LETTERS. LETTER I. MR SIMMONS, Surgeon in Manchester. Lichfield, Jan. 20, 1802. DEAR Sir, I am ashamed of not having sooner acknowledged your obliging attention in sending me a paper from the American press, which states a circumstance so remarkable. I do not, however, exactly perceive what poetic use could be made of it, or of the coincidence of the fall of that tree with the tidings of the traitor's death, whose treachery to his country brought the amiable and gallant Major André into that dire snare, which drew upon his head the doom of a disgraceful and unsoldierlike death. In the first paroxysm of anguish for the fate of my beloved friend, I wrote that Monody under the belief that he was basely murdered rather than reluctantly sacrificed to the belligerent customs and laws. I have since understood the subject better. Ge neral Washington allowed his aide-de-camp to return to England after peace was established, and American independence acknowledged; and he commissioned him to see me, and request my attention to the papers he sent for my perusal ; copies of his letters to André, and André's answers, in his own hand, were amongst them. Concern, esteem, and pity, were avowed in those of the General, and warm entreaties that he would urge General Clinton to resign Arnold in exchange for himself, as the only means to avert that sacrifice which the laws of war demanded. Mr André's letters breathed a spirit of gratitude to General Washingtou for the interest he took in his preservation, but firmly declined the application to General Clinton. The other papers were minutes of the court-martial, from which it appeared, that General Washington had laboured to avert the sentence against André, and to soften the circumstances of disguised dress, and of those fatal drawings of the enemies' outworks and situation, which placed him in the character of a spy rather than that of a negotiator. The General's next fruitless endeavour was to have obtained the grant of poor André's petition, to die a less disgraceful death. His voice, though commander of the American armies, counted but as one on the court-martial. General Washington did me |