Great read about war heros. Heros from a long time ago. A bit long, but very good.

General Differences
by Gary Schneeberger

A new book takes an insightful look at Revolutionary War icons George Washington and Benedict Arnold -- and concludes character made all the difference in their destinies.

For all the remembrances of and memorials to those who fought to found the United States, you probably won't find today's historical anniversary on any calendar. But it was exactly 226 years ago -- Friday, Sept. 22, 1780 -- that one of the more famous events of the Revolutionary War took place.

It was the day Benedict Arnold betrayed his country, turning his name into one of the more unsavory epithets you can hurl at someone who has less than your best interests at heart.

But if you think of "Benedict Arnold" only as an insulting adjective, you'll learn a lot from George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots, a new book by retired Army Lt. Gen. Dave R. Palmer, who once held the same post as Arnold: superintendent of West Point.

You might be surprised to learn, for instance, that Washington and Arnold faced similar challenges growing up in essentially single-parent households; that both had pretty nasty tempers; and that they were considered, during the pivotal early years of the War for Independence, the top two military men in the Continental Army -- without whom we in the States might still be singing "God Save the Queen" before soccer matches and not "The Star-Spangled Banner" before baseball games.

"The tale of the two patriots, who left such diametrically opposed legacies despite life trajectories that were at one time so parallel, is only partly told by addressing what happened," Palmer writes. "To be complete it must address the why. Why did one man stay on the road to historical immortality while the other plunged over the cliff in infamy?

"The easy answer is to say one had strength of character while the other did not. But what exactly does that mean? And how did it shape such an extraordinary outcome?"

That's the focus of Palmer's book -- part historical narrative, part biography, all quite revealing. CitizenLink talked with him recently about what prompted him to spotlight what has been a largely dark corner of history.

Q. I'm the product of public schools and I didn't know anything about Benedict Arnold except that his name was synonymous with "traitor" and that there was an episode of The Brady Bunch once when Peter had to play him in a school play and didn't want to.

Well, you've hit just about what 99 percent of Americans know. I went to public high school, too, and I don't think I really knew anything about him until I was out of college.

You show how Washington and Arnold were similar in many ways. And you talk about their childhoods, and neither one of them had childhoods that were easy. And the first real difference I noticed was that Washington kind of rolled with the ups and downs experienced by his family, but Arnold really didn't, did he?

No, he fought it all along.

And how did that manifest itself?

Well, their personalities, although they've got tremendous similarities in their youth, their upbringing, their ability in the battlefield and so forth -- but Arnold was always combative, pugnacious; fought duels all his life. Even after the revolution, while he was in England, there was at least one more that I know of.

And Washington, who probably had as many reasons back in that era when men did that, never fought one.

But both of these guys had tempers. Washington kept his in check, and Arnold didn't. How was he able to do that?

Well, he didn't always. There are examples where he really flew off the handle, but he brought himself under control. I don't think he ever did it publicly; the only times I've been able to find anyone recording him losing his temper was, occasionally, one of his aides would record it, or someone who saw him in a behind-the-scenes situation. But he always quickly recovered and publicly was able to keep a very, very cool demeanor.

One of the lines that really struck me early in the book, when you're talking about Arnold, you say, "Worst of all, he was ashamed by his family's poverty and mortified by a derelict father who had become the town joke. The boy reacted by rebelling and becoming increasingly rowdy." Washington didn't have it easy, either.

There was a little bit of a difference there. They both lost their father. And were both raised essentially by single mothers. The big difference is, Washington's father died, and so there was no indignity to be suffered from that. But in Arnold's case, his father lived to be the town drunk and was sort of a laughingstock. The best you can tell, that always grated on him and probably shaped his personality to make him more personally combative.

One of the overall impressions I got from the book was that both Washington and Arnold were praised for their accomplishments, but it seems Washington was the one who was more liked. Is that a fair read?

Well, yes and no. In the large picture it is. (Arnold) was much more irascible, much more prone to chew people out for letting him down and so forth. But at the same time he was obviously a charming person. The people who liked him really liked him; and the people who didn't like him really didn't like him.

No middle ground.

Exactly. And I think with Washington there was more of a middle ground. There were people who actually liked him as a person, to include fellow Virginians, who by '76 or so had concluded that he was not up to the job (of commanding the Continental Army). So, while they liked him, they began to believe he was not competent.

Who was, in your estimation, more important to America winning the Revolutionary War? Take away one or the other and we lose. Who would that be?

Every historian who's ever dealt with it and addressed that question has come up with the conclusion that Washington was the indispensable man. With him out of the equation, with the revolution, it would have ended very differently -- probably not to our liking. Later, if you pull him out of the equation of being the first president and writing the Constitution, it would not have happened. The Constitution would not have been written, would not have been ratified, and he wouldn't have been there to set the tone. So, over that whole period, the revolutionary era, he is.

However, Arnold had something to do with the revolution for only three years: 1775, 1776 and 1777. And then he was seriously wounded at Saratoga in October of '77. And from that point on he has no positive impact on the revolution. You can get rid of him -- if he had been killed at that moment, if that musket ball, instead of shattering his left thigh, had gone into his heart, the rest of the revolution would not have been changed one whit. However, he'd be remembered today as one of our great heroes. There'd be a state named Arnold. There'd be lots of towns and cities. Anybody with a last name of Arnold would be happy to name their boys "Benedict." His treason erased all that.

I found it very interesting in the end when you talk about how many books are written about Washington versus how many books are written about Arnold. I went to amazon.com to the book section and typed George Washington's name in, it shows up in 48,826 references. I typed "Benedict Arnold" in, he shows up in 3,482. That's 14 times more mentions of Washington than Arnold.

What I find interesting about that is that actors will always tell you the most robust roles to play are villains. But it seems like historians don't agree.

Certainly that's the case with these two. Part of that, though, is that they went to great extremes to "erase from the register" -- a quote from the Congress -- references of Arnold. He became a non-person. And that was done consciously.

Just being a loyalist, or just changing your loyalty, would not have been such an unusual or horrible thing except that he was seen by the British and by the Americans as the premier battle commander. If you go to World War II, it was much the way George Patton was viewed in Europe. You have Eisenhower filling the Washington role, and Patton filling the role of Arnold. You have a rough comparison. Maybe even the Civil War -- Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

Jackson or Patton, they were the go-to guys when the senior commander had to have something done that was critical, and particularly by someone who could operate away from immediate control.

So, when you have someone who is such a noted celebrity who switches sides -- it would be almost as if George Patton had said in, oh, January of '45, "You know, after all, I think I am a Nazi. And I am going to go over and join Hitler." That would have been something incredible; you couldn't even imagine that happening. And that was sort of the way it was with Arnold.

What's more, he didn't just switch sides. He decided that -- for money -- he would take the Revolution down when he switched sides by selling West Point. So, you combine those two, and you get a feel for how terrible, what a great transgression this was for him to switch sides. You can't find a modern-day parallel.

As I was reading the book, I thought of Hebrews Chapter 12, Verse 15: "See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many." What I see here is that the bitterness of Arnold -- to Congress, to Washington eventually, to his circumstances -- really was what led to his downfall.

Yeah, I think it's implicit. I didn't spell it out precisely this way in the book, but he went through four entirely different personalities; Washington was the same man from beginning to end. Arnold in those first three years that I mentioned, I'd call him the consummate patriot. He sacrificed, risked his life over and over, sacrificed his own personal fortune and so forth. You couldn't find a more ideal patriot than he was during those first three years.

And then he becomes what I call an embittered soldier. This starts in early '77 when he's not promoted by Congress after all he's done, when in merit and seniority he's clearly the No. 1 in both. And then when they do promote him they don't backdate it so he retains his seniority. And all along, Washington is in his camp; he fumes at that himself. So as an embittered soldier he is looking for vindication. And I think that happens throughout 1777 and throughout his appointment as military governor.

But then, by May of '78, when he's recuperated from his wounding, he's what I call then a physically and emotionally scarred veteran. Physically, he's a cripple, and will be for the rest of his life. Emotionally as well. And he sets out to restore his personal fortune. He says, "OK, if that's all they think of what I've done, I'm going to look out for No. 1." And avarice comes in to play -- and that's when he starts his illicit and unethical money-making scheme. And that puts him on a really steep slope that gets him more and more in trouble.

And his final phase is when he becomes what I call a crook who's bent on revenge. He's looking for vengeance. So he goes from being a consummate patriot to being a criminal who's looking for vengeance.

Quite a biblical story in the end.

It is. It really is.

It's really a cautionary tale too, isn't it? Clear evidence of the dangers of bitterness, not just for you but for the country and your loved ones.

There again, pairing him with Washington was part of my scheme -- except that Washington was never wounded. He exposed himself as much as Arnold did; he had no business living through the war, either, doing the things on the battlefield that he did. But he also had people who were antithetical to him, people who were enemies. And he had a lot of reasons to be bitter, to be angry. But he was able to keep his bearing and keep his eye on the whole aim of the cause -- and that was to win the war.

And that's the beauty of the book. It gives you an object lesson to follow and one to avoid.

Actually, the genesis of the book was about 18 years ago, when I was still on active duty in the Army, and a private boys school in New York, across the Hudson from West Point, asked me to give the graduation speech to eighth-graders. And they asked me to talk on character. Well, if there are two talks that will be forgotten, it's a graduation address for 13-year-old boys and it's a talk on character. So I decided I had to tell them a story.

Without telling them it was Washington and Arnold, I just told them about these two men -- and traced what the book traces: their youth, how they grew up, how they were similar in so many ways, how they had to overcome similar obstacles, how they were both very successful and how they were both good leaders. And then they both had all these highs and lows, great successes and great defeats, and people who were against them. And never told (the kids) who the two were.

So when I got to the end, I said one became the father of our country, George Washington. And the other became a man without a country, Benedict Arnold.

And then I was able to make the point why: One was a leader of character; one was a man who had a huge character flaw. So character is very important in determining the destiny of a person. Well, those kids were rapt -- sitting on the edge of their seats. And anytime you get a group of 40 eighth-graders to hang on every word you're saying …

You're doing pretty well …

… and you've got a moral at the end, I said, "Well, I know that's a good story." So I thought when I retired I'd write it for young people, but I found among the many talents I don't have, writing for young people is one of them. That's an art form in itself.