Impact Without Limits

S5 E25: The Revolutionary Goats

• Dale and Brian Karmie / Adkins Media Co.

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Dale and Brian Karmie take a closer look at some of the Revolutionary War’s most infamous “goats”—men who had the potential to be heroes but ultimately found themselves on the wrong side of history. From Charles Lee and Horatio Gates to Benjamin Franklin’s loyalist son William and the infamous Benedict Arnold, they explore how ambition, selfishness, disloyalty, and poor decisions turned promising figures into cautionary tales.

The conversation also examines John André, the British officer whose role in the plot with Benedict Arnold placed him on the “goat” list despite the honor and respect he demonstrated in the end. Throughout the episode, Dale and Brian reflect on a larger lesson from these stories: the difference between ambition that serves others and selfish ambition that puts self above country, relationships, and the greater good.


Episode Highlights: 

  • Charles Lee’s fall from favor.
  • Horatio Gates and Saratoga.
  • Benjamin Franklin’s loyalist son.
  • Benedict Arnold turns traitor.
  • John André and honor in defeat.


Links Mentioned in Episode/Find More on ForeverLawn:

This show has been produced by Adkins Media Co.


SPEAKER_02

The Patriots valued country over self. Traitors and the people that ended up on the wrong side valued self over country and over others and over relationships. That's not obviously not a good way to live your life. Selfishness.

SPEAKER_03

Selfish ambition.

SPEAKER_02

It is its root of every evil.

SPEAKER_04

So why would two guys leave comfortable jobs, move across the country, and start a business in an industry they don't know, a place they don't know? And could it be successful? We're Dale and Brian Carmen. Join us as we share our story and inspire you to become people of impact. Welcome to the Impact Without Limits podcast.

SPEAKER_02

Welcome back to the Impact Without Limits podcast. Dale Carmen here sitting with my brother Brian. And we are this is an interesting episode because we want to talk about the goats. The goats of the Revolutionary War or the Revolutionary Era. And in today's world, people might think we mean goat.

SPEAKER_04

As in greatest of all time. Michael Jordan, Tom Brady.

SPEAKER_02

Goat. Like whatever, whatever sound goats make. That might have been a sheep. It might have been a sheep. But a sheep. I did put this in my own. I put the horns up. I got the horns going.

SPEAKER_04

What's the difference between a ram and a goat? They're different animals. A ram as a male sheep. Totally different animals. That's what we're doing. But other than that, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02

So does goat come from scapegoat? I believe so. Right. Right? Before we had the G Capital All Caps, G-O-A-T, greatest of all time, goats, which is really what the last maybe eight to ten years. Decade. That's been a thing. A goat was a bad thing.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You were the goat, you were the scapegoat, you were the cast, you were the reason for a loss. And we had some goats in the revolutionary time. So we're we're going to dive into that. But you had a question.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, the question that we're going to pose to the audience is we talk a lot about the founding fathers, and some of them had notable sons, right? You have John Adams, John Quincy Adams, um stuck. All right. There's others, there's other ones that had kids. But Benjamin Franklin, did Benjamin Franklin have a son that was involved in the revolutionary? Great question. Maybe we'll find out today. Maybe we will.

SPEAKER_02

So it's it's interesting. So we have a list. Do we want to read them all off, or are we going to just hit them one at a time?

SPEAKER_04

I think I just hit them one at a time. And and the thing that to me is stands out as we talk about this, we're not doing it just to like bad mouth people, but I think sometimes looking at the thin threads of how close somebody was to being a hero and becomes a goat before they could have it could have gone one way or another, and they end up as the villain of the story or the bad guy or the goat.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and and you'll find out when we get through. One of the goats we're going to talk about actually maybe could have been been considered the other kind of goat in a way, but he was on the wrong side. So we'll we'll we'll get to that.

SPEAKER_04

All right. So the first one we are going to talk about is a general in the army, and we've mentioned his name before, but it's Charles Lee. Yeah. And so uh I'm running through the book of Washington and uh Washington when there was an attack on New York and he was trying to defend New York, he had two forts. He had Fort Washington, named after himself, and he named the other fort Lee after Charles Lee, who was second in command, and many saw him as you know potentially the guy who who would succeed, sorry, yeah, succeed uh Washington and and be the the next leading general. Um but he was actually born in Britain, right? He was a British born soldier, and he had fought in Europe before coming to America, and that was unique because a lot of the colonial army didn't have prior fighting experience. Washington had served in the French and Indian War, but a lot of these guys were just militia, right? So have somebody that was a classical trained general was was a big deal. And so Charles Lee was you know considered um kind of a military um you know uh intellectual, knew how to fight, and had a lot of you know street cred in the cred in the the Congress and loved him. There were even some that felt he was better than George Walsh.

SPEAKER_02

I was gonna say most of the people we're gonna talk about, not not all of them, most of them, I'm I'm gonna say they were good before they were bad. Yeah. Right? They were maybe even almost hero status, or people that were looked looked up to and said, Man, this is a good person doing good things in the battle against Great Britain. Right. And then the tables get completely turned. And Lee was one such character, because like you said, he he commanded uh armies, he led battles, he won some battles, right? Yeah, and so you're thinking, this guy's you know, this guy's good, he's got it going on, but um I don't know honestly if he turned or if he was like always there and just got revealed.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, so interesting, it it is you know, we're doing research. I find out that 1776, he's actually captured by the British and kind of gives them a plan on how to defeat the Americans, but then he ends up getting getting released, they trade prisoners and goes back to fights for the American Revolution again. So, which one is the real Charles Lee, right? And I think the answer is in the end, he was self-preservation. Whatever was best for Charles Lee is what he did, and that was his downfall. Um, you know, the what he's probably best known for is retreating in battle, right? He gets in the Battle of Monmouth. They've got, you know, he's ordered to go forward and he defies orders from Washington and turns and retreats, and he's running, right? And they're like, no, go forward, go forward. And he's retreating. He's running, taking his men and leaving town. And Washington actually confronts him on the battlefield and he's like, What are you doing, Lee? And they get into this skirmish and this fight on the battlefield. He gets court-martialed, suspended for a year, and during that time he starts badmouthing Washington. He's like, Oh, he's the problem. He's not a good leader, and he starts stirring dissension. Um, and you know, it's it's portrayed well in the musical, uh, the Hamilton musical, but he actually, Alexander Hamilton and John Lawrence are like, you can't talk about Washington that way. And Washington's like, let him go. It's not just it's don't worry about it. But John Lawrence actually challenges him to a duel, and they get into a duel, which is crazy to think that. I mean, we might have talked about this before, but these guys get into duels.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_04

And they just go, I got a problem with you.

SPEAKER_02

Let's take it out. Take it out to the field.

SPEAKER_04

I don't like what you said. I'm gonna defend my honor or defend the honor of my general, and by doing it, we're we're gonna shoot guns at each other. And Charles Lee gets shot and injured, and never, you know, it it didn't kill him in the duel, but Washington's angry about this, and you know, a big deal. But how crazy that they have this duel because he's badmouthing Washington after he's suspended from being in the army.

SPEAKER_02

So, and and I don't know. We're I'm gonna talk about something here, and I'm gonna reference the uh miniseries Turn that I've been watching. Uh a lot of it has been very accurately portrayed. Obviously, it's a story and they fill in a lot of gaps. And so I'm not gonna claim this as fact, but I'm gonna say this is what was alluded to and challenge you to go look it up, and I'll go check it out myself. But that Lee retreating on that battlefield at Monmouth was an intentional setup. That he had fed the British information. He knew what troops they had there, and he showed up at that battlefield with the intention of retreating. And Washington was supposed to be a day behind. He was bringing troops to the field as well, but he wasn't supposed to be there the same day the battle began. And Lee calls the retreat and is calling the men back. Uh, and while it's happening, Washington and his troops show up. And it is because Washington's spy network had revealed Lee as a traitor, because uh the and we're gonna talk about the culprit spy ring, but you have this culprit spy ring, you had Robert Townsend in New York City who was in the pub where the British soldiers were and heard them talking about Lee as their informant and their insider on the colonial side. And as soon as they found that out, the spy ring gets this information to Washington. So Washington knows ahead of time that Lee is a traitor and shows up in time to save the battle. And the Americans won that battle, the Battle of Monmouth. After Lee retreated, they came in with Washington troops because the British didn't know Washington was going to be there. They thought he was a day behind. Um, and that Washington didn't want to call Lee out as a traitor because that would look bad for the American army, would look bad for bringing the French in. I think at this point the French hadn't joined the shit. I might be wrong on that one, but he just he thought it would look bad to see dissension at the top ranks of the army. So he wanted to catch him, humiliate him in front of the troops, which is a confrontation on the battlefield, and then had him court-martialed. Um just crazy.

SPEAKER_04

And so that's 76, 77. I think it was 77. And he ends up dying in 1782 as the the goat, right? He's he's discredited, bitter, seen as a traitor, and dies.

SPEAKER_02

And he could have been one of the heroes of the war had he picked the wrong side been willing to one, you know, if he was a good person, but two, put the nation's interest above his own, listen to Washington, and serve as a you know a loyal general instead of Yeah, but so I think you said it in addition to well, you did say you talked about the duel, but in when he was still general, in addition to him being um subversive to the uh American side uh on the field, he was sowing seeds of discontent to Congress about Washington. He was undermining Washington's power and Washington's authority, I think sometimes quietly, behind the scenes, whispering it and just trying to disturb dissension. That's just that's a bad character. Buddy, that gets you at the top of the goat list.

SPEAKER_04

He is top of the goats. So the second one we're going to talk about has a little bit of a similar story. Horatio Gates. Yeah. Again, born in Britain, professional soldier, comes to the America as is similar to Lee, as like, hey, this guy is is good. And he actually came earlier. He served alongside uh Washington um under Braddock in the French and Indian War. And uh, you know, so he's one of the generals and and he's one of the leading generals under Washington. But there was always this little bit of contention where I don't know that he felt he should have been under Washington. And so he's best known for winning the Battle of Saratoga.

SPEAKER_02

Saratoga, big victory for Americans. Some say the turning point of the war. Yeah. But he was maybe the real credit for it, the real hero. The real hero, it sounds like, was Benedict Arnold, who was an American, I think, general. Um and while Gates was retreating or pulling back at the Battle of Saratoga, uh, Benedict Arnold wanted to charge, and Gates told him no. Benedict Arnold actually defied orders and rallied the troops and charged and led to a victory. And we won. And like I said, many people say that was one of the key victories in the Revolutionary War, um, you know, a turning point for America. But then after the victory, the victory's credited to Gates because he was the commanding general. And there's this almost a little like feud between Benedict Arnold and Gates, because Benedict Arnold is saying, I won the victory. It was me. I rallied the troops, I I defied all odds and took us in and got the win. And now you're giving the credit to this Gates, who was a coward who who had pulled back and retreated.

SPEAKER_04

And on top of that, Gates, rather than reporting back to Washington saying, hey, we won this war, which was the chain of command and what he should have done, he reported his victory to Congress to make himself look great. And Washington actually finds out about it through the grapevine. And there's this like uh rivalry between Can you imagine how much turmoil Washington lived with?

SPEAKER_02

Oh my goodness. Because he's the leader of the army. He's leading men who aren't getting paid by Congress. He's continually going to Congress pleading for payment, for supplies, food, rations, anything for his people. He's battling the greatest superpower in the world, and he's being subverted by his other generals, two of which we just talked about, Leon Gates.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And he lost more battles than he won.

SPEAKER_04

Yes, he did. And that's oh my goodness. So during this time, Gates wins the battle. Washington's been retreating across New Jersey, and he's actually getting ready to winter in Valley Forge. And then you've got the whole Conway Cabal, which is this uh desire of people in Congress to try and make Gates the commander instead of Washington, which gets thwarted. But as kind of this placating Gates, they make him leader of the Southern Command and put him down there uh without George Washington's approval. So you've got, I mean, he's commander of the Continental Army, and he's Congress is calling shit. He's like kind of getting his knees cut out from his generals kind of stabbing him in the back, Congress kind of subverting his authority, and he's like, No, he Washington won a Nathaniel Green, and they're like, nope, we're gonna give it to Gates. So they move Gates to the South. But unfortunately, for Gates, he gets totally obliterated in the Battle of Camden, and he has an awful strategy, gets a destroyed by um Cornwallis and the the Brit Brits. And the story is he flees on horseback, right? And he turns and just runs away from battle and goes 200 miles in three days running, just running away. He gets relieved of his command, never returned, and that's the end of Gates. I mean, he's pretty much erased from the pages of history after that.

SPEAKER_02

Now, the thing I'll say about Gates, he wasn't a traitor, he was not, right? He was just a coward. Like we we believe Lee was that was actually subverting the Americans by feeding information to the British. Yeah, he was just not a good field general, maybe a little bit of a coward. Um, you know, and I you read different reports, and and I think history at first painted him very poorly because it was fresh in everybody's mind. Then people came back and said, well, you know, he had he did win Saratoga and he was a general and he did some good things, but overall he makes the GOAT list. He does.

SPEAKER_04

So oh for two on the the generals there. And and again, the the thing that to me stands out in both of those is they were both ambitious, selfishly ambitious, right? And we had this conversation yesterday just about life and the difference between ambition, which can be used for good, right? Because Washington and Hamilton and John Adams, these guys were all ambitious, but they were ambitious with an eye to what's good for everybody. Not just me. Right. This is uh what's what's the movie? Uh Beautiful Mind, right? The Nobel Prize and good for you. But these guys were like, no, what's good for me, even if it's bad for the the ones around me. And so because of that, they are both on our goat list. Next up. Next up is the answer to the first question that we asked to open. Ben Franklin. Franklin has a son. He has a son. And you're telling me he's on the goat list, he's on the goat list. William Franklin, born in 1730. So crazy. Uh he's right around George Washington's age. I can't remember exactly when George was born. I think it was slightly before that. But I mean, he's one.

SPEAKER_02

He's the son of Benjamin Franklin.

SPEAKER_04

He's actually an illegitimate son. It's not not Franklin's wife, but he does take Franklin's name, and and Ben is like close with him and actually travels with him to England.

SPEAKER_02

Do we know who the mom is? Uh, I don't know that.

SPEAKER_04

But he becomes a British loyalist. So while Ben Franklin is working with the founding fathers to start America and and the revolution, his son is actually a British loyalist, and he's appointed governor of New Jersey by the king. And so it's just amazing. So he gets arrested in 1776 by the Americans. The British end up doing some type of prisoner swap to trade and get him back in 78. He moves to New York City because that city is controlled by the British. Yeah, they held a war. They held it for the entire war. And he becomes part of these loyalists from New York City that do raids on American colonies and can't encampments. I mean, he's not just like a loyalist, he's actively subverting against his father and the revolution and the nation.

SPEAKER_02

And it's just amazing. You know, it it's so yeah, Ben Franklin in Philadelphia making trips back and forth to Great Britain, right? Um arguably one of the most well-known founding fathers. Yes. Like if you go out to the general public and you say, tell me some of the founding fathers of the American uh of America or the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin's got to be number two right behind George Washington. Yep. And his son is a loyalist, was governor of New Jersey, and is then winds up in New York attacking uh or or leading charges against the Americans.

SPEAKER_04

It's it's crazy. And and it actually, you know, uh uh some of the things I was reading talked about the fact that we don't think of it this way, but the American Revolution was technically a civil war, right? It was a country fighting against itself, it was a group trying to secede, but for good reason and successfully so, but it split families. You had some families where the parents were loyalists and the kids were were uh you know sons of liberty or freedom fighters, and sometimes apparently it was the other way, where you have a father who's a founding father and a leader of um this new nation and the son who's a loyalist.

SPEAKER_02

That's just crazy.

SPEAKER_04

And the the stats I saw said somewhere between 15 to 20 percent of the the colonists remained loyal to Britain, and then after the war, a lot of them beat feet and went back. And William Franklin is one of them.

SPEAKER_02

The ones that didn't probably get beat up. Right. They were gonna get seriously. I mean, maybe not physically beat up, although it might have been, but if they owned a shop, people aren't gonna shop there, right? I mean, they remember.

SPEAKER_04

So he he goes back, moves back to Britain. He never reconciles with his father. Uh, he and Ben Franklin do end up meeting and having some conversations, but they never repair their relationship and he ends up dying estranged from his father. His father probably dies first. But you know what that does? That gets you on the goat list. He's a goat. All right, so we're three goats in, just a couple to go. We've got an Another William on the list. The next one is William Church. And William Church, I've got to admit, I did not know much about William Church.

SPEAKER_02

I knew the name, but I didn't know anything about him.

SPEAKER_04

So we talked previously about the Sons of Liberty. And the Sons of Liberty being, you know, the group that really started the movement.

SPEAKER_02

And not to rehash, but it's the secret society that started in 1765 that raised up out of the British oppression. And it ended up being this group, not just in one location, throughout all the colonies. There was this band of people that gathered together as the Sons of Liberty who were spearheading this resistance against Great Britain, against the tyrannical rule, against the king, and and all these um acts and laws and things that were put into place to just hold down and oppress the people. He was the Sons of Liberty.

SPEAKER_04

And so and you're asking, how could a son of Liberty be one of the goats? I mean, he obviously turns. He's actually known as the first American traitor. That's his subheading in the books. Um, but he was a close associate of Sam Adams, John Hancock. Um, he actually was the the surgeon general of the Continental Army.

SPEAKER_02

Surgeon General of the Continental Army. What's the surgeon general do? Does he run around doing surgery on all the people?

SPEAKER_04

I think he generals the surgeons.

SPEAKER_02

He generals the surgeons. Yeah. I but I'm assuming though, they're overseeing the health and well-being of the army, making sure that conditions are good and there's a proper people in place to treat them, things like that. He's supposed to be overseeing the care of these men who are putting their lives on the line. And he's a traitor.

SPEAKER_04

So he's actually caught in 1775 sending an encoded spy letter through his mistress, which let's face it, if you got the mistress, that's probably a bad sign to begin with. George Washington is shocked when he learns this, right? This is his surgeon general at the time, and he's like, We gotta punish this guy hard, right? We've got to make a an example out of him.

SPEAKER_02

And I just want to say, George Washington took command of the Continental Army in 1775. It's it's early. It was June and July 3rd, he shows up in Boston because that does happen to be my birthday. So remember is when he began leading the army in Boston. So this guy he sneaked out pretty quick.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, he did. And so William Church um GW wants to like punish him, hang him, treat him as a traitor. And the Continental Congress is like, um, I mean, this is early. We don't even have this is before the declaration. They're like, we really don't have any any laws that say being loyal to Britain is a crime. We can't call him a traitor. He's just on the other side right now. And so they're like, we don't have any basis to execute him.

SPEAKER_02

We don't have like trust me, I don't think they needed a lot of basis back then either. Yeah, just crazy. If you were caught counterfeiting money, you could be executed.

SPEAKER_04

Well, they don't execute him, they just imprison him, but he ends up saying hey life in prison, right? It was supposed to be life in prison. But he gets sick and he gets released in 1778. So he's only in prison for three years. And they put him on a ship to try he was going somewhere to get medical treatment or what. Yeah, it was somewhere nice. It was like the Virgin Islands or something. But his ship disappears in 1778.

SPEAKER_02

So I think that might have been a little bit of a setup. I said it's kind of like hey, we got a ship for you.

SPEAKER_04

Come over here. We're gonna send you to someplace nice. It's kind of like in basketball when the refs make a bad call, and then the next play the ball goes out of bounds and the ball don't lie. This one, the boat don't lie, right? They put them on the boat, the boat disappears, boat don't lie. They knew this guy needed to be accepted.

SPEAKER_02

Guess what? You start out as the Sons of Liberty, and you wind up being a traitor and a spy. That gets you where? Gets you on the goat list.

SPEAKER_04

William Church, you're a goat. We got another Sons of Liberty. This one is probably the most well-known trader. I mean, when your name becomes a euphemism for being a trader, yeah. You're tops of the list.

SPEAKER_02

We're talking about, of course, audience?

SPEAKER_04

Benedict Arnold. But before, because I mean, in order for him to have such a traumatic fall, he had to be good to start with. He's arguably one of the best commanders and generals in the revolutionary army. He was already talked about. He was the hero, rightfully so, of the Battle of Saratoga.

SPEAKER_02

He was one of the Sons of Liberty, he was one of the early adopters of the Sons of Liberty. He was a rising star, right? We talked about the Battle of Saratoga. Uh, he had Washington's eye. I think Washington liked and respected him. Um he and the the thing that, and I guess you hit this on uh some of the others. The thing I think he really wanted recognition. He wanted to be known, he wanted to be respected, he wanted to be revered. And it's Saratoga, Gates gets the recognition, right? And he got injured, right? I don't know if it was in Saratoga or bad at battle following. He took a bullet to the leg and was having trouble getting around, and then he wanted to keep his command and he had to like give it up because they they said he wasn't fit to serve with his injury, and he fought to get back to where uh you know he could he could serve actively. Looked like you were gonna say something else.

SPEAKER_04

No, I mean I I was even before Saratoga, he's one of the ones responsible for the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, which we'll get to the story sometime of Henry Knox and the ammunition.

SPEAKER_02

And if that hadn't happened, how's it all I mean how's it all come together? I know it all comes together because looking at it, but how crazy is that? It's amazing. Because Ticonderoga is where we got the artillery from to send up to Boston to help chase the Brits out of Boston. That's right.

unknown

Wow.

SPEAKER_04

So Benedict Arnold was really good until he wasn't, right? And so just what you said, and and I mean, he he wanted to be recognized, he felt underappreciated by Congress. He's getting passed up for promotions that he felt, like promotions that should have been his, other people got. And so he starts to act out a little bit and he ends up getting court-martialed for some small administrative things.

SPEAKER_02

Right. So here's here's what happened. Um again, um, this part I'm I'm taking from the show I'm watching. He gets sent to Philadelphia and gets put over Philadelphia. He is in charge of, and this is after the Americans chased the Brits out of Philadelphia, we get it back. He was in charge of giving order to the city. Um, because again, they didn't feel he was capable of serving like out active duty fighting, leading the men, although he wanted to. He was a little bit frustrated to be put there. And while he's there, he takes a house, and it was, I don't know, it was Penn Mansion, or it was something that I think at one point had been Ben Franklin's house. He takes that as his residence, and they get like some furniture and things that had been captured at different ships or different things from the British, and he takes it into his own um home and and uses it, and there was somebody there, and I can't remember his name that from the Congress that didn't like him, it was going against him, and that's what led ultimately to the court martial. And uh, I honestly don't remember the outcome of the court martial, but through this, through wanting recognition, through wanting to be fighting, wanting to be the hero, and feeling and and he hadn't been paid for four years.

SPEAKER_03

Right. There's a money issue there.

SPEAKER_02

He's not getting paid, and and then on the other side, there is this active attempt to recruit him by the Brits. They see that they believe he's susceptible because of the injuries, because of the challenges, because of losing command, because of the court martial, that he ends up switching, switching sides in uh 1780. 1799. 79? Yeah, 79. Uh wrong time to switch, buddy. Benedict, you were two years away from from knowing that the U.S. is going to win that war. You went to the wrong side. So I the and I have a couple notes.

SPEAKER_04

1780, he's plotting to turn over West Point.

SPEAKER_02

That that was his plot to turn over West Point.

SPEAKER_04

That gets foiled. He ends up fleeing to a British ship and then leads British raids against American settlements. I mean, it's just I mean, he doesn't, again, not just a little turn. I mean, he totally flips. Total turncoat traitor, which is why when people say you're being a military. After the war, he moves to England, right? He can't live in America. They don't want him. And he'd probably, again, be beat up or worse if he stays. But the British don't accept him either. They're like, yeah, this guy's a traitor. There's no respect. Right? And so he dies in 1801, very like beleaguered, and nobody likes him. Poor Ben McDonald. He was more worried about self. So now we've got three of Washington's key generals in the war. Horatio Gates, Charles Lee, Benedict Darnold.

SPEAKER_02

So so think about right. Think about that. It's crazy. Washington overcame all that, but I'm gonna tell you. Um I I can't even think of what song it is, but who who their country more than self they loved, right? It's a patriotic song. I'm the I forget which one, but think about that. The Patriots valued country over self. Right. The traders and the people that ended up on the wrong side valued self over country and over others and over relationships. That's not obviously not a good way to live your life. You know, selfishness.

SPEAKER_03

Do nothing selfish ambition.

SPEAKER_02

It is at the root of every evil. Every single evil. You've got selfishness at the heart of it.

SPEAKER_04

All right. We're wrapping up, but the last goat really ties into Benedict. It ties right in. And this is one that you actually call a good and honorable man, just on the wrong side. It is John Andre.

SPEAKER_02

John Andre. He is actually he was uh, I don't know, general, major, whatever he was in the British Army, and he was kind of their head of their special intelligence. He was head of their their spy network and and what have you. And he was the one that was actively recruiting or you know, leading the charge, I don't know him personally, but to to get Benedict Arnold over to the British side.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm not gonna remember how all this plays out. But Benedict Arnold, they make contact, and and there was a how much were they gonna pay him and what were they gonna give him? And again, Benedict Arnold really wanted himself to be inflated and and be the guy everybody respected. Well, I don't think that the British respected him even right after he switched sides because they're looking at him saying, There's no honor in being a turncoat, right? So he's trying to, you know, what can I do to earn my place here? And it is he wants to turn over the plans of West Point to um to Major John Andre. And so they have this special meeting, and Andre comes in in his uh uniform, uh, you know, a British uniform as a major general, whatever it is, and he gets the plans and he has the plans hidden in his sock, and then he was supposed to have this escape through this boat, and there was a skirmish that happened on the shore that people were firing at the boat that caused the boat to leave. So John Andre lost his way to get out of, I think he was in New York where this exchange happened. So now they're saying he has to walk to get back to New York City, I believe. Well, he's thinking, uh, I don't want to walk in my general's uniform. And I think uh it might have been Benedict Arnold told him, but they decided it was better for him to change to just plain clothes and just walk unassumingly back to you know the British command. So he discards his uniform, changes into regular clothes, has the plans uh in his sock to um West Point. He's walking back, and some militia, you know, part of the the army just stops and questions him and they start digging into it, and he says, No, I'm just a citizen. And and they he had a name, an alias. Um it was John, it used John, but it was a different last name. And amazingly, I don't know, they search him, they find the plans, and and they and they capture John Andre. And they end up bringing him in, and they they get him to Washington, and they're like, You're a spy. And he's sitting there saying, I I am not a spy. And they said, You came behind lines, you were in plain clothes, you're taking plans, you're a spy. And and on his honor, he said, I'm not a spy. Please, please don't try me as a spy, you know, you can try me as a war criminal, whatever. Um, but so he gets sentenced to being hanged, and his request was that he face firing squad because it was more honorable.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, you want to die with honor.

SPEAKER_02

And he writes this letter, and it was a uh I've I've read it, it was a pretty pretty well-written, powerful letter um to his commander. I don't even remember, I don't think it was Cornwallis, but whoever he reported to. And um as the as the story goes, he was incredibly well respected, not just by the British soldiers, he was respected by the Americans who captured him, and that he held himself with with honor and he served with honor. And and uh yeah, I mean he was on the the other side, but uh it was said when when he was hanged and Washington did hang him, he wouldn't let him be uh in front of the the firing squad that the American soldier was in the house. Yeah, even his enemies were said to see him hanged because he handled himself with such honor. So he's a goat, he's on the goat list because he was on the wrong side, and he led to Benedict Arnold, right? He brings him over and all of that. So, you know, sorry, John Andre, you you were I think he served his position right character perspective, and he served the the British Army well, but he sneaks onto the goat list.

SPEAKER_04

He probably does a lot better on the character list than the rest of the people. Absolutely, but he's still a goat.

SPEAKER_02

I think I think he's the only one on the list that sacrificed self. Yeah. Uh just he's on because he was on the wrong side. And and it's a it's it's an intriguing story. Uh uh that one really struck me as I I watched it and read about it and learned about that.

SPEAKER_04

So that just kind of a fun episode to kind of go through and talk about some of the the names that maybe you know, maybe you don't, but that were the goats on the bad side of the Revolutionary War. And next episode we'll talk about the greats, the heroes. And we're gonna try and pick some that maybe are a little less well known than others. Yep. Um, but yeah, just a fun episode and and just amazing to think some of these guys were so close to being greats, but because they operated out of selfish ambition or putting themselves above the cause, they become the GOAT in a bad way.

SPEAKER_02

Fourth of July is behind us, but we still have almost a full year of the semi-quincentennial ahead of us. So uh relish it, enjoy it, um, share the stories, uh, embrace America's heritage, remember it, and share it. God bless. You have a great great week. God bless the USA.

SPEAKER_00

This is the thread economy reminding you that faith looks up, hope looks ahead, and love looks all around to see whom it can help. Good day.