Homegrown Terror: Benedict Arnold and the Burning of New London

293 Pages·2015·12.07 MB·English

by  Eric D. Lehman

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Homegrown Terror

A Driftless ConneCtiCut series Book
This book is a 2014 selection in the Driftless Connecticut Series,
for an outstanding book in any field on a Connecticut topic or
written by a Connecticut author.

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Homegrown Terror
Benedi� Arnold

and the Burning of

New London

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ERIC D. LEHMAN

Wesleyan university Press
Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan university Press
Middletown CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
© 2014 Eric D. Lehman
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Richard Hendel
Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro by
Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
The Driftless Connecticut Series is funded by the
Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund
at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.
Wesleyan University Press is a member
of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in
this book meets their minimum requirement
for recycled paper.
Cloth isBn: 978-0-8195-7329-2
Ebook isBn: 978-0-8195-7330-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available upon request
5 4 3 2 1
Cover illustration: detail from the mural "Battle of Groton Heights,"
by David R. Wagner.
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xxiii
On the Edge of Spring 1
Flashpoint 14
Resist Even Unto Blood 28
The Shadow War 46
Invasion 62
Villainous Perfidy 79
The Scandal of the Age 97
A Parricide in Old Virginia 113
William Ledyard’s Last Summer 127
The Sixth of September 140
The Battle of Groton Heights 151
Remember New London 162
The Fall of Silas Deane 178
Epilogue 197
A Note on Sources 205
Notes 207
Index 255

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Preface
Just after midnight, a fleet of twenty-f our ships slid east on the
calm black water of the Devil’s Belt. It was late summer in 1781, and
the fleet had waited until complete darkness to weigh anchor and move
up from the west, with a fair wind behind them. Now they stood near
Plum Island, outside Gardiner’s Bay, at the very tip of Long Island,
ten miles southwest as the crow flies from the entrance to New Lon-
don harbor. The ships would have to go farther to avoid the reefs on
the western side, as they sailed past the jaws of The Race in a few short
hours.
On the deck of one of the warships stood a stout, muscular man
with dark hair, gray eyes, and a sharp nose. He walked with a limp, his
leg shot, then crushed underneath a horse—injuries that might have
destroyed a weaker man. He must have tried to see the northern shore,
searching for the sleeping town across the wide expanse of the Devil’s
Belt, sometimes called Long Island Sound. The town was New Lon-
don, Connecticut, a town he had visited many times to conduct busi-
ness, to visit friends, or to retrieve his drunken father and bring him
home. But he had not returned for years, or returned upriver to Nor-
wich, to the house he had been born in and to the graves of his parents.
It was not a clear night. If it had been clear, without cloud or fog,
then someone would have seen the sails, even at this distance, by star-
light or moonlight, and cannon would have been fired to warn the
militia. One might fire soon enough, as they rowed in for the landing,
but by then it would be too late. Besides, the man on the deck knew
that the Americans fired two shots to signal for enemy, and he had
ordered that another cannon be fired once from the ship. That way
the men in their warm beds, far in the wooded backcountry of eastern
Connecticut, would not be alarmed and maybe would turn over and
go to sleep.
Long Island was held by the British, and though there were Patriot
spies there, the man had planned so swiftly that none of the spies could
have sent word to Connecticut in time. There would be no welcoming
party marched in from Hartford or Providence. Even if the scattered ix