Secret History of the American Revolution (review)

BOOK REVIEWS37 illusioned by the injustice of her conviction and the selfishness and villainy of Philip, who kills himself in decent despair at his disgrace and his own villainy, she doubts even Christopher, and only after he has wooed long and patiently does she finally realize that he does indeed prize her beyond all else on earth, and yield to his entreaties. Christopher, meanwhile, partner in his father's banking house in England, has decided to settle in the new colony as the resident partner of the bank, the more especially as Jennifer is loath to return to the land of her humiliation ; and they start off their new life together with the growing young colony. The reviewer once heard Janet Whitney tell how she got the background for her book on Elizabeth Fry, and is prepared to believe that the history of Jennifer is accurate and that the local color is dependable. Certainly it is vivid. About the verdict of fifty or a hundred years hence we are not now concerned : in this present world we have a skilful and compelling narrative and an altogether charming story. Many will have heard of Jennifer, and have not yet read it ; but now is the time. T. K. B. Secret History of the American Revolution, by Carl Van Doren. New York, Viking Press, 1931. xv+534 pp. ; illustrated. $3.75. ONE of the most interesting parts of this book is the first page of the Preface, in which it is recounted that the complete correspondence between Benedict Arnold and Major André has recently come to light among the Clinton papers now preserved in the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. The marvel is that such papers were preserved at all, and that if preserved they should not have been discovered, or made accessible to historians, till now. André was aid-decamp to Sir Henry Clinton, who succeeded Lord Howe as commanderin -chief of the British forces in the Colonies; he was the confidant of Arnold and the go-between in Arnold's negotiations. The letters as preserved are voluminous and detailed; and, with many by Clinton and others involved in the narrative, are printed in a verbatim transcript at the end of the volume, thus providing source material of the first importance to later investigators. The book has the infinitude of detail ordinarily found only in a work of fiction, reminding one somewhat of Francis Hackett's Queen Anne Boleyn, published a few years ago (1939) ; and the justification of the detail is that it is all contained in the sources. The kernel of the Secret History is the treason of Benedict Arnold, now definitively proved to have been ruthlessly planned, haggled over and bargained for (he was to have received ¿20,000 for the betrayal of West Point and its garrison, with additional allowances for loss of confiscated property, emoluments, etc.), and carried out over a considerable period of double dealing; but the narrative brings the doings of a great number of lesser characters to light, and furnished data for many of the blanks in the story of the Revolution as it has hitherto been written. Carl Van Vol. 31, No. 1. Spring 1942 38FRIENDS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Doren is thoroughly at home in the field of historical research, and his Benjamin Franklin, published in 1938, shows an immense knowledge of the detailed history of the period. This book makes clearer than ever before the fact that what we now call treason was everywhere—that the Revolution in its early stages was as much a civil war as a revolt against British rule, and that the patriots were deemed guilty of treason by the loyalists, and the loyalists by the patriots—until by the slow growth of popular support, strengthened by the solidity and leadership of Washington and the fire and enthusiasm of groups of younger patriots all through the Colonies, it became clear that a new nation had been born, and that those who worked against it would have to bear the odium of the charge of treason rather than those who supported it. In spite of the dramatic and essentially interesting character of the story told...