Reviewed by Christian M. McBurney

Unfortunately, the list of women in the American Revolutionary War for whom we have biographies is short, due in large part to the then accepted practice of treating women as second-class citizens. But now we can add another woman to this select list: Peggy Shippen, the wife of the most infamous traitor in American history, Benedict Arnold.

One question concerning women of the Revolutionary War era is whether enough of their writings have survived to give them a voice that can be heard today. In Shippen’s case, the answer is yes — authors Mark Jacob and Stephen H. Case use 37 of her letters (though only four were written before or during the war), and have supplemented them with correspondence and diaries written by her family, friends and acquaintances commenting on her conduct.

Born in 1760, Peggy Shippen was the daughter of a wealthy merchant of Philadelphia, when it was the 13 colonies’ most populous city and second-most populous in the British Empire. At a time when many girls received little formal education, it was the practice of wealthy merchants in New York, Boston, Newport and Philadelphia to provide their daughters with almost as good an education as they gave to their sons. Reaping the benefits, Peggy grew into an intelligent, articulate young woman, reputedly one of the most beautiful in America. The authors nicely paint a picture of the pampered colonial world in which Peggy was raised.

Stephen H. Case

Peggy’s life, and those of all Americans, changed forever upon the outbreak of the Revolutionary War between American patriots and the British Crown, the latter supported by their American loyalist allies. War came to Philadelphia when the British army captured it on September 26, 1777. Peggy and her young female friends were suddenly wooed by suave British officers in bright red uniforms. At their head was Major John André, a respectable poet and artist, whom a Connecticut militiaman once described as “the handsomest man I ever laid eyes on.” The authors came up not only with that marvelous quote, but also a wonderful story from one of Peggy’s friends, demonstrating that British officers were not always interested in chaste young women:

“Becky Franks wrote to Peggy Shippen’s second cousin Nancy about an encounter with three officers on the street. ‘After talking a few minutes with me they walked off,’ Becky recalled. ‘There’s a house next door … that a Mrs. McKoy lives in, a lady well known to the gentlemen.’ In other words, a prostitute. Becky said two of the officers ‘had the impudence to go in while I was looking right at them.’ The third officer explained to Becky that he was a married man and would abstain. He told her that his comrades had visited Mrs. McKoy’s home ‘to look at a tube rose.’ This infuriated Becky. ‘I was never half so angry in my life,’ she wrote. ‘I never think of it but I feel my face glow with rage.’ ”

The rounds of balls and parlor visits culminated in a legendary celebration organized by André called the Meschianza, which involved elaborately decorated floats, with the city’s attractive young women decked out in high hair adorned with feathers, and British officers dressed in pink and white silk as medieval knights. The authors have penned perhaps the best description of this gala in print, while noting that Peggy’s father may have forced her to withdraw from participating in it.

When André and the rest of the British army evacuated Philadelphia in June of 1778, the city reverted to patriot control. Peggy and her family came under scrutiny as possible loyalists. Then Peggy met the most important man in her life, General Benedict Arnold. Perhaps the most talented field officer in the Continental army, Arnold was then recovering from a debilitating battlefield wound to his left leg. After the former Connecticut merchant was appointed by General George Washington as the military commander of Philadelphia, his spirits lifted upon meeting 19-year-old Peggy. Despite his being twice her age, the pair married in May of 1779.

Arnold became embroiled in fierce controversies with the city’s radical patriots, who controlled the civilian government, led by the tenacious Joseph Reed. The authors superbly sift through the complex details of the corruption charges Reed brought against Arnold for his business dealings with the army, summarizing them with journalistic simplicity, and finding that some of them were warranted (although ethical standards in those days were looser than in our own).

Some of the great Revolutionary leaders had near-mad men viciously attack their reputations — in Paris alone, Benjamin Franklin had his Arthur Lee, and John Paul Jones had his Pierre Landais. While Franklin and Jones were able to overcome their antagonists, Arnold was not. Embittered by his loss of reputation, and feeling abandoned by Washington and the Continental Congress, Arnold opened communications with none other than Peggy’s friend, John André, about turning traitor and being paid handsomely for it.

The authors persuasively argue that Peggy was intimately involved in Arnold’s treasonous correspondence with British spymasters in New York. When Washington appointed Arnold to command the key American fort at West Point on the Hudson River, Peggy’s husband immediately initiated secret plans to turn it over to the British. The well-known story of Arnold’s plotting, its failure, his escape to safety in New York City, and John André’s capture and hanging as a spy, are efficiently set forth in readable style.

Next came Peggy’s great moment: the Mad Scene. Seeking to avoid being implicated in her husband’s plot to betray his country, a disheveled and scantily dressed Peggy engaged in a hysterical rant so convincingly that its intended targets — Washington, his young aide Alexander Hamilton and General Marquis de Lafayette — looked on her sympathetically as temporarily insane. The authors point out that Peggy was able to turn two then widely held assumptions — that women lacked the capacity to participate in important affairs and were susceptible to hysterical fits — to her advantage.

Later banished from Philadelphia, Peggy joined her husband in New York City and then London, living out her life as a strong and resourceful defender of her children. The authors justifiably conclude, “Hers was a life of high hair, high drama, and high treason.” In sum, this book is a fresh, carefully researched and well-written addition to the list of excellent Revolutionary War biographies.

Christian M. McBurney, a tax attorney in Washington, D.C., is the author of The Rhode Island Campaign: The First French and American Operation in the Revolutionary War (Westholme, 2011).