Today’s offering from This Day in History takes us back to 1780 and the American Revolution. But first, a more pleasant diversion to Gastro Obscura for an exhaustive examination of the the origins of the eponymous egg dish, along with some great Gilded Age photos of Delmonico’s in New York, including one of their menu: “Beluga caviar, only $1.75” – wow! You can read all about it here.
And for those whose appetite has now been whetted for finding out the fate of America’s foremost traitor, you can read it here.
Benedict Arnold
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Last but not least, the following, from Wikipedia.
Historians have identified many possible factors contributing to Arnold’s treason, while some debate their relative importance. According to W. D. Wetherell, he was:
- among the hardest human beings to understand in American history. Did he become a traitor because of all the injustice he suffered, real and imagined, at the hands of the Continental Congress and his jealous fellow generals? Because of the constant agony of two battlefield wounds in an already gout-ridden leg? From psychological wounds received in his Connecticut childhood when his alcoholic father squandered the family’s fortunes? Or was it a kind of extreme midlife crisis, swerving from radical political beliefs to reactionary ones, a change accelerated by his (second) marriage to the very young, very pretty, very Tory Peggy Shippen?
Wetherell says that the shortest explanation for his treason is that he “married the wrong person.”
Peggy Shippen
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Or, as the FBI agent who interviewed me for my security clearance before I started working for the U.S. Department of Interior told me: “This process will take about half a day – unless of course you’ve got big debts or a second marriage. In those cases, the background check will take considerably longer.”