Benedict Arnold: The Greatest Heel Turn in American History

There is a monument at Saratoga that does not name the man it honors. It is not a statue on a horse. It is a single left boot, and the inscription calls its owner the "most brilliant soldier" of the Continental Army. The leg inside that boot belonged to the best battlefield general America produced, and to the most hated man in its history. The same man. Before Benedict Arnold became a noun, he marched eleven hundred men into the Maine wilderness in winter and arrived with six hundred, took a musket ball at Quebec, took another in the same leg at Saratoga, and won the battle that brought France into the war. Washington loved him. Then Congress promoted five juniors over his head, and a man who had given a leg for the cause decided what he was owed. This is how that happens. Chapters 0:00 Cold open 0:49 The chip 3:16 The man was a problem 5:25 Management 8:26 The turn 11:02 Three nobodies 14:12 The long sad epilogue 16:50 Outro Sources Principal sources: the American Battlefield Trust; the Henry Clinton Papers at the Clements Library, University of Michigan; George Washington's Mount Vernon; Founders Online; the Journal of the American Revolution; Fort Ticonderoga; Connecticut History; and the National Park Service at Saratoga. The video's full fact-check, claim by claim including the two claims our own researcher rated disputed, is in the production notes. History, not advice. Music: Twin Lynches by Density & Time, YouTube Audio Library. Narration: AI voice (ElevenLabs). Images are public domain or CC0 from Wikimedia Commons, except the photograph of the Boot Monument by Stashlab, used under CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa.... Footage licensed from Storyblocks. Nine illustrations in this video were generated for this channel and are drawn, not photographic.