Free Victory at Yorktown by Richard M. Ketchum

whatever.” What’s more, when Varick appeared, he and Franks observed that Mrs. Arnold had episodes of nervous tension “during which she would give utterance to anything and everything on her mind … so much so as to cause us to be scrupulous of what we told her or said within her hearing.” Service on the staff of Benedict Arnold was not an enviable assignment. Washington told Varick to go back to bed and not to worry, and after he and his officers enjoyed a leisurely breakfast they left Alexander Hamilton behind to receive any messages and rode to the dock, where Arnold’s barge—an elegant vessel with seats and awnings—and a crew of eight oarsmen waited to take them upriver to the fort.
    What greeted them at West Point was quite a sight—one the Chevalier Chastellux was to call “the most magnificent picture” he had ever beheld. Around the fort itself, which clung to the rocks at river’s edge, the mountain summits bristled with redoubts and batteries—a complex that was an engineering triumph, designed by such skilled foreign engineers as Thaddeus Kosciuszko and Louis Duportail, and built with several years of hard labor by Continental soldiers. Above the fort were six additional works in the form of an amphitheater, positioned so as to protect each other. The highest and most formidable was known as Fort Putnam, named for General Israel Putnam, who had the lion’s share of its planning and construction, atop a precipitous plateau of rock that made it virtually inaccessible. Once here, one had a spectacular view of thirty miles in every direction. To the north of West Point, angling into the middle of the river, was Constitution Island, which seemed to be secured to the west bank by an enormous iron chain, made of iron bars two inches square, with links twelve inches wide and eighteen inches long, floating on sixteen-foot logs, to prevent vessels from sailing upstream. The main guns of the fort were trained on this barrier, which was located at the point where the river made a ninety-degree turn to the east, creating a kind of embrasure formed over the eons through the sheer rocks of immense mountains. Below it the Hudson widened and plunged southward again.
    As the barge neared the dock, where Washington expected to find a welcoming party, no sign of activity was evident other than a few sentries making their appointed rounds. Most unusual—no Arnold, nor had anyone seen him that morning. Probably, the General thought, he was at one of the outlying works and would undoubtedly be found during their inspection tour of the defenses. Of all the posts in the United States, Washington considered West Point the most important. Three years earlier the Burgoyne expedition’s goal was to seize control of the Hudson and cut off communications between the northeastern and southern states, but fortunately that army of British, Germans, and Indians had been stopped at Saratoga in the victory that convinced the French to join in the war on the side of the Americans. West Point, which commanded the Hudson, had been called the Gibraltar of America, but when the General saw the condition of the place he was appalled.
    The east wall and other portions of Fort Putnam had collapsed; Fort Arnold, constructed entirely of wood, was a tinderbox, certain to be set afire by a shell; and all the other defenses were in a state of advanced decay. Yet instead of crews at work on all these posts, Washington saw almost no one, and those he did see could tell him nothing of their commander’s whereabouts. The artillery colonel, John Lamb, who had fought at Arnold’s side at Quebec, where he lost an eye and part of his face, was in charge here and said he had not seen the major general all morning.
    Thoroughly irritated now by Arnold’s unexplained absence, Washington nevertheless completed his inspection in about two hours (reporting later that he had found the post in