Benedict Arnold

1741–1801

Benedict Arnold was one of the Continental army’s most energetic commanders during the American Revolutionary War. He played important roles at Fort Ticonderoga, Lake Champlain and Saratoga but believed that Congress and fellow officers denied him recognition and reimbursement.

In 1780 he secretly agreed to surrender West Point to the British; the plot failed after the capture of John André, and Arnold escaped to serve as a British brigadier. Benedict Arnold was born in Norwich and died in London.

Hourly History’s Battles of Saratoga restores Benedict Arnold to the battlefield reputation he earned before his treason, tracing his aggressive role in the fighting at Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights and his clashes with Horatio Gates. Benedict Arnold follows the fuller arc from gifted Continental officer to conspirator. Nathaniel Philbrick’s Valiant Ambition sets that transformation beside George Washington’s struggle to sustain the Revolution, showing how grievance, ambition and political distrust accumulated before Arnold changed sides. Lucia St. Clair Robson’s Shadow Patriots brings the Arnold–André conspiracy into the world of the Culper network, while James R. Benn’s Freegift imagines an enslaved son seeking the disgraced general during the attack on New London. Diana Gabaldon’s An Echo in the Bone returns Arnold to the Saratoga campaign, where Jamie and Claire encounter the war before his name has become synonymous with betrayal.

Periods

Periods linked to Benedict Arnold

American Revolutionary War1775–1783 CE

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Benedict Arnold (1 series)

Outlander in Order

by Diana Gabaldon 9 books 4.6(525,677)

The Outlander series follows twentieth-century physician Claire Randall after she travels through time to eighteenth-century Scotland and forms a life with Highlander Jamie Fraser. The novels move through the Jacobite rising, its aftermath, the Caribbean, colonial North America and the American Revolution, combining family saga, historical adventure, romance…