Bring Back Benedict Arnold!

In my ten years as a history textbook writer, I was constantly trying to sneak Benedict Arnold into my American Revolution manuscript. The editors were constantly cutting him out.

I’ll never forget my first attempt. I proposed introducing Arnold early in the Revolution unit. Most kids know he was a traitor, I told the editors, but few know what he actually did. So right away his presence adds this spark of mystery and danger. And as we follow him through the narrative, as we do with Washington, we’re surprised to see that he’s the star of some of the greatest adventure stories in American history. I pitched a little lesson opener, set in the raucous tax protest days of 1760s New England, in which Arnold drags a sailor—a man who informed on Arnold’s smuggling—out of a tavern and whips him in the New Haven town square.

There was a long silence in our conference room. The editors exchanged glances. They appeared to be in a small amount of physical pain.

“Benedict Arnold makes me… nervous,” said one.

“Me too,” said the other.  

I wanted to shout: That’s exactly the point! That’s what makes Arnold such a priceless character. He made George Washington nervous. He made Congress nervous. He was a loose-cannon action hero two centuries before Hollywood discovered the genre!

Instead, I moved on, and tried again later, and failed again, and tried more, and eventually gave up. But what can only be described as my Arnold obsession lived on. I spent weekends and holidays driving to the places Arnold lived and fought. And I soon discovered that historical sites are just like textbooks: Benedict Arnold makes them nervous.

In Norwich, Connecticut, the town where Arnold was born and raised, you can search out one obscure sign, at the site of his boyhood home. And it’s not even official; it was posted by a local jeweler. In New Haven, where he rose to local prominence as a rabblerousing Patriot, there’s nothing. At the Saratoga battlefield park, where Arnold led Americans to their “turning point” victory, there’s a statue of Arnold’s lower leg, the leg wounded in Arnold’s furious charge at the British. The plaque speaks of “the most brilliant soldier of the Continental Army.” Arnold’s name doesn’t appear.

The best Arnold signage is found along the route of his incredible march through the unmapped wilderness of Maine, en route to attack Quebec in the fall/winter of 1775. But even these signs are few, far between, and rusted—until you cross the line into Canada. Then you see Arnold plaques, the Arnold River, even hotels and bars named for Arnold.

I guess it’s that, as a country, we don’t handle contradiction well. We like our heroes pure, comic book-like. George Washington must be presented this way, as I learned from painful experience as a textbook writer. Of course, that’s why kids think Washington is unbearably boring.

Now it’s time to bring back Benedict Arnold. Not to apologize for him, not to absolve him from guilt, but to celebrate his story. A country only gets a few cracks at tragic adventure tales this good. Let’s face it: Washington never did anything half as exciting as Arnold’s march to Quebec, or his nearly suicidal stand against the British navy on Lake Champlain. We all want to get kids thinking about and learning from history, but first we’ve got to get them to care. To compete with fiction, we’ve got to present historical figures—yes, even Founders and traitors—as three-dimensional humans, capable of both great deeds and great mistakes.

I tried to keep that goal in mind while writing my new book, The Notorious Benedict Arnold, a non-fiction thriller about Arnold’s glorious rise and spectacular crash.

But mostly I just wanted to tell a ripping cool story. In the end, that’s what really counts.

Steve Sheinkin has been writing history textbooks for years. A meticulous researcher and documenter, he is also a former teacher, and knows well how to grab a young readers’ interest and hold it. Steve Sheinkin lives in Brooklyn, NY.