It is much to the credit of the Southern people, that while they have been pressed as hard as any people ever were, and while, as happens in all wars, deserters and men who faint by the wayside have been sufficiently numerous, there has been no case like that of Arnold. No general officer has, so far as we are aware, ever been suspected of selling himself and his country for gold. An Arnold could have been produced only in Yankeedom. No other portion of that immense territory formerly known as the United States of America could have given birth to such a monster. It required all the avarice of the Yankee national character, all that insensibility to shame,--which is one of its most striking traits,--and all that disbelief in the existence of a Supreme Being,--which had even then begun to develop itself in their midst,--to form such a character as that of the traitor. No other country could furnish the ingredients out of which it was compounded, although there are bad men, and a plenty of them, in all countries.
Major Tallmadge, the father of the former Senator from New York, was the officer who had immediate charge of Major Andre after he had been taken. He had been brought, before Colonel Jamieson, commander of the post nearest the point, by his captors. He had upon his person the plans of West Point and other treasonable papers. Yet, notwithstanding this, when he showed Jamieson Arnold's pass, Jamieson ordered him to be carried to Arnold. The affair would thus have been only temporarily delayed — Andre would have been dismissed, and the neck of treason would have been reconstructed without difficulty. Major Tallmadge, who had been out on duty, arrived after Andre had been started off, under escort, to Arnold. He no sooner saw the papers that had been found on Andre than he saw at once that there was treason in the case, and that Arnold was at the bottom of it. He entreated Colonel Jamieson (who seems to have been a perfectly stupid man) to recall him, and it was done accordingly. Andre, it will be recollected, was disguised as a merchant and passed in Arnold's passport by the name of John Anderson. As soon as Tallmadge laid eyes on him, he discovered that he was a military man from his always stepping off on his left foot in pacing the room in which he was confined. Andre told who he was as soon as he became assured that Arnold had escaped. From that time until his death, Andre seems to have reposed the utmost confidence in Major Tallmadge, who was nearly of the same age, and deeply sympathized with his prisoner. This is a very singular circumstance connected with this affair, which, as it is told by Sparks, himself a Yankee, we suppose we may repeat without the imputation of undue prejudice against that interesting people.
Many years after the death of Andre, about 1818 or '19, Major Tallmadge, then an old man, was a member of Congress when a bill was brought in to bestow a pension on David Williams, the survivor of the captors, and opposed it most vehemently. In the course of his speech, he gave a most interesting narrative of the whole transaction. He said that Andre told him, when he came upon the three militiamen, they were sitting on the ground playing cards, and that they would have let him pass if he had the money to pay them for doing so which they demanded. Of that opinion, Major Tallmadge continued to the last, and he refused to vote for the bill. If this were so, they were three lucky fellows, for they had medals struck in their honor, and have been handed down as models of incorruptible fidelity. We express no opinion on the subject; and Major Tallmadge had a better opportunity to judge than most men can pretend to.
