“WHILE Arnold is handed down with execration to future times, posterity will repeat with reverence the names of Van Wart, Paulding, and Williams.” These words of Alexander Hamilton, written to John Laurens shortly after the taking of AndrÉ, form a fitting text for the chapter introducing Browere’s busts of those patriots. It is fitting, because of the varying winds that have blown over the subject, swaying public opinion first one way and then the other; until finally the full prophecy of Hamilton is accepted as the right judgment of posterity. Of course, my comments refer only to the captors of AndrÉ; there never has been but one judgment as to the execrated Arnold.

It required more than a generation for any voice to let itself be heard questioning the sincerity and patriotism of the three

lads who brought AndrÉ to justice. And then it was the voice of only one man, Colonel Tallmadge, who had come under AndrÉ’s winsome fascinations, while acting as officer of the guard over the unfortunate spy from his capture to his execution. The occasion for the unworthy onslaught of Tallmadge, was a resolution offered in the House of Representatives, at Washington, to increase the beggarly pension of $200 per annum, awarded, with a silver medal, by the Continental Congress, to each of the three,—Paulding, Williams, and Van Wart. Tallmadge opposed it, not upon the ground that these men had not done the deed history accords to them and thereby possibly saved the new nation, but because AndrÉ, the captured spy, while in captivity, had told his keeper that they deceived him into believing they were British soldiers, and when he found they were not, but were American militiamen and he their prisoner, he could have bought his freedom if he had been weighted down with gold. Suppose this story of AndrÉ, as retailed by Tallmadge, thirty-seven years after the happening of the event, is accepted at its fullest value—what does it signify? At best it is a mere surmise, hardly even the expression of an opinion; and that it was baseless is shown most emphatically by the express denial of each one of the captors, under oath, when Tallmadge made his ill-judged and unpatriotic charge. British gold was ever present during the Revolution to debauch patriots and make them traitors, acting upon the doctrine of Sir Robert Walpole, that every man has his price; therefore AndrÉ surmised that three ragged, unpaid, militiamen would easily have yielded could they have seen the yellow glitter; but subsequent events clearly disprove that the prisoner could have bought his freedom.

The fact is, such a halo of romance and supposed chivalry has garlanded itself over AndrÉ, owing to his youth and charming personality, that the best judgments are warped and influenced, in his favor, when they take up a consideration of his unhappy fate. Yet his case was an aggravated one. He entered upon the errand of a spy with his eyes wide open to its dangers and its consequences. He was taken red-handed, and suffered the penalty of his daring, after a trial, not by his peers, but by his superiors. His suppliant plea that he was unwittingly betrayed within our lines by the very man with whom he knew he was holding unlawful communication, and that he should be protected by the word and passes of the traitor Arnold, are pathetic in their puerility; yet his cause has not failed of advocates upon this plea. After all, it is merely the settling of a sentimental point in history, and the consensus of opinion is that AndrÉ suffered justly and that posterity should “repeat with reverence the names of Van Wart, Paulding, and Williams.”

The truth is, there is too much unnecessary iconoclasm abroad in regard to historic characters. Where false reputations have been built upon foundations laid by others, or impinge upon the honor due to another, it is meet and right that they should be exposed and honor be given to whom honor is due. But there is no such condition here; it is a mere attempt to tarnish one of the most important acts of the American Revolution in its far-reaching consequences, so that it shall be deprived of some of its brilliancy. On the present question we can do no better than accept the judgment of Washington—a man never carried away by his feelings, but always calm, judicial, and just. He wrote to Congress: “I do not know the party that took Major AndrÉ, but it is said that it consisted only of a few militia, who acted in such a manner upon the occasion as does them the highest honor and proves them to be men of great virtue. As soon as I know their names I shall take pleasure in transmitting them to Congress.” And later, in forwarding the proceedings of the Board of War, to Congress, he writes: “I have now the pleasure to communicate the names of the three persons who captured Major AndrÉ and who refused to release him notwithstanding the most earnest importunities and assurances of a liberal reward on his part. Their names are John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart.”

The master spirit of the three captors seems to have been John Paulding, who was the first of them to die, as also the first to have his mask taken by Browere. Indeed, his bust is from the earliest mask we have that Browere made, and is inscribed by the sculptor: “Made 1821 from the mould made in 1817.” The latter was the year of the Tallmadge episode, and Paulding, when in New York in connection with that affair, was taken, by Alderman Percy Van Wyck, to Browere’s house at No. 315 Broadway, where the life mask was made.

The attempt has also been made to throw discredit upon the service of the captors of AndrÉ by underestimating their social position in the community in which they lived. This absurd but too common practice in a democracy like ours, where all men are supposed to be equal, can cut no figure here; for whatever may have been the station in life of Williams and Van Wart, who were kinsmen (the latter’s mother and the former’s father having been brother and sister), Paulding belonged to a family of consideration in his native State.

John Paulding was born in New York city in 1758, and died in Staatsburg, Dutchess county, New York, February 18, 1818. His brother, William Paulding, represented Suffolk county in the first provincial congress that met in New York city, May 23, 1775; was a member of the New York Committee of Safety, and commissary-general of the State troops. He, himself, served throughout the war of the Revolution, and was three times taken prisoner by the British, having escaped from his second capture only a few days before the adventure with AndrÉ. His unswerving patriotism is therefore

established by his personal service. Paulding was the one who actually made the arrest by seizing the bridle of AndrÉ’s horse, and he was the leader and spokesman on the occasion. Nearly a decade after his death, the corporation of the city of New York caused a monument to be erected over his grave, at Peekskill, when his nephew, William Paulding, then Mayor of New York, made the dedicatory address. Rear-Admiral Hiram Paulding—who, at the time of his death, October 20, 1878, was senior officer in the United States navy—was his son, and Commander Leonard Paulding, who commanded the St. Louis, the first ironclad vessel in the United States navy, in the war of the rebellion, was his grandson; while James Kirke Paulding, the collaborateur of Washington Irving, in the Salmagundi papers, and Secretary of the Navy under President Van Buren, was his nephew. Surely this brief family history is sufficient to set at rest any ridiculous squabbling as to his respectability and position in the community. He very possibly wore the stigma of poverty, in which case his refusal to release AndrÉ, “notwithstanding the most earnest importunities and assurances of a liberal reward,” only emphasizes him to have been, in the words of Washington, a man of “great virtue.”

Isaac Van Wart, who next followed Paulding to the grave, died at Mount Pleasant, New York, on May 23, 1828, having been born, in Greenburg, sixty-eight years before. He was the youngest of the three captors. Van Wart was a West Chester farmer, and a staunch adherent to the cause of his country; and there is no more reason to throw doubt upon the purity of his motives in the great affair of his life than upon the motives of Paulding, which are beyond questioning. His social position also seems to be established by the fact, that he was a brother of Abraham Van Wart, Adjutant in the Continental line, whose son Henry married the youngest sister of Washington Irving. Van Wart’s mask was made by Browere at Tarrytown in 1826, and until its discovery by the writer there was no likeness of him known to be in existence.

David Williams, the eldest and the last survivor of the three, was born in Tarrytown, October 21, 1754, dying near Livingstonville, August 2, 1831. He served under Montgomery in the expedition to Canada, and remained actively in the service until disabled by frozen feet. Many of the details of the capture of AndrÉ that we have, are from Williams’s sworn statement, made on the day following, when everything was perfectly fresh in his mind. He passed the closing years of his life on a farm in the Catskills, that had belonged to the leader of Shays’s rebellion, and it is still in the occupancy of Williams’s descendants. A monument has been erected to his memory, by the State of New York, near Schoharie Court House.

Browere had great trouble in securing Williams’s mask.

Twice he went by sloop and on foot for this purpose to the latter’s home at Schoharie, only to find the veteran absent. Finally, in 1829, Williams visited General Delavan, at Peekskill, and sent Browere word, whereupon the artist went thither and took the mask, the only portrait extant of the sturdy patriot.

Therefore to Browere’s art,—or “process,” whichever one pleases,—we owe, among other causes for congratulation, the possession of the only authenticated likenesses of Paulding, Williams and Van Wart, the three pure and unyielding patriots who captured the unfortunate AndrÉ, and who, “leaning only on their virtue and an honest sense of their duty, could not be tempted by gold.” Thereby they saved Washington and his army from capture, and possibly preserved the infant nation from a return to servitude. Each one of them received the thanks of Congress, and from the State of New York a two-hundred-acre farm. “Vincit amor patriÆ.”