Histories of the Revolutionary War honor several heroines. There's Betsy Ross, Abigail Adams, and Molly Pitcher. But there is no popular biography -yet-that focuses on one of the most remarkable women of the war, a beautiful society girl named Peggy Shippen, who befriended a handsome British spy and then married a crippled American revolutionary general twice her age. At a crucial juncture in the Revolutionary War, Peggy brought the two enemy warriors together in a treasonous plot that came perilously close to turning George Washington into a prisoner of war and possibly changing the outcome of the conflict. Peggy Shippen was Mrs. Benedict Arnold.
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Peggy was to the American Revolution what the fictional Scarlett O'Hara was to the Civil War: a woman whose survival skills trumped all other values. Had she been a man, she might have been arrested, tried, and executed. And she might have become famous. But because ofÿeighteenth-century views of womenÿand her own guileful deflection of blame, Peggy's role was minimized and she was allowed to recede into the background - with a generous British pension in hand. It took a century and a half for historians to begin to appreciate her true treacherous role during our nation's birth.
Industry Reviews
"Treacherous Beauty fills an important gap in American history with its in-depth narrative of the treason of Benedict Arnold and his beautiful young wife, Peggy. This excellent book is also the story of a star-crossed love affair beyond anything that a playwright could imagine." -Arthur S. Lefkowitz, author of George Washington's Indispensable Men "Treacherous Beauty is history at its most engaging: familiar in its context, but surprising, even enlightening, in its detail. It is, in fact, surprising that those who care about America's past have not been enlightened about Peggy Shippen before." -Eric Burns, author of Virtue, Valor, and Vanity "At last, a serious work on one of the most fascinating and little known women in American history! Peggy Shippen was so much more that the wife of the famous traitor-she was a women with a foot in two worlds, an American whose life serves as a perfect illustration of the wild complexities of the Revolution. With Treacherous Beauty Mark Jacob and Stephen H. Case have done ample justice to the life and times of their subject with this fair-minded, well researched, and finely crafted biography, a gift to students of the Revolution eager to dig beneath the well worn surface of that conflict's history." -James L. Nelson, author of Benedict Arnold's Navy "Chicago Tribune deputy metro editor Jacob and Case, an American Revolution Center board member, detail Peggy's role as go-between and document her later life in London. They succeed in capturing the period atmosphere as they adroitly interweave military maneuvers with the shadowy machinations. The book also benefits from rarely studied correspondence by Peggy to her son Edward provided by her descendant Hugh Arnold." --Publishers Weekly
