George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[380] Andre, disguising his name, wrote to Sheldon from

Chap. XVIII.} 1780.

New York by order of Clinton: ‘A flag will be sent to Dobbs Ferry on Monday next, the eleventh, at twelve o'clock. Let me entreat you, sir, to favor a matter which is of so private a nature that the public on neither side can be injured by it. I trust I shall not be detained, but I would rather risk that than neglect the business in question, or assume a mysterious character to carry on an innocent affair and get to your lines by stealth.’ To this degree could the British commander-in-chief prostitute his word and a flag of truce, and lull the suspicions of the American officer by statements the most false. The letter of Andre being forwarded to Arnold, he ‘determined to go as far as Dobbs Ferry and meet the flag.’ As he was approaching the vessel in which Andre came up the river, the British guard-boats whose officers were not in the secret fired upon his barge and prevented the interview.

Clinton became only more interested in the project, for of a sudden he gained a great fellow-helper. At the breaking out of the war between France and England, Sir George Rodney, a British naval officer, chanced to be detained in Paris by debt. But the aged Marshal de Biron advanced him money to set himself free, and he hastened to England to ask employment of the king. He was not a member of parliament, and was devoted to no political party; he reverenced the memory of Chatham, and yet held the war against the United States to be just. A man of action, quick-sighted, great in power of execution, he was just the officer whom a wise government would employ, and whom by luck the British admiralty of