Everyone has heard of Benedict Arnold. He was a traitor during the Revolutionary War. In fact his name is practicly synonomous with being a traitor. So how is it that hardly anyone knows what exactly it was that he did? And what does all this have to do with Major John Andre? Major John Andre was the British Adjunct General during the Revolutionary War. That meant he was sort of a personal secretary to the commanding General of the British forces in America. It was Andre who negotiated with Benedict Arnold. Arnold at the time was the commander of West Point. And it was West Point that Arnold promised to the British for a sum of 20,000 pounds sterling. Most of the time they communicated in code which was fine for short messages.However in order to work out the attack on West Point they needed to meet face to face. Which they did. This presented a problem for Arnold who didn't want to be seen meeting with a British officer. So he told Andre to come in civilians clothes. Which of course made Andre nervous because if he were caught he could be hung as a spy. And thats pretty much what happened. Riding along with the plans for the attack of West Point Andre was stopped by a group of men. He noticed one of them wore a hessian coat so he thought he was amoung friends. He sought to impress them with his ring and his watch and told them he was a British Officer on important business and must not be delayed. That impressed them alright. They siezed both the ring and watch and anything else he had which they were entitled to do under the law of that day. Too bad he didn't show them the pass from General Arnold that he had on him. He tried the pass but oh too late. You said you were a British officer and pass or no pass we are taking you to the American troops. And so they did. This book was written over a hundred years ago. It goes over the happenings from many different sources. A very useful book if you want to understand what happened and why.

John Walsh does not like Major Andre. This is what you come away with after reading Walsh's book. Walsh sees Andre as some master manipulator. This is at odds with the fact that Andre couldn't amanipulate his way out of capture despite having a legitamate pass from Gen. Arnold. All Andre had to do was to show the pass and say nothing. Instead Andre takes a guess at his captor's allegiance and blurts out his own. Is this the work of a master manipulator?

Walsh's section on the trial is informative.

I think it speaks volumes about the author that on page 69 of his work he adds a footnote informing the reader that the lower arm of the Hudson River has regular tides as it is part of the sea. "This fact and its bearing on the Andre story has escaped almost all previous writers. None dwell on it." On one hand I am glad that Walsh mentions the point becuase it does make clearer why two men were needed to row a boat out to the Vulture. On the other hand it seems as if he stops his story to take a bow. It left me a little confused.

I suggest instead J.T. Flexnor's "The Traitor and the Spy".

This book achieved a very important objective of nonfiction writing which is that it caused me to reexamine my understanding of Andre's character and his role in the events leading up to and after the discovery of Benedict Arnold's attempt to turn over West Point to the British. In other words, it made me think pretty seriously about what I believe about Andre.

There are many conclusions and arguments in this book that I disagree with. I don't agree that Andre was so selfserving and so manipulative that everything he did was for effect. Evangelist did not make a persuasive case for me. I was not pursuaded to conclude that it was solely due to Andre's manipulation that his three captors are routinely disparaged by historical writers. I still don't know what to think about the captors.I don't think the author made his case that Washington's views did not affect the outcome of the trial.Subsequent actions of Washington lead me to believe that he had lost his usual clear thinking when it came to Benedict Arnold's treason.

However, the author made me seriously think about all of these issues, and more. This is not the best revolutionary war history of the year and it is unlikely to win any awards. I recommend it because it raises questions and provokes serious thinking. At least it did so for me.

An intene look at the capture, trial and execution of Major John Andre, Benedict Arnold's British contact. This story will have you contemplating Washington's action and the outcome of the American Revolution. Specifically, one will be surprised how three young militia men may have saved the whole Contenental Army from certain defeat. John Walsh does a great job of keeping this story alive and keeping the question of Andre's sentence at the forefront of debates. A must for revolutionary war readers.