Note 1532 — Chapter IX

Writings, i. 288. See Steuben's report to Washington, Sparks's Corresp., etc., iii. 204. At the time of Arnold's descent on Virginia, a scheme was devised by Jefferson and Baron Steuben to capture the arch-traitor alive, and hang him. The scheme is set forth in a letter of Jefferson, with no address (Writings, i. 289), dated Richmond, Jan. 21, 1781; and it immediately follows the one describing Col. Clark's ambuscade. The purpose of the letter is to enlist the services of the person addressed in this hazardous enterprise. The writer says he has "peculiar confidence in the men from the western side of the mountains, whose courage and fidelity would be above all doubt. Your perfect knowledge of those men personally, and my confidence in your discretion, induces me to ask you to pick from among them proper characters, in such numbers as you think best, and engage them to undertake to seize and bring off this greatest of all traitors. Whether this may be best effected by their going in as friends and awaiting their opportunity, or otherwise, is left to themselves. The smaller the number the better, so that they be sufficient to manage him." He offers them a reward of five thousand guineas for bringing him off alive, and says "their names will be recorded with glory in history with those of Vanwert, Paulding, and Williams." The editor states in a note that the person addressed "was probably Gen. [John Peter Gabriel] Mühlenberg." Gen. Mühlenberg was a Pennsylvanian, and never resided west of the mountains. The person was doubtless George Rogers Clark, who was then in Virginia, and was too deeply interested in his Detroit expedition to engage in the scheme.