Note 964 — Chapter V · (continued 2)

The question of Mrs. Arnold's privity to her husband's plot has been much discussed, but most investigators acquit her. Her innocence is maintained by Irving (Washington, iv. 151), Isaac N. Arnold (Arnold ch. 17), Sargent (André, p. 220), and Sabine (Loyalists, i. 122). The chief accusations are in Leake's General Lamb, 270, and in the Lives of Aaron Burr by Davis (i. 219) and Parton (p. 126). Cf. Mrs. Ellet's Women of the Rev., ii. 213; Stone's Brant, ii. 101; Reed's Joseph Reed, ii. 373. The scene in which she showed disorder of mind, when she accused Washington of attempting to kill her child, is held by some to have been mere acting. (Cf. Jones, N. Y. during the Rev., i. 745.) It seems clear that she did not wish to join her husband when the authorities of Pennsylvania drove her to New York.