202 THE WIFE OF BENEDICT ARNOLD. There lias been much discussion with regard to this letter. Many deem it to be what it purports to be — a letter of friendship, and nothing more. Others think with much probability, that it was written to indicate, by a veiled allusion to "further employment," and by the similarity of the handwriting to that of " John Ander- son," who that mysterious individual really was. It is worded, moreover, in a careful and conciliatory manner. The slighting reference to the war as " political broils," is immediately noticeable. Whether, from his knowledge of the character of his fair Tory friend, he imagined that, since there was a plot, she would be sure to be in it, or whether he wrote the letter merely that she might show it to her husband, we can only conjecture. In 1780, with the express and deliberate purpose of betraying an important post, Benedict Arnold solicited an appointment to the command at West Point. Shortly after his removal to this place he was joined by his wife, whose beauty and agreeable mariners had already made her as popular with the American officers, in spite of her well-known Tory inclinations, as she had been with the British. But her American admirers had neither time nor opportunity to enjoy her society as their enemies had done. " Political broils," perhaps, appeared to them too serious a matter to permit of such distractions as balls and amateur theatricals. And if, while still in her native city, surrounded by old friends and new acquaintances, Mrs. Arnold looked back with regret to the gayeties of the British occupation, she could scarcely have found the military routine of life at West Point much to her taste. Meanwhile, the treacherous plans of her husband were maturing. The impulse that precipitated Andre* upon his fate was, as we can clearly discern in the records of the time, honorable and patriotic. He looked forward with the utmost confidence to being the means oi putting
