Anne S. K. Brown Collection at Brown University, Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain
When the Revolutionary War broke out, Benedict Arnold became one of America’s first military heroes. But within a few short years, patriots were comparing him unfavorably to the man who betrayed Jesus. As a disgusted Benjamin Franklin wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette, “Judas sold only one man, Arnold three millions [sic].”
That Arnold defected to the British army in 1780 is common knowledge. But before he switched allegiances, he engineered some crucial victories for the colonist rebels and, by all accounts, led a pretty interesting life. Here are a few things you might not have known about one of America s most notorious traitors.