When I took students to Saratoga, one of the greatest military victories in American history, I would ask them to find a monument with a boot and no name. Nobody ever failed to find it. Here it is with an inscription that reads:
“In memory of
the “most brilliant soldier” of the
Continental Army
who was desperately wounded
on this spot the sally port of
BORGOYNES GREAT WESTERN REDOUBT
7th October, 1777
winning for his countrymen
the decisive battle of the
American Revolution
and for himself the rank of Major General.”
The British had most of the great victories early in the War of Independence. American troops were not good in traditional battles and the well trained British troops occupied the cities of Boston and New York with ease. Washington could not stop careful British attack. What Washington did do was keep an army in the field and this would doom the British long term.
Thoughtful men like the father of conservatism Edmund Burke told the British parliament that Washington and the Americans were fighting for the rights of Englishmen. The cause of the patriots had merit and the force used by George III was disastrous. If we could endure, we could win, but to endure we needed allies. Like the Confederacy in 1861, many European powers, especially France, sympathized with our struggle. The Confederacy never convinced France they could win. The defeat of Lee at Gettysburg may have sealed the doom of the CSA (thanks be to God and General Meade!) by convincing the European powers, a military victory was impossible. At the Battle of Saratoga, the Americans did the opposite: we defeated a fine British army which may have helped persuade the French we could win. Always eager to take on their historic foe, France intervened and provided the fleet and the military aide Washington needed.
Oddly, the victory of Saratoga was not Washington’s but of an incompetent American General Horatio Gates who proves that sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. Gates was lucky in his opponent, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, who would have made a better name for a fine whiskey than a general. Gates was lucky in the terrain and in his army. (Some would say God blessed!) Most of all, the man they called Granny Gates was lucky to have in his command a dashing American hero: Benedict Arnold.
No man other than Washington had given more to the American cause and no man deserved promotion more than Arnold. He was checked by fatuous Congressional politics . . . not a first in American history . . . and would marry a delectable wife who demanded a lifestyle greater than he could command. Benedict Arnold would become an embittered man, a byword for betrayal, and would attempt to sell out his country for money to the British.
Benedict Arnold is the Judas of American history and he deserves the rebuke. He did not offer the British his services for any great moral transformation, but for money and power.
All of that would be sad enough, but Arnold has been a great man. At Saratoga, he saved the battle and received a crippling injury he would carry the rest of his life. The Boot Monument represents the Arnold who swung the tide of the key battle of the War for Independence by his courage, daring, and sheer audacity. There is no name because this hero fouled his name by the love of money, the root of all kinds of evil.
To me, Benedict Arnold stands as a great warning: end well, don’t foul your heritage.
Who hasn’t known men who were great, but who frittered away their greatness, their heroism, for money, power, or sex? They are Benedict Arnold. Great traitors can only get to the position of great betrayal by being skilled enough, great enough, to reach positions of trust and authority. His victories and his injury put him in a position to potentially deliver the key fort of West Point to the British. Arnold ended up trying to sell control of the Hudson, the very thing Saratoga had saved, to the men he had defeated.
Benedict Arnold used his greatness to achieve infamy.
And so it is today in our communities, churches, schools, and businesses. The Benedict Arnolds are not the men who are obviously evil, but the heroes who betray us. They are the narcissistic personalities that cannot stand losing out on promotion. They are the greedy men who sell their greatness for gold. They are driven by a sense of destiny to the point where they will dishonor their own accomplishment to try for something “greater.”
God help us all to avoid being Benedict Arnold: a man who on his greatest day made a monument for himself and then made sure that his name would be stricken from that same shrine. He became less than his greatest day.
God save us all.
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