for some time considered himself ill-treated, and at first thought of leaving the service and settling upon a grant of land in western New York. Then, as the charges against him were pressed and his anger increased, he seems to have dallied with the notion of going over to the British. At length in the early summer of 1780, after the reprimand, his treasonable purpose seems to have taken definite shape. As General Monk in 1660 decided that the only way to restore peace in England was to desert the cause of the Commonwealth and bring back Charles II., so Arnold seems now to have thought that the cause of American independence was ruined, and that the best prospect for a career for himself lay in deserting it and helping to bring back the rule of George III. In this period of general depression, when even the unconquerable Washington said "I have almost ceased to hope," one staggering blow would be very likely to end the struggle. There could be no heavier blow than the loss of the Hudson river, and with baseness almost incredible Arnold asked for the command of West Point, with the intention of betraying it into the hands of Sir Henry Clinton. The depth