Will History Look Kindly On President Trump?
By September 1781, Benedict Arnold had crossed a bright line into the dark side of history.
In 1780, the Norwich native went from being a respected military leader under Gen. George Washington to being a turncoat who led British troops against the towns of New London and Groton. During those battles in early September 1781, things got out of hand on both sides of the river, including more property damage in New London than was necessary, and more deaths than necessary at the fort in Groton. As commander of the British forces, the excess of the British troops fell squarely at Arnold’s feet.
That kind of treason is pretty obvious. More lately, we’re examining a more complicated kind of turncoat.
We can draw lessons from history, though history isn’t always cut and dried. For instance, longtime residents of the area say there once was a marker on the New London side of the Thames River in an ancient burial ground where Arnold was said to have stood watching the sack of the Groton fort. But Steve Manuel, executive director of the New London Historical Society, says he’s found no such thing.
In the commander’s papers, Manuel said Arnold wrote that he gained “a height of ground in the rear of New London” — what could be the area where the town’s ancient burial ground now crowns a hill. Arnold did not, however, say he stood in a burial ground, which had been operational since the mid-1600s. That seems an important detail to omit.
We may not be sure of where Arnold stood that day, but we do know that history has not been kind to the man whose main motivation for changing sides may have been nothing more than narcissism. He was angry that he’d been passed over for promotion, he had lived beyond his means as military commander of Philadelphia, and though he was fierce in battle, he was not popular among many of his peers or superiors. When he had the opportunity to collude with a British officer (a man who was eventually hanged for his crimes), Arnold took it.
In the ensuing years, we’ve done our best to erase his memory. Benedict Arnold is not on our Revolutionary War monuments, and we aren’t much fond of his name. (Benedict Cumberbatch doesn’t count; he’s British.)
And those of us with long memories can take some comfort that things didn’t go much better for Arnold once he left the colonies to live in England with some 7,000 other loyalists. He lived the rest of his life caught betwixt and between. Americans focus on Arnold’s life post-treason; the British appear to focus on his life pre-treason. A modern-day plaque on the London home where he lived calls him an “American patriot.” He and his family — including a daughter — are buried in a crypt in a London church, and his tombstone identifies him as a “Sometime General in the Army of George Washington.” Bill Stanley, a beloved Norwich historian and former state senator who died in 2010 at age 80, put that stone there. Stanley insisted that if we can forgive Japan for Pearl Harbor, we can forgive Arnold.
Maybe, and it’s important to remember the good work Arnold did before he became a turncoat, says Manuel. People don’t make history. History makes people.
For instance, “President Trump is not making history,” Manuel said. “Social mores have allowed a President Trump to occur. It’s the lens at which we look at events that matters.”
This past week, we were treated to respected journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” which paints a picture of the president as a hateful toddler surrounded by people who mostly seek to sidestep his amoral behavior. A week before that, an anonymous White House official published a scathing review of Trump in the pages of The New York Times. Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller continues to tighten the drawstring around a host of criminal cronies who worked with or currently work for the president. It will be interesting, hundreds of years after Donald Trump, if historians will take the long view, or will they call him traitor.
Susan Campbell teaches at the University of New Haven. She is the author of “Dating Jesus: Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl” and “Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker.” Her email address is slcampbell417@gmail.com.