title: Method Man

text: Method Man is the first of the Wu-Tang Clan to produce a series of eponymous graphic novels for Hachette Book Group USA's imprint Grand Central Publishing (to be followed by GZA and Ghostface Killah).


title: Method Man

text: In February 2021, Method Man began hosting "Marvel/Method", a podcast series for Marvel Entertainment and Sirius XM. The podcast features interviews with celebrity guests discussing Marvel comics, music, and culture.


title: Method Man

text: Method Man is a comic book fan and has a vast collection of around 30,000 comics, including Hulk #181, which features the first full appearance of Wolverine.


title: Method Man

text: On May 17, 2007, Method Man was arrested in New York City for marijuana possession. His SUV was pulled over near the Battery Tunnel toll booths for having an expired inspection sticker. An unidentified source said, "It was like something out of "Cheech & Chong". He rolls down the window and the smoke would choke a horse." The arresting officer noticed two blunts and a plastic bag containing marijuana in plain view. Upon further inspection more marijuana was found under the driver's seat. Method Man was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana, criminal possession of marijuana, DWI, and driving an uninspected motor vehicle. He reached a plea agreement to perform community service including rapping to children about the dangers of drugs.


title: Method Man

text: On October 5, 2009, Method Man was arrested at his home in Staten Island for income tax violations. He was accused of failing to file income tax returns for the state of New York between 2004 and 2007, and owes nearly $33,000 in taxes. On June 28, 2010, Method Man pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was sentenced to a conditional discharge and paid a $106,000 fine.


title: Method Man

text: In 2003, Method Man criticized Oli "Power" Grant and Mitchell "Divine" Diggs, the managers of the Wu-Tang Clan business. "Number 1 on my shit list right now is Divine from Wu-Tang management. He took something major from me that he had no intention of giving back."


title: Method Man

text: Aside from the financial issues, Method Man was unhappy with the decision to bring Wu-Tang into the fashion world for a brief period of time with Wu-Wear, despite the brand being a major money-maker for the group. "When Wu-Wear started making shoes and sneakers and pants, it was shoddy material. I never rocked that shit."


title: Method Man

text: In 2006, Method Man had a personal and publicized conflict with TV talk show host Wendy Williams on "The Breakdown", an Internet show on Onloq.com. Williams talked on air about Method Man's wife's having cancer, which was something he wanted to keep private and her own family members had not yet known about. He said that people who lived next door to him did not know, but Williams had dug it up and made it public over the radio. Because of this leaked information, Method Man and his wife had many problems.


title: Method Man

text: Williams also reported rumors that Method Man had been having an affair with his wife's doctor. Method Man first heard of this while in recording sessions in Los Angeles.


title: Method Man

text: During a concert in 2006, Method Man criticized Diddy's decisions on "", the posthumous album by The Notorious B.I.G., saying that Biggie never would have worked with some of the rappers. Method Man also brought up the fact that he was the only other rapper that Biggie chose to have on his debut album "Ready to Die"; he was featured on the track "The What".


title: Method Man

text: In 2004, Method Man starred in a Fox sitcom called "Method & Red". However, after only a short time on the air, the show was put on hiatus and never returned. Method Man later spoke to the press about Fox's influence on the show's style, saying that "there's been too much compromise on our side and not enough on their side", and criticizing the network's decision to add a laugh track. Before the show premiered, he was telling fans not to bother watching it. He told the "Los Angeles Times":


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: Sicario: Day of the Soldado (also known as Sicario 2: Soldado and Soldado) is a 2018 American action-thriller film directed by Stefano Sollima and written by Taylor Sheridan. A sequel to 2015's "Sicario", the film features Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Jeffrey Donovan, and Raoul Trujillo reprising their roles, with Isabela Merced, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and Catherine Keener joining the cast. The story relates to the drug war at the U.S.-Mexico border and an attempt by the United States government to incite increased conflict among the cartels.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" was released in the United States and Canada on June 29, 2018, by Sony Pictures Releasing under its Columbia Pictures label, while it was distributed internationally by Lionsgate (excluding Latin America and Spain, where it was distributed by Sony).


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: The film is dedicated to the memory of Jóhann Jóhannsson, the composer of the first film, who died in February 2018.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: It received generally favorable reviews from critics. A sequel, titled "Sicario: Capos", is in development.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: A suicide bombing by ISIS in a Kansas City grocery store kills fifteen people. In response, the United States government orders CIA officer Matt Graver to apply extreme measures to combat Mexican drug cartels who are suspected of having smuggled the terrorists across the U.S.-Mexico border. Graver and the Department of Defense decide the best option is to instigate a war between the major cartels, and Graver recruits operative Alejandro Gillick for the mission. Graver also meets with PMC official Andy Wheeldon to secure mercenaries, helicopters, and encrypted communication equipment in order for the U.S. to maintain plausible deniability while combating the Mexican cartels.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: Gillick assassinates a high-profile lawyer of the Matamoros cartel in Mexico City while Graver and his team capture Isabel Reyes, the daughter of the kingpin of the Matamoros rival, Carlos Reyes (who ordered the killing of Gillick's family in the events leading up to the previous film), in a false flag operation.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: Graver, Gillick and their team take Isabel to a safe house in Texas. They stage a DEA raid and pretend to rescue her, making her believe that she had been captured by the Matamoros cartel. They take her to an American military base while the team organizes her return to Mexico. They plan to leave her behind in a Mexican Federal Police depot located inside territory controlled by her father's rivals to further escalate the inter-cartel conflict. However, after they cross into Mexico, the corrupt police escort turns against them and attacks the American armoured vehicles. In the firefight that ensues, Graver and his team kill 25 Mexican policemen to escape the ambush.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: Amidst the chaos, Isabel runs away into the desert. Gillick goes after her alone while the rest of the team returns to the United States. Meanwhile, the American government determines that at least two of the suicide bombers in Kansas City were really domestic terrorists, not foreign nationals, and thus were not smuggled into the United States by the cartels. To quell tensions with Mexico, the Secretary of Defense orders the CIA to abandon the mission. Learning that Isabel witnessed the Americans shooting the Mexican police, the Secretary orders the team to erase all proof of American involvement by killing Isabel and Gillick. Graver in turn warns Gillick and orders him to kill Isabel, but Gillick refuses and turns rogue in order to keep her alive. Both have found shelter at an isolated farm in the desert for the night. Gillick knows that if they stay in Mexico, Isabel will be killed. With few resources, they disguise themselves as illegal immigrants and pay human traffickers to help them re-enter the United States. Graver and his team fly covertly into Mexico on Black Hawks, tracking a GPS device that Gillick has activated and embedded into Isabel's shoe.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: At the point of departure for the border, Miguel, a young Mexican-American who has been recruited as a coyote, recognizes Gillick from an encounter in a Texas parking lot two days earlier. He alerts his boss who takes Gillick and Isabel hostage. As a gang initiation, Miguel is forced to shoot a hooded Gillick in the head. Upset by his actions, Miguel abandons the gang and walks off by himself. Graver witnesses the apparent killing of Gillick through live satellite imaging and his team track down and eliminate the Mexican gang, rescuing Isabel. Instead of killing her according to his orders, Graver decides to bring Isabel back to the U.S. and place her in witness protection. Meanwhile, Gillick regains consciousness and discovers he has been shot through the cheek. He is chased by a gang search party but he kills its members by throwing a grenade into the pursuing car.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: One year later, a now heavily gang-tattooed Miguel is in the Texas mall where he first saw Gillick. He enters the office of his gang contact but instead finds Gillick waiting for him. Gillick says to an inscrutable Miguel: "So you want to be a sicario? Let's talk about your future."


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: In September 2015, Lionsgate commissioned a sequel to "Sicario", centering on Benicio del Toro's character. The project was being overseen by writer Taylor Sheridan, with Denis Villeneuve initially involved. In April 2016, producers Molly Smith and Trent Luckinbill said Emily Blunt, del Toro and Josh Brolin would return. By June 1, 2016, Italian director Stefano Sollima had been hired to direct what was now titled "Soldado" from a script by Sheridan. On October 27, 2016, Catherine Keener was cast in the film, which Lionsgate and Black Label Media financed, and which was produced by Thunder Road's Basil Iwanyk, Black Label's Molly Smith and Thad and Trent Luckinbill, and Edward McDonnell. By November 2016, Blunt was no longer attached. The following month, Isabela Merced, David Castaneda and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo joined the cast. Jeffrey Donovan, who returned as Steve Forsing, said that the story would focus on Forsing, Gillick and Graver "going down into Mexico to basically start a war, on purpose, between the rival Mexican cartels," and described the film as a "stand-alone spin-off" rather than a sequel or prequel. In January 2017, Elijah Rodriguez, Matthew Modine and Ian Bohen also joined the cast. Sheridan said, "if "Sicario" is a film about the militarization of police and that blending over, this is removing the policing aspect from it."


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: Principal photography on the film began in New Mexico on November 8, 2016, and then it was shot in Mexico City and Tijuana, Baja California.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: Hildur Guðnadóttir composed the score for the film, after collaborating with Jóhann Jóhannsson on the first film as cello soloist. The soundtrack was released by Varese Sarabande Records.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: The film was originally set to be released by Lionsgate in the United States, under the title "Soldado", but a disagreement between Lionsgate and production company Black Label Media saw the U.S. and Canadian distribution rights change to Sony Pictures through its Columbia Pictures label, who then changed the title to "Sicario 2: Soldado" (which is the UK title) and then thereafter to "Sicario: Day of the Soldado", in the North American market. Sony Pictures distributed the film in the U.S., Canada, Latin America and Spain, while Lionsgate distributed it in the UK, as well as handling international rights to other independent distributors. In August 2017, Sony set the release date for June 29, 2018.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: On December 19, 2017, the first trailer was released. The second trailer debuted on March 19, 2018, confirming the new title as "Sicario: Day of the Soldado". The film was released outside North America under the title "Sicario 2: Soldado" in some locations, and in Italy, the Philippines and others keeping the initial title of "Soldado".


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" grossed $50.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $25.7 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $75.8 million. The studio has stated the production budget was $35 million, although "Deadline Hollywood" reported the film cost as high as $45 million before prints and advertising.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: In the United States and Canada, "Day of the Soldado" was released alongside "Uncle Drew", and was initially projected to gross around $12 million from 3,055 theaters in its opening weekend. After making $7.5 million on its first day (including $2 million from Thursday night previews), estimates were raised to $19 million. Its debut was ultimately $19.1 million, an improvement over the $12.1 million the first film took in during its wide expansion, and third at the box office that weekend, behind "" and "Incredibles 2". It fell 61% in its second weekend, to $7.3 million, finishing fifth at the box office.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, "Day of the Soldado" holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "Though less subversive than its predecessor, "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" succeeds as a stylish, dynamic thriller—even if its amoral machismo makes for grim viewing." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 61 out of 100, based on 50 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, down from the first film's "A−".


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: "Variety"s Peter Debruge called the film "tense, tough, and shockingly ruthless at times," and wrote, ""Soldado" may not be as masterful as Villeneuve's original, but it sets up a world of possibilities for elaborating on a complex conflict far too rich to be resolved in two hours' time." Todd McCarthy of "The Hollywood Reporter" praised the film as a "worthy, rough-and-tough sequel", highlighting the direction, lead performances and Sheridan's script, and saying ""Sicario: Day of the Soldado" emerges as a dynamic action drama in its own right."


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: Darren Franich of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a 'B' rating, praising the performance of Del Toro while criticizing the plot, stating: "Alejandro (played by Del Toro) assassinates a cartel functionary in broad daylight... He executes the man, firing his gun exactly 417 times. So "Sicario 2" is junk, but it's terrifically stylish junk. Director Stefano Solima has worked in Italian crime thrillers, and he brings a run-and-gun humanity to this, suggesting complexities of border society where the first film defaulted to moody hellscapery".


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: "Time" magazine's Stephanie Zacharek found the film to be adequate, though lacking the presence of a character in the sequel as emotive as the one played by Emily Blunt in the original, stating: "There's not a Blunt in sight, though special task force macho men Matt Graver and Alejandro... return. This time their job is to stir up a war between rival Mexican drug cartels; part of the scheme involves kidnapping a drug lord's scrappy teenage daughter. Although she has enough teen-beat orneriness to kick both Matt's and Alejandro's butts, the movie doesn't let her."


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: In an opinion piece for "NBC News", Ani Bundel called the film "as implausible as it is irresponsible" and criticized the use of negative stereotypes, concluding that the film "is the worst kind of propaganda, in that it probably doesn’t even realize just how harmful it really is." Monica Castillo at "IndieWire" describes the first film as an unsympathetic portrayal of Mexicans, and compares the sequel to state-sanctioned propaganda, decrying the "xenophobic absurdity" of it.


title: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

text: In June 2018, prior to the release of "Soldado", producer Trent Luckinbill stated that a third film is in development. In January 2021, it was noted that the producers hoped to start filming of a third installment in the spring or summer of that year. It was revealed that the third film will be named "Sicario: Capos". In February 2021, producer Molly Smith said the film was still in development.


title: Species

text: In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined.


title: Species

text: The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. However, only about 14% of these had been described by 2011.


title: Species

text: All species (except viruses) are given a two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet (in botanical nomenclature, also sometimes in zoological nomenclature). For example, "Boa constrictor" is one of the species of the genus "Boa", with "constrictor" being the species' epithet.


title: Species

text: While the definitions given above may seem adequate at first glance, when looked at more closely they represent problematic species concepts. For example, the boundaries between closely related species become unclear with hybridisation, in a species complex of hundreds of similar microspecies, and in a ring species. Also, among organisms that reproduce only asexually, the concept of a reproductive species breaks down, and each clone is potentially a microspecies. Although none of these are entirely satisfactory definitions, and while the concept of species may not be a perfect model of life, it is still an incredibly useful tool to scientists and conservationists for studying life on Earth, regardless of the theoretical difficulties. If species were fixed and clearly distinct from one another, there would be no problem, but evolutionary processes cause species to change. This obliges taxonomists to decide, for example, when enough change has occurred to declare that a lineage should be divided into multiple chronospecies, or when populations have diverged to have enough distinct character states to be described as cladistic species.


title: Species

text: Species were seen from the time of Aristotle until the 18th century as fixed categories that could be arranged in a hierarchy, the great chain of being. In the 19th century, biologists grasped that species could evolve given sufficient time. Charles Darwin's 1859 book "On the Origin of Species" explained how species could arise by natural selection. That understanding was greatly extended in the 20th century through genetics and population ecology. Genetic variability arises from mutations and recombination, while organisms themselves are mobile, leading to geographical isolation and genetic drift with varying selection pressures. Genes can sometimes be exchanged between species by horizontal gene transfer; new species can arise rapidly through hybridisation and polyploidy; and species may become extinct for a variety of reasons. Viruses are a special case, driven by a balance of mutation and selection, and can be treated as quasispecies.


title: Species

text: Biologists and taxonomists have made many attempts to define species, beginning from morphology and moving towards genetics. Early taxonomists such as Linnaeus had no option but to describe what they saw: this was later formalised as the typological or morphological species concept. Ernst Mayr emphasised reproductive isolation, but this, like other species concepts, is hard or even impossible to test. Later biologists have tried to refine Mayr's definition with the recognition and cohesion concepts, among others. Many of the concepts are quite similar or overlap, so they are not easy to count: the biologist R. L. Mayden recorded about 24 concepts, and the philosopher of science John Wilkins counted 26. Wilkins further grouped the species concepts into seven basic kinds of concepts: (1) agamospecies for asexual organisms (2) biospecies for reproductively isolated sexual organisms (3) ecospecies based on ecological niches (4) evolutionary species based on lineage (5) genetic species based on gene pool (6) morphospecies based on form or phenotype and (7) taxonomic species, a species as determined by a taxonomist.


title: Species

text: A typological species is a group of organisms in which individuals conform to certain fixed properties (a type), so that even pre-literate people often recognise the same taxon as do modern taxonomists. The clusters of variations or phenotypes within specimens (such as longer or shorter tails) would differentiate the species. This method was used as a "classical" method of determining species, such as with Linnaeus, early in evolutionary theory. However, different phenotypes are not necessarily different species (e.g. a four-winged "Drosophila" born to a two-winged mother is not a different species). Species named in this manner are called "morphospecies".


title: Species

text: In the 1970s, Robert R. Sokal, Theodore J. Crovello and Peter Sneath proposed a variation on the morphological species concept, a phenetic species, defined as a set of organisms with a similar phenotype to each other, but a different phenotype from other sets of organisms. It differs from the morphological species concept in including a numerical measure of distance or similarity to cluster entities based on multivariate comparisons of a reasonably large number of phenotypic traits.


title: Species

text: A mate-recognition species is a group of sexually reproducing organisms that recognise one another as potential mates. Expanding on this to allow for post-mating isolation, a cohesion species is the most inclusive population of individuals having the potential for phenotypic cohesion through intrinsic cohesion mechanisms; no matter whether populations can hybridise successfully, they are still distinct cohesion species if the amount of hybridisation is insufficient to completely mix their respective gene pools. A further development of the recognition concept is provided by the biosemiotic concept of species.


title: Species

text: In microbiology, genes can move freely even between distantly related bacteria, possibly extending to the whole bacterial domain. As a rule of thumb, microbiologists have assumed that members of Bacteria or Archaea with 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences more similar than 97% to each other need to be checked by DNA–DNA hybridisation to decide if they belong to the same species. This concept was narrowed in 2006 to a similarity of 98.7%.


title: Species

text: The average nucleotide identity method quantifies genetic distance between entire genomes, using regions of about 10,000 base pairs. With enough data from genomes of one genus, algorithms can be used to categorize species, as for "Pseudomonas avellanae" in 2013, and for all sequenced bacteria and archaea since 2020.


title: Species

text: DNA barcoding has been proposed as a way to distinguish species suitable even for non-specialists to use. One of the barcodes is a region of mitochondrial DNA within the gene for cytochrome c oxidase. A database, Barcode of Life Data System, contains DNA barcode sequences from over 190,000 species. However, scientists such as Rob DeSalle have expressed concern that classical taxonomy and DNA barcoding, which they consider a misnomer, need to be reconciled, as they delimit species differently. Genetic introgression mediated by endosymbionts and other vectors can further make barcodes ineffective in the identification of species.


title: Species

text: A phylogenetic or cladistic species is "the smallest aggregation of populations (sexual) or lineages (asexual) diagnosable by a unique combination of character states in comparable individuals (semaphoronts)". The empirical basis – observed character states – provides the evidence to support hypotheses about evolutionarily divergent lineages that have maintained their hereditary integrity through time and space. Molecular markers may be used to determine diagnostic genetic differences in the nuclear or mitochondrial DNA of various species. For example, in a study done on fungi, studying the nucleotide characters using cladistic species produced the most accurate results in recognising the numerous fungi species of all the concepts studied. Versions of the phylogenetic species concept that emphasise monophyly or diagnosability may lead to splitting of existing species, for example in Bovidae, by recognising old subspecies as species, despite the fact that there are no reproductive barriers, and populations may intergrade morphologically. Others have called this approach taxonomic inflation, diluting the species concept and making taxonomy unstable. Yet others defend this approach, considering "taxonomic inflation" pejorative and labelling the opposing view as "taxonomic conservatism"; claiming it is politically expedient to split species and recognise smaller populations at the species level, because this means they can more easily be included as endangered in the IUCN red list and can attract conservation legislation and funding.


title: Species

text: Unlike the biological species concept, a cladistic species does not rely on reproductive isolation – its criteria are independent of processes that are integral in other concepts. Therefore, it applies to asexual lineages. However, it does not always provide clear cut and intuitively satisfying boundaries between taxa, and may require multiple sources of evidence, such as more than one polymorphic locus, to give plausible results.


title: Species

text: An evolutionary species, suggested by George Gaylord Simpson in 1951, is "an entity composed of organisms which maintains its identity from other such entities through time and over space, and which has its own independent evolutionary fate and historical tendencies". This differs from the biological species concept in embodying persistence over time. Wiley and Mayden stated that they see the evolutionary species concept as "identical" to Willi Hennig's species-as-lineages concept, and asserted that the biological species concept, "the several versions" of the phylogenetic species concept, and the idea that species are of the same kind as higher taxa are not suitable for biodiversity studies (with the intention of estimating the number of species accurately). They further suggested that the concept works for both asexual and sexually-reproducing species. A version of the concept is Kevin de Queiroz's "General Lineage Concept of Species".


title: Species

text: An ecological species is a set of organisms adapted to a particular set of resources, called a niche, in the environment. According to this concept, populations form the discrete phenetic clusters that we recognise as species because the ecological and evolutionary processes controlling how resources are divided up tend to produce those clusters.


title: Species

text: A genetic species as defined by Robert Baker and Robert Bradley is a set of genetically isolated interbreeding populations. This is similar to Mayr's Biological Species Concept, but stresses genetic rather than reproductive isolation. In the 21st century, a genetic species can be established by comparing DNA sequences, but other methods were available earlier, such as comparing karyotypes (sets of chromosomes) and allozymes (enzyme variants).


title: Species

text: An evolutionarily significant unit (ESU) or "wildlife species" is a population of organisms considered distinct for purposes of conservation.


title: Species

text: In palaeontology, with only comparative anatomy (morphology) from fossils as evidence, the concept of a chronospecies can be applied. During anagenesis (evolution, not necessarily involving branching), palaeontologists seek to identify a sequence of species, each one derived from the phyletically extinct one before through continuous, slow and more or less uniform change. In such a time sequence, palaeontologists assess how much change is required for a morphologically distinct form to be considered a different species from its ancestors.


title: Species

text: Viruses have enormous populations, are doubtfully living since they consist of little more than a string of DNA or RNA in a protein coat, and mutate rapidly. All of these factors make conventional species concepts largely inapplicable. A viral quasispecies is a group of genotypes related by similar mutations, competing within a highly mutagenic environment, and hence governed by a mutation–selection balance. It is predicted that a viral quasispecies at a low but evolutionarily neutral and highly connected (that is, flat) region in the fitness landscape will outcompete a quasispecies located at a higher but narrower fitness peak in which the surrounding mutants are unfit, "the quasispecies effect" or the "survival of the flattest". There is no suggestion that a viral quasispecies resembles a traditional biological species. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses has since 1962 developed a universal taxonomic scheme for viruses; this has stabilised viral taxonomy.


title: Species

text: Most modern textbooks make use of Ernst Mayr's 1942 definition, known as the Biological Species Concept as a basis for further discussion on the definition of species. It is also called a reproductive or isolation concept. This defines a species as


title: Species

text: It has been argued that this definition is a natural consequence of the effect of sexual reproduction on the dynamics of natural selection. Mayr's use of the adjective "potentially" has been a point of debate; some interpretations exclude unusual or artificial matings that occur only in captivity, or that involve animals capable of mating but that do not normally do so in the wild.


title: Species

text: It is difficult to define a species in a way that applies to all organisms. The debate about species concepts is called the species problem. The problem was recognised even in 1859, when Darwin wrote in "On the Origin of Species":


title: Species

text: A simple textbook definition, following Mayr's concept, works well for most multi-celled organisms, but breaks down in several situations:


title: Species

text: Species identification is made difficult by discordance between molecular and morphological investigations; these can be categorised as two types: (i) one morphology, multiple lineages (e.g. morphological convergence, cryptic species) and (ii) one lineage, multiple morphologies (e.g. phenotypic plasticity, multiple life-cycle stages). In addition, horizontal gene transfer (HGT) makes it difficult to define a species. All species definitions assume that an organism acquires its genes from one or two parents very like the "daughter" organism, but that is not what happens in HGT. There is strong evidence of HGT between very dissimilar groups of prokaryotes, and at least occasionally between dissimilar groups of eukaryotes, including some crustaceans and echinoderms.


title: Species

text: Wilkins writes that biologists such as the botanist Brent Mishler have argued that the species concept is not valid, and that "if we were being true to evolution and the consequent phylogenetic approach to taxa, we should replace it with a 'smallest clade' idea" (a phylogenetic species concept). Wilkins states that he concurs with this approach, while noting the difficulties it would cause to taxonomy. He cites the ichthyologist Charles Tate Regan's early 20th century remark that "a species is whatever a suitably qualified biologist chooses to call a species". Wilkins notes that the philosopher Philip Kitcher called this the "cynical species concept", and arguing that far from being cynical, it usefully leads to an empirical taxonomy for any given group, based on taxonomists' experience.


title: Species

text: The species concept is further weakened by the existence of microspecies, groups of organisms, including many plants, with very little genetic variability, usually forming species aggregates. For example, the dandelion "Taraxacum officinale" and the blackberry "Rubus fruticosus" are aggregates with many microspecies—perhaps 400 in the case of the blackberry and over 200 in the dandelion, complicated by hybridisation, apomixis and polyploidy, making gene flow between populations difficult to determine, and their taxonomy debatable. Species complexes occur in insects such as "Heliconius" butterflies, vertebrates such as "Hypsiboas" treefrogs, and fungi such as the fly agaric.


title: Species

text: Natural hybridisation presents a challenge to the concept of a reproductively isolated species, as fertile hybrids permit gene flow between two populations. For example, the carrion crow "Corvus corone" and the hooded crow "Corvus cornix" appear and are classified as separate species, yet they hybridise freely where their geographical ranges overlap.


title: Species

text: A ring species is a connected series of neighbouring populations, each of which can sexually interbreed with adjacent related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene flow between each "linked" population. Such non-breeding, though genetically connected, "end" populations may co-exist in the same region thus closing the ring. Ring species thus present a difficulty for any species concept that relies on reproductive isolation. However, ring species are at best rare. Proposed examples include the herring gull-lesser black-backed gull complex around the North pole, the "Ensatina eschscholtzii" group of 19 populations of salamanders in America, and the greenish warbler in Asia, but many so-called ring species have turned out to be the result of misclassification leading to questions on whether there really are any ring species.


title: Species

text: The commonly used names for kinds of organisms are often ambiguous: "cat" could mean the domestic cat, "Felis catus", or the cat family, Felidae. Another problem with common names is that they often vary from place to place, so that puma, cougar, catamount, panther, painter and mountain lion all mean "Puma concolor" in various parts of America, while "panther" may also mean the jaguar ("Panthera onca") of Latin America or the leopard ("Panthera pardus") of Africa and Asia. In contrast, the scientific names of species are chosen to be unique and universal; they are in two parts used together: the genus as in "Puma", and the specific epithet as in "concolor".


title: Species

text: A species is given a taxonomic name when a type specimen is described formally, in a publication that assigns it a unique scientific name. The description typically provides means for identifying the new species, which may not be based solely on morphology (see cryptic species), differentiating it from other previously described and related or confusable species and provides a validly published name (in botany) or an available name (in zoology) when the paper is accepted for publication. The type material is usually held in a permanent repository, often the research collection of a major museum or university, that allows independent verification and the means to compare specimens. Describers of new species are asked to choose names that, in the words of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, are "appropriate, compact, euphonious, memorable, and do not cause offence".


title: Species

text: Books and articles sometimes intentionally do not identify species fully, using the abbreviation "sp." in the singular or "spp." (standing for "species pluralis", Latin for "multiple species") in the plural in place of the specific name or epithet (e.g. "Canis" sp.). This commonly occurs when authors are confident that some individuals belong to a particular genus but are not sure to which exact species they belong, as is common in paleontology.


title: Species

text: Authors may also use "spp." as a short way of saying that something applies to many species within a genus, but not to all. If scientists mean that something applies to all species within a genus, they use the genus name without the specific name or epithet. The names of genera and species are usually printed in italics. However, abbreviations such as "sp." should not be italicised.


title: Species

text: When a species's identity is not clear, a specialist may use "cf." before the epithet to indicate that confirmation is required. The abbreviations "nr." (near) or "aff." (affine) may be used when the identity is unclear but when the species appears to be similar to the species mentioned after.


title: Species

text: With the rise of online databases, codes have been devised to provide identifiers for species that are already defined, including:


title: Species

text: The naming of a particular species, including which genus (and higher taxa) it is placed in, is a "hypothesis" about the evolutionary relationships and distinguishability of that group of organisms. As further information comes to hand, the hypothesis may be corroborated or refuted. Sometimes, especially in the past when communication was more difficult, taxonomists working in isolation have given two distinct names to individual organisms later identified as the same species. When two species names are discovered to apply to the same species, the older species name is given priority and usually retained, and the newer name considered as a junior synonym, a process called "synonymy". Dividing a taxon into multiple, often new, taxa is called "splitting". Taxonomists are often referred to as "lumpers" or "splitters" by their colleagues, depending on their personal approach to recognising differences or commonalities between organisms. The circumscription of taxa, considered a taxonomic decision at the discretion of cognizant specialists, is not governed by the Codes of Zoological or Botanical Nomenclature.


title: Species

text: The nomenclatural codes that guide the naming of species, including the ICZN for animals and the ICN for plants, do not make rules for defining the boundaries of the species. Research can change the boundaries, also known as circumscription, based on new evidence. Species may then need to be distinguished by the boundary definitions used, and in such cases the names may be qualified with "sensu stricto" ("in the narrow sense") to denote usage in the exact meaning given by an author such as the person who named the species, while the antonym "sensu lato" ("in the broad sense") denotes a wider usage, for instance including other subspecies. Other abbreviations such as "auct." ("author"), and qualifiers such as "non" ("not") may be used to further clarify the sense in which the specified authors delineated or described the species.


title: Species

text: Species are subject to change, whether by evolving into new species, exchanging genes with other species, merging with other species or by becoming extinct.


title: Species

text: The evolutionary process by which biological populations evolve to become distinct or reproductively isolated as species is called speciation. Charles Darwin was the first to describe the role of natural selection in speciation in his 1859 book "The Origin of Species". Speciation depends on a measure of reproductive isolation, a reduced gene flow. This occurs most easily in allopatric speciation, where populations are separated geographically and can diverge gradually as mutations accumulate. Reproductive isolation is threatened by hybridisation, but this can be selected against once a pair of populations have incompatible alleles of the same gene, as described in the Bateson–Dobzhansky–Muller model. A different mechanism, phyletic speciation, involves one lineage gradually changing over time into a new and distinct form, without increasing the number of resultant species.


title: Species

text: Horizontal gene transfer between organisms of different species, either through hybridisation, antigenic shift, or reassortment, is sometimes an important source of genetic variation. Viruses can transfer genes between species. Bacteria can exchange plasmids with bacteria of other species, including some apparently distantly related ones in different phylogenetic domains, making analysis of their relationships difficult, and weakening the concept of a bacterial species.


title: Species

text: Louis-Marie Bobay and Howard Ochman suggest, based on analysis of the genomes of many types of bacteria, that they can often be grouped "into communities that regularly swap genes", in much the same way that plants and animals can be grouped into reproductively isolated breeding populations. Bacteria may thus form species, analogous to Mayr's biological species concept, consisting of asexually reproducing populations that exchange genes by homologous recombination.


title: Species

text: A species is extinct when the last individual of that species dies, but it may be functionally extinct well before that moment. It is estimated that over 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth, some five billion species, are now extinct. Some of these were in mass extinctions such as those at the ends of the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous periods. Mass extinctions had a variety of causes including volcanic activity, climate change, and changes in oceanic and atmospheric chemistry, and they in turn had major effects on Earth's ecology, atmosphere, land surface and waters. Another form of extinction is through the assimilation of one species by another through hybridization. The resulting single species has been termed as a "compilospecies".


title: Species

text: Biologists and conservationists need to categorise and identify organisms in the course of their work. Difficulty assigning organisms reliably to a species constitutes a threat to the validity of research results, for example making measurements of how abundant a species is in an ecosystem moot. Surveys using a phylogenetic species concept reported 48% more species and accordingly smaller populations and ranges than those using nonphylogenetic concepts; this was termed "taxonomic inflation", which could cause a false appearance of change to the number of endangered species and consequent political and practical difficulties. Some observers claim that there is an inherent conflict between the desire to understand the processes of speciation and the need to identify and to categorise.


title: Species

text: Conservation laws in many countries make special provisions to prevent species from going extinct. Hybridization zones between two species, one that is protected and one that is not, have sometimes led to conflicts between lawmakers, land owners and conservationists. One of the classic cases in North America is that of the protected northern spotted owl which hybridises with the unprotected California spotted owl and the barred owl; this has led to legal debates. It has been argued that the species problem is created by the varied uses of the concept of species, and that the solution is to abandon it and all other taxonomic ranks, and use unranked monophyletic groups instead. It has been argued, too, that since species are not comparable, counting them is not a valid measure of biodiversity; alternative measures of phylogenetic biodiversity have been proposed.


title: Species

text: In his biology, Aristotle used the term γένος (génos) to mean a kind, such as a bird or fish, and εἶδος (eidos) to mean a specific form within a kind, such as (within the birds) the crane, eagle, crow, or sparrow. These terms were translated into Latin as "genus" and "species", though they do not correspond to the Linnean terms thus named; today the birds are a class, the cranes are a family, and the crows a genus. A kind was distinguished by its attributes; for instance, a bird has feathers, a beak, wings, a hard-shelled egg, and warm blood. A form was distinguished by being shared by all its members, the young inheriting any variations they might have from their parents. Aristotle believed all kinds and forms to be distinct and unchanging. His approach remained influential until the Renaissance.


title: Species

text: When observers in the Early Modern period began to develop systems of organization for living things, they placed each kind of animal or plant into a context. Many of these early delineation schemes would now be considered whimsical: schemes included consanguinity based on colour (all plants with yellow flowers) or behaviour (snakes, scorpions and certain biting ants). John Ray, an English naturalist, was the first to attempt a biological definition of species in 1686, as follows:


title: Species

text: In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified organisms according to shared physical characteristics, and not simply based upon differences. He established the idea of a taxonomic hierarchy of classification based upon observable characteristics and intended to reflect natural relationships. At the time, however, it was still widely believed that there was no organic connection between species, no matter how similar they appeared. This view was influenced by European scholarly and religious education, which held that the categories of life are dictated by God, forming an Aristotelian hierarchy, the "scala naturae" or great chain of being. However, whether or not it was supposed to be fixed, the "scala" (a ladder) inherently implied the possibility of climbing.


title: Species

text: In viewing evidence of hybridisation, Linnaeus recognised that species were not fixed and could change; he did not consider that new species could emerge and maintained a view of divinely fixed species that may alter through processes of hybridisation or acclimatisation. By the 19th century, naturalists understood that species could change form over time, and that the history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his 1809 "Zoological Philosophy", described the transmutation of species, proposing that a species could change over time, in a radical departure from Aristotelian thinking.


title: Species

text: In 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided a compelling account of evolution and the formation of new species. Darwin argued that it was populations that evolved, not individuals, by natural selection from naturally occurring variation among individuals. This required a new definition of species. Darwin concluded that species are what they appear to be: ideas, provisionally useful for naming groups of interacting individuals, writing:


title: Pedri

text: Pedro González López (born 25 November 2002), known as Pedri, is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as a central midfielder for La Liga club Barcelona and the Spain national team.


title: Pedri

text: Born in Bajamar, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Pedri's family moved to Tegueste, a nearby town, when he was 3. Pedri joined UD Tegueste, starting as a centre-back. At 12, Pedri signed for CF Juventud Laguna, where he played until 2018. Pedri and his family are Catholic Christians.


title: Pedri

text: Pedri joined Las Palmas's youth setup in 2018 from Juventud Laguna. On 15 July 2019, aged only 16, he signed a professional four-year contract with the club, being promoted to the first team by manager Pepe Mel.


title: Pedri

text: Pedri made his professional debut on 18 August 2019, aged only 16, by starting in a 0–1 home loss against Huesca in the Segunda División. He scored his first professional goal on 19 September, with the game's only goal in a home victory over Sporting Gijón and became the youngest goalscorer in Las Palmas history at 16 years, 9 months and 23 days of age.


title: Pedri

text: On 2 September 2019, Barcelona reached an agreement with Las Palmas for the transfer of Pedri, effective as of the following 1 July 2020. The player agreed to a two-year contract with the Catalan club, who paid €5 million for the deal, which would increase as he fulfilled various clauses in his contract. Assigned to the main squad for the 2020–21 season and with the number 16 shirt, Pedri made his debut on 27 September, replacing Philippe Coutinho in a 4–0 home win against Villarreal in La Liga. He received his first start on 17 October in a 0–1 away loss against Getafe. On 20 October, Pedri scored his first goal for the club on his UEFA Champions League debut, in a 5–1 win over Ferencváros in the group stage, after coming on as a substitute in the 61st minute for Ansu Fati. On 7 November, in a 5–2 home win over Real Betis, he scored his first goal in La Liga after an assist from Sergi Roberto.


title: Pedri

text: On 6 January 2021, he scored a headed goal against Athletic Bilbao and assisted Barcelona's second goal in a 3–2 win at San Mamés. On 17 April, Pedri won the first trophy of his senior career after Barcelona beat Athletic 4–0 in the Copa del Rey final. On 8 May, at 18 years and 164 days, Pedri made his 50th appearance for Barcelona in all competitions when he started in the 0–0 draw against Atlético Madrid at Camp Nou, thus becoming the second youngest player to reach this milestone after Bojan Krkić, who was 18 years and 3 days when he reached 50 appearances. In the middle of October 2021 Pedri signed a new contract with Barcelona which contained a record €1 billion ($1.57 billion) release clause.


title: Pedri

text: On 22 November 2021, Pedri won the Golden Boy award presented by "Tuttosport" for being the best player in European football under the age of 21. The following week he also received the 2021 Kopa Trophy, awarded by "France Football", for being the best performing player in world football under the age of 21.


title: Pedri

text: On 13 February 2022, Pedri scored the fastest Derbi barceloní goal of the 21st century, clocking in at 75 seconds in a 2–2 draw against Espanyol.


title: Pedri

text: On 14 April 2022, Pedri picked up a hamstring injury during Barcelona's second legged quarter-final Europa League clash with Frankfurt, in which they were eliminated. Subsequently, it was announced that Pedri could miss the rest of the season.


title: Pedri

text: On 21 August 2020, Pedri was called up to the Spain under-21 squad; he later made his debut on 3 September in a 1–0 away win over Macedonia in a qualifying match for the 2021 UEFA European Under-21 Championship.


title: Pedri

text: In March 2021, Pedri received his first call up to the Spain senior team from coach Luis Enrique ahead of the group stage of the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification. He made his debut on 25 March against Greece.


title: Pedri

text: On 24 May 2021, Pedri was included in Luis Enrique's 24-man squad for UEFA Euro 2020. On 14 June, he became the youngest player ever to represent Spain at the European Championships, when he started in the 0–0 draw against Sweden aged 18 years, 6 months and 18 days, breaking the previous record set by Miguel Tendillo in Euro 1980. On 28 June, Pedri became the youngest player to feature in a knock-out game at the European Championships when he started in the last-16 against Croatia, aged 18 years and 215 days; however, he scored an own goal when goalkeeper Unai Simón failed to control his long backpass. Spain eventually won match the 5–3 in extra-time. He played all but one minute of Spain's six matches, and had an important impact on Spain's run to the semifinal, where they were defeated 4–2 on penalties by eventual winners Italy following a 1–1 draw after extra-time; during the latter match, he completed 65 of the 66 passes he attempted. For his performances, he was voted the Young Player of the Tournament, and was the only Spanish player in the tournament to be named in the Team of the Tournament.


title: Pedri

text: On 29 June 2021, Pedri was called up to the Spain squad for the 2020 Summer Olympics. The move to include Pedri in Spain's Olympic squad attracted criticism from Barcelona, with manager Ronald Koeman branding the decision to call up Pedri for two international tournaments in the same summer as "too much". On 22 July, Pedri played the full 90 minutes in Spain's 0–0 opener against Egypt. The game was Pedri's 66th of the season. In the final, Pedri's 73rd game of the season, Spain suffered a 2–1 loss to Brazil in extra-time.


title: Pedri

text: Pedri was named in Spain's squad for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. He started in all four Spain's matches and were later knocked out by Morocco in the Round of 16.


title: Pedri

text: Pedri is regarded as one of the most promising young footballers in the world. Although he is often described as a winger by pundits, Pedri usually plays in a free role, which allows him to roam the pitch; he likes to occupy central areas and operate between the lines, although he is also capable of moving out wide and running towards the touchline to create chances for teammates. He even drops deep to the defence to pick up the ball. He normally situates himself on either the left or right flank, or even as a number 8. Indeed, although he initially played as a winger, he was later moved to a central midfield role, although he is also capable of playing as an attacking midfielder, as well as in several other offensive and midfield roles. He has also occasionally been used as a defensive midfielder and even as a centre-forward.


title: Pedri

text: Pedri is a quick, intelligent, creative, and hard-working player, who is known for his excellent technical skills, ball control, passing, awareness, and vision, as well as his ability to manage himself in tight spaces, exploit gaps, and play the final ball or penetrating passes, which makes him an effective playmaker. Moreover, he is also highly regarded for his dribbling skills, his stamina, his calm composure under pressure, and his ability to play with either foot. His role has been likened to that of a "mezzala" in the Italian sports media. His slight frame, qualities, position, and playing style have led him to be compared to former Barcelona players such as Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, Michael Laudrup, and Lionel Messi.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Benedict Arnold (June 14, 1801) was an American military officer who served during the Revolutionary War. He fought with distinction for the American Continental Army and rose to the rank of major general before defecting to the British side of the conflict in 1780. General George Washington had given him his fullest trust and had placed him in command of West Point in New York. Arnold was planning to surrender the fort there to British forces, but the plot was discovered in September 1780, whereupon he fled to the British lines. In the later part of the conflict, Arnold was commissioned as a brigadier general in the British Army, and placed in command of the American Legion. He led the British army in battle against the soldiers whom he had once commanded, after which his name became synonymous with treason and betrayal in the United States.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold was born in Connecticut. In 1775, when the war began, he was a merchant operating ships in the Atlantic Ocean. He joined the growing American army outside of Boston, and distinguished himself by acts that demonstrated intelligence and bravery: In 1775, he captured Fort Ticonderoga. In 1776, he deployed defensive and delay tactics at the Battle of Valcour Island in Lake Champlain that gave American forces time to prepare New York's defenses. His performance in the Battle of Ridgefield in Connecticut prompted his promotion to major general. He performed operations that provided the Americans with relief during the Siege of Fort Stanwix, and key actions during the pivotal 1777 Battles of Saratoga, in which he sustained leg injuries that put him out of combat career for several years.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold repeatedly claimed that he was being passed over for promotion by the Continental Congress, and that other officers were being given credit for some of his accomplishments. Some among those in his military and political circles charged him with corruption and other bad acts. After formal inquiries, he was usually acquitted, but Congress investigated his finances and determined that he was indebted to Congress, and that he had borrowed money heavily to maintain a lavish lifestyle.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold mingled with Loyalist sympathizers in Philadelphia and married into a Loyalist family when he wedded Peggy Shippen. She was a close friend of British major John André and kept in contact with him when he became head of the British espionage system in New York. Many historians see her as having facilitated Arnold's plans to switch sides; he opened secret negotiations with her friend André, and she relayed their messages to each other. The British promised £20,000 for the capture of West Point, a major American stronghold; Washington greatly admired Arnold and gave him command of that fort in July 1780. His scheme was to surrender the fort to the British, but it was exposed in September 1780 when revolution militia captured André carrying papers which revealed the plot. Arnold escaped; André was hanged.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold received a commission as a brigadier general in the British Army, an annual pension of £360, and a lump sum of over £6,000. He led British forces in the Raid of Richmond and nearby areas, and they burned much of New London, Connecticut, to the ground and slaughtered surrendering forces after the Battle of Groton Heights—just a few miles downriver from the town where he had grown up. In the winter of 1782, he and Peggy moved to London, England. He was well received by King George III and the Tories but frowned upon by the Whigs and most Army officers. In 1787, he moved to Canada to run a merchant business with his sons Richard and Henry. He was extremely unpopular there and returned to London permanently in 1791, where he died ten years later.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Benedict Arnold was born a British subject, the second of six children of his father Benedict Arnold III (1683–1761) and Hannah Waterman King in Norwich, Connecticut on January 14, 1741. Arnold was the fourth surviving member of his family named after his great-grandfather Benedict Arnold I, an early governor of the Colony of Rhode Island; his grandfather (Benedict Arnold II) and father, as well as an older brother who died in infancy, were also named for the colonial governor. Only he and his sister Hannah survived to adulthood; his other siblings died from yellow fever in childhood. His siblings were, in order of birth: Benedict (1738–1739), Hannah (1742–1803), Mary (1745–1753), Absolom (1747–1750), and Elizabeth (1749–1755). Through his maternal grandmother, Arnold was a descendant of John Lothropp, an ancestor of six presidents.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold's father was a successful businessman, and the family moved in the upper levels of Norwich society. He was enrolled in a private school in nearby Canterbury, Connecticut, when he was 10, with the expectation that he would eventually attend Yale College. However, the deaths of his siblings two years later may have contributed to a decline in the family fortunes, since his father took up drinking. By the time that he was 14, there was no money for private education. His father's alcoholism and ill health kept him from training Arnold in the family mercantile business, but his mother's family connections secured an apprenticeship for him with her cousins Daniel and Joshua Lathrop, who operated a successful apothecary and general merchandise trade in Norwich. His apprenticeship with the Lathrops lasted seven years.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold was very close to his mother, who died in 1759. His father's alcoholism worsened after her death, and the youth took on the responsibility of supporting his father and younger sister. His father was arrested on several occasions for public drunkenness, was refused communion by his church, and died in 1761.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: In 1755, Arnold was attracted by the sound of a drummer and attempted to enlist in the provincial militia for service in the French and Indian War, but his mother refused permission. In 1757 when he was 16, he did enlist in the Connecticut militia, which marched off toward Albany, New York and Lake George. The French had besieged Fort William Henry in northeastern New York, and their Indian allies had committed atrocities after their victory. Word of the siege's disastrous outcome led the company to turn around, and Arnold served for only 13 days. A commonly accepted story that he deserted from militia service in 1758 is based on uncertain documentary evidence.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold established himself in business in 1762 as a pharmacist and bookseller in New Haven, Connecticut, with the help of the Lathrops. He was hardworking and successful, and was able to rapidly expand his business. In 1763, he repaid money that he had borrowed from the Lathrops, repurchased the family homestead that his father had sold when deeply in debt, and re-sold it a year later for a substantial profit. In 1764, he formed a partnership with Adam Babcock, another young New Haven merchant. They bought three trading ships, using the profits from the sale of his homestead, and established a lucrative West Indies trade.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: During this time, Arnold brought his sister Hannah to New Haven and established her in his apothecary to manage the business in his absence. He traveled extensively in the course of his business throughout New England and from Quebec to the West Indies, often in command of one of his own ships. On one of his voyages, he fought a duel in Honduras with a British sea captain who had called him a "damned Yankee, destitute of good manners or those of a gentleman". The captain was wounded in the first exchange of gunfire, and he apologized when Arnold threatened to aim to kill on the second. However, it is unknown whether this encounter actually happened or not.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: The Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765 severely curtailed mercantile trade in the colonies. The Stamp Act prompted Arnold to join the chorus of voices in opposition, and also led to his joining the Sons of Liberty, a secret organization which advocated resistance to those and other restrictive Parliamentary measures. Arnold initially took no part in any public demonstrations but, like many merchants, continued to do business openly in defiance of the Parliamentary Acts, which legally amounted to smuggling. He also faced financial ruin, falling £16,000 in debt with creditors spreading rumors of his insolvency, to the point where he took legal action against them. On the night of January 28, 1767, he and members of his crew roughed up a man suspected of attempting to inform authorities of Arnold's smuggling. He was convicted of disorderly conduct and fined the relatively small amount of 50 shillings; publicity of the case and widespread sympathy for his views probably contributed to the light sentence.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: On February 22, 1767, Arnold married Margaret Mansfield, daughter of Samuel Mansfield, the sheriff of New Haven and a fellow member in the local Masonic Lodge. Their son Benedict was born the following year and was followed by brothers Richard in 1769 and Henry in 1772. Margaret died on June 19, 1775, while Arnold was at Fort Ticonderoga following its capture. She is buried in the crypt of the Center Church on New Haven Green. The household was dominated by Arnold's sister Hannah, even while Margaret was alive. Arnold benefited from his relationship with Mansfield, who became a partner in his business and used his position as sheriff to shield him from creditors.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold was in the West Indies when the Boston Massacre took place on March 5, 1770. He wrote that he was "very much shocked" and wondered "good God, are the Americans all asleep and tamely giving up their liberties, or are they all turned philosophers, that they don't take immediate vengeance on such miscreants?"


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold began the war as a captain in the Connecticut militia, a position to which he was elected in March 1775. His company marched northeast the following month to assist in the siege of Boston that followed the Battles of Lexington and Concord. He proposed an action to the Massachusetts Committee of Safety to seize Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York, which he knew was poorly defended. They issued him a colonel's commission on May 3, 1775, and he immediately rode off to Castleton in the disputed New Hampshire Grants (Vermont) in time to participate with Ethan Allen and his men in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. He followed up that action with a bold raid on Fort Saint-Jean on the Richelieu River north of Lake Champlain. A Connecticut militia force arrived at Ticonderoga in June; Arnold had a dispute with its commander over control of the fort, and resigned his Massachusetts commission. He was on his way home from Ticonderoga when he learned that his wife had died earlier in June.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: The Second Continental Congress authorized an invasion of Quebec, in part on the urging of Arnold—but he was passed over for command of the expedition. He then went to Cambridge, Massachusetts and suggested to George Washington a second expedition to attack Quebec City via a wilderness route through Maine. He received a colonel's commission in the Continental Army for this expedition and left Cambridge in September 1775 with 1,100 men. He arrived before Quebec City in November, after a difficult passage in which 300 men turned back and another 200 died en route. He and his men were joined by Richard Montgomery's small army and participated in the December 31 assault on Quebec City in which Montgomery was killed and Arnold's leg was shattered. His chaplain Rev. Samuel Spring carried him to the makeshift hospital at the Hôtel Dieu. Arnold was promoted to brigadier general for his role in reaching Quebec, and he maintained an ineffectual siege of the city until he was replaced by Major General David Wooster in April 1776.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold then traveled to Montreal where he served as military commander of the city until forced to retreat by an advancing British army that had arrived at Quebec in May. He presided over the rear of the Continental Army during its retreat from Saint-Jean, where he was reported by James Wilkinson to be the last person to leave before the British arrived. He then directed the construction of a fleet to defend Lake Champlain, which was overmatched and defeated in the October 1776 Battle of Valcour Island. However, his actions at Saint-Jean and Valcour Island played a notable role in delaying the British advance against Ticonderoga until 1777.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: During these actions, Arnold made a number of friends and a larger number of enemies within the army power structure and in Congress. He had established a decent relationship with George Washington, as well as Philip Schuyler and Horatio Gates, both of whom had command of the army's Northern Department during 1775 and 1776. However, an acrimonious dispute with Moses Hazen, commander of the 2nd Canadian Regiment, boiled into Hazen's court martial at Ticonderoga during the summer of 1776. Only action by Arnold's superior at Ticonderoga prevented his own arrest on countercharges leveled by Hazen. He also had disagreements with John Brown and James Easton, two lower-level officers with political connections that resulted in ongoing suggestions of improprieties on his part. Brown was particularly vicious, publishing a handbill which claimed of Arnold, "Money is this man's God, and to get enough of it he would sacrifice his country".


title: Benedict Arnold

text: General Washington assigned Arnold to the defense of Rhode Island following the British seizure of Newport in December 1776, where the militia were too poorly equipped to even consider an attack on the British. He took the opportunity to visit his children while near his home in New Haven, and he spent much of the winter socializing in Boston, where he unsuccessfully courted a young belle named Betsy Deblois. In February 1777, he learned that he had been passed over by Congress for promotion to major general. Washington refused his offer to resign, and wrote to members of Congress in an attempt to correct this, noting that "two or three other very good officers" might be lost if they persisted in making politically motivated promotions.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold was on his way to Philadelphia to discuss his future when he was alerted that a British force was marching toward a supply depot in Danbury, Connecticut. He organized the militia response, along with David Wooster and Connecticut militia General Gold Selleck Silliman. He led a small contingent of militia attempting to stop or slow the British return to the coast in the Battle of Ridgefield, and was again wounded in his left leg.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: He then continued on to Philadelphia where he met with members of Congress about his rank. His action at Ridgefield, coupled with the death of Wooster due to wounds sustained in the action, resulted in his promotion to major general, although his seniority was not restored over those who had been promoted before him. Amid negotiations over that issue, Arnold wrote out a letter of resignation on July 11, the same day that word arrived in Philadelphia that Fort Ticonderoga had fallen to the British. Washington refused his resignation and ordered him north to assist with the defense there.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold arrived in Schuyler's camp at Fort Edward, New York on July 24. On August 13, Schuyler dispatched him with a force of 900 to relieve the siege of Fort Stanwix, where he succeeded in a ruse to lift the siege. He sent an Indian messenger into the camp of British Brigadier General Barry St. Leger with news that the approaching force was much larger and closer than it actually was; this convinced St. Leger's Indian allies to abandon him, forcing him to give up the effort.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold returned to the Hudson where General Gates had taken over command of the American army, which had retreated to a camp south of Stillwater. He then distinguished himself in both Battles of Saratoga, even though General Gates removed him from field command after the first battle, following a series of escalating disagreements and disputes that culminated in a shouting match. During the fighting in the second battle, Arnold disobeyed Gates' orders and took to the battlefield to lead attacks on the British defenses. He was again severely wounded in the left leg late in the fighting. Arnold said that it would have been better had it been in the chest instead of the leg. Burgoyne surrendered ten days after the second battle on October 17, 1777. Congress restored Arnold's command seniority in response to his valor at Saratoga. However, he interpreted the manner in which they did so as an act of sympathy for his wounds, and not an apology or recognition that they were righting a wrong.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold spent several months recovering from his injuries. He had his leg crudely set, rather than allowing it to be amputated, leaving it shorter than the right. He returned to the army at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in May 1778 to the applause of men who had served under him at Saratoga. There he participated in the first recorded Oath of Allegiance, along with many other soldiers, as a sign of loyalty to the United States.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: The British withdrew from Philadelphia in June 1778, and Washington appointed Arnold military commander of the city. Historian John Shy states:


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold began planning to capitalize financially on the change in power in Philadelphia, even before the Americans reoccupied their city. He engaged in a variety of business deals designed to profit from war-related supply movements and benefiting from the protection of his authority. Such schemes were not uncommon among American officers, but Arnold's schemes were sometimes frustrated by powerful local politicians such as Joseph Reed, who eventually amassed enough evidence to publicly air charges against him. Arnold demanded a court martial to clear the charges, writing to Washington in May 1779: "Having become a cripple in the service of my country, I little expected to meet ungrateful returns".


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold lived extravagantly in Philadelphia and was a prominent figure on the social scene. During the summer of 1778, he met Peggy Shippen, the 18-year-old daughter of Judge Edward Shippen (III), a Loyalist sympathizer who had done business with the British while they occupied the city; Peggy had been courted by British Major John André during the British occupation of Philadelphia. She married Arnold on April 8, 1779. Shippen and her circle of friends had found methods of staying in contact with paramours across the battle lines, despite military bans on communication with the enemy. Some of this communication was effected through the services of Joseph Stansbury, a Philadelphia merchant.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Historians have identified many possible factors contributing to Arnold's treason, while some debate their relative importance. According to W. D. Wetherell, he was:


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold had been badly wounded twice in battle and had lost his business in Connecticut, which made him profoundly bitter. He grew resentful of several rival and younger generals who had been promoted ahead of him and given honors which he thought he deserved. Especially galling was a long feud with the civil authorities in Philadelphia which led to his court-martial. He was also convicted of two minor charges of using his authority to make a profit. General Washington gave him a light reprimand, but it merely heightened Arnold's sense of betrayal; nonetheless, he had already opened negotiations with the British before his court martial even began. He later said in his own defense that he was loyal to his true beliefs, yet he lied at the same time by insisting that Peggy was totally innocent and ignorant of his plans.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold had an extremely ambitious and jealous personality. He knew that he was distrusted and disliked by senior military officers on both sides. Washington was one of the few who genuinely liked and admired him, but Arnold thought that Washington had betrayed him.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: As early as 1778, there were signs that Arnold was unhappy with his situation and pessimistic about the country's future. On November 10, 1778, General Nathanael Greene wrote to General John Cadwalader, "I am told General Arnold is become very unpopular among you oweing to his associateing too much with the Tories." A few days later, Arnold wrote to Greene and lamented over the "deplorable" and "horrid" situation of the country at that particular moment, citing the depreciating currency, disaffection of the army, and internal fighting in Congress, while predicting "impending ruin" if things did not change soon. Biographer Nathaniel Philbrick argues:


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Early in May 1779, Arnold met with Philadelphia merchant Joseph Stansbury who then "went secretly to New York with a tender of [Arnold's] services to Sir Henry Clinton". Stansbury ignored instructions from Arnold to involve no one else in the plot, and he crossed the British lines and went to see Jonathan Odell in New York. Odell was a Loyalist working with William Franklin, the last colonial governor of New Jersey and the son of Benjamin Franklin. On May 9, Franklin introduced Stansbury to Major André, who had just been named the British spy chief. This was the beginning of a secret correspondence between Arnold and André, sometimes using his wife Peggy as a willing intermediary, which culminated more than a year later with Arnold's change of sides.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: André conferred with General Clinton, who gave him broad authority to pursue Arnold's offer. André then drafted instructions to Stansbury and Arnold. This initial letter opened a discussion on the types of assistance and intelligence that Arnold might provide, and included instructions for how to communicate in the future. Letters were to be passed through the women's circle that Peggy Arnold was a part of, but only Peggy would be aware that some letters contained instructions that were to be passed on to André, written in both code "and" invisible ink, using Stansbury as the courier.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: By July 1779, Benedict Arnold was providing the British with troop locations and strengths, as well as the locations of supply depots, all the while negotiating over compensation. At first, he asked for indemnification of his losses and £10,000, an amount that the Continental Congress had given Charles Lee for his services in the Continental Army. General Clinton was pursuing a campaign to gain control of the Hudson River Valley, and was interested in plans and information on the defenses of West Point and other defenses on the Hudson River. He also began to insist on a face-to-face meeting, and suggested to Arnold that he pursue another high-level command. By October 1779, the negotiations had ground to a halt. Furthermore, revolutionary mobs were scouring Philadelphia for Loyalists, and Arnold and the Shippen family were being threatened. Arnold was rebuffed by Congress and by local authorities in requests for security details for himself and his in-laws.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold's court martial on charges of profiteering began meeting on June 1, 1779, but it was delayed until December 1779 by General Clinton's capture of Stony Point, New York, throwing the army into a flurry of activity to react. Several members on the panel of judges were ill-disposed toward Arnold over actions and disputes earlier in the war, yet Arnold was cleared of all but two minor charges on January 26, 1780. Arnold worked over the next few months to publicize this fact; however, George Washington published a formal rebuke of his behavior in early April, just one week after he had congratulated Arnold on the birth of his son Edward Shippen Arnold on March 19:


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Shortly after Washington's rebuke, a Congressional inquiry into Arnold's expenditures concluded that he had failed to account fully for his expenditures incurred during the Quebec invasion, and that he owed the Congress some £1,000, largely because he was unable to document them. Many of these documents had been lost during the retreat from Quebec. Angry and frustrated, Arnold resigned his military command of Philadelphia in late April.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Early in April, Philip Schuyler had approached Arnold with the possibility of giving him the command at West Point. Discussions had not borne fruit between Schuyler and Washington by early June. Arnold reopened the secret channels with the British, informing them of Schuyler's proposals and including Schuyler's assessment of conditions at West Point. He also provided information on a proposed French-American invasion of Quebec that was to go up the Connecticut River (Arnold did not know that this proposed invasion was a ruse intended to divert British resources). On June 16, Arnold inspected West Point while on his way home to Connecticut to take care of personal business, and he sent a highly detailed report through the secret channel. When he reached Connecticut, Arnold arranged to sell his home there and began transferring assets to London through intermediaries in New York. By early July, he was back in Philadelphia, where he wrote another secret message to Clinton on July 7 which implied that his appointment to West Point was assured and that he might even provide a "drawing of the works ... by which you might take [West Point] without loss".


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Major André returned victorious from the Siege of Charleston on June 18, and both he and General Clinton were immediately caught up in this news. Clinton was concerned that Washington's army and the French fleet would join in Rhode Island, and he again fixed on West Point as a strategic point to capture. André had spies and informers keeping track of Arnold to verify his movements. Excited by the prospects, Clinton informed his superiors of his intelligence coup, but failed to respond to Arnold's July 7 letter.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Benedict Arnold next wrote a series of letters to Clinton, even before he might have expected a response to the July 7 letter. In a July 11 letter, he complained that the British did not appear to trust him, and threatened to break off negotiations unless progress was made. On July 12, he wrote again, making explicit the offer to surrender West Point, although his price rose to £20,000 (in addition to indemnification for his losses), with a £1,000 down payment to be delivered with the response. These letters were delivered by Samuel Wallis, another Philadelphia businessman who spied for the British, rather than by Stansbury.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: On August 3, 1780, Arnold obtained command of West Point. On August 15, he received a coded letter from André with Clinton's final offer: £20,000 and no indemnification for his losses. Neither side knew for some days that the other was in agreement with that offer, due to difficulties in getting the messages across the lines. Arnold's letters continued to detail Washington's troop movements and provide information about French reinforcements that were being organized. On August 25, Peggy finally delivered to him Clinton's agreement to the terms.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold's command at West Point also gave him authority over the entire American-controlled Hudson River, from Albany down to the British lines outside New York City. While en route to West Point, Arnold renewed an acquaintance with Joshua Hett Smith, who had spied for both sides and who owned a house near the western bank of the Hudson about 15 miles south of West Point.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Once Arnold established himself at West Point, he began systematically weakening its defenses and military strength. Needed repairs were never ordered on the chain across the Hudson. Troops were liberally distributed within Arnold's command area (but only minimally at West Point itself) or furnished to Washington on request. He also peppered Washington with complaints about the lack of supplies, writing, "Everything is wanting." At the same time, he tried to drain West Point's supplies so that a siege would be more likely to succeed. His subordinates, some long-time associates, grumbled about Arnold's unnecessary distribution of supplies and eventually concluded that he was selling them on the black market for personal gain.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: On August 30, Arnold sent a letter accepting Clinton's terms and proposing a meeting to André through yet another intermediary: William Heron, a member of the Connecticut Assembly whom he thought he could trust. In an ironic twist, Heron went into New York unaware of the significance of the letter and offered his own services to the British as a spy. He then took the letter back to Connecticut, suspicious of Arnold's actions, where he delivered it to the head of the Connecticut militia. General Parsons laid it aside, seeing a letter written as a coded business discussion. Four days later, Arnold sent a ciphered letter with similar content into New York through the services of the wife of a prisoner of war. Eventually, a meeting was set for September 11 near Dobb's Ferry. This meeting was thwarted when British gunboats in the river fired on his boat, not being informed of his impending arrival.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold and André finally met on September 21 at the Joshua Hett Smith House. On the morning of September 22, from their position at Teller's Point, two American rebels, John "Jack" Peterson and Moses Sherwood, under the command of Col. James Livingston fired on HMS "Vulture", the ship that was intended to carry André back to New York. This action did little damage besides giving the captain, Andrew Sutherland, a splinter in his nose—but the splinter prompted the "Vulture" to retreat, forcing André to return to New York overland. Arnold wrote out passes for André so that he would be able to pass through the lines, and he also gave him plans for West Point.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: André was captured near Tarrytown, New York on Saturday, September 23 by three Westchester militiamen. They found the papers exposing the plot to capture West Point and passed them on to their superiors, but André convinced the unsuspecting Colonel John Jameson, to whom he was delivered, to send him back to Arnold at West Point—but he never reached West Point. Major Benjamin Tallmadge was a member of the Continental Army's Culper Ring, a network of spies established under Washington's orders, and he insisted that Jameson order the prisoner to be intercepted and brought back. Jameson reluctantly recalled the lieutenant who had been delivering André into Arnold's custody, but he then sent the same lieutenant as a messenger to notify Arnold of André's arrest.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold learned of André's capture the morning of September 24 while waiting for Washington, with whom he was going to have breakfast at his headquarters in British Col. Beverley Robinson's former summer house on the east bank of the Hudson. Upon receiving Jameson's message, however, he learned that Jameson had sent Washington the papers which André was carrying. Arnold immediately hastened to the shore and ordered bargemen to row him downriver to where HMS "Vulture" was anchored, fleeing on it to New York City. From the ship, he wrote a letter to Washington requesting that Peggy be given safe passage to her family in Philadelphia—which Washington granted.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Washington remained calm when he was presented with evidence of Arnold's treason. He did, however, investigate its extent, and suggested that he was willing to exchange André for Arnold during negotiations with General Clinton concerning André's fate. Clinton refused this suggestion; after a military tribunal, André was hanged at Tappan, New York, on October 2. Washington also infiltrated men into New York City in an attempt to capture Arnold. This plan very nearly succeeded, but Arnold changed living quarters prior to sailing for Virginia in December and thus avoided capture. He justified his actions in an open letter titled "To the Inhabitants of America", published in newspapers in October 1780. He also wrote in the letter to Washington requesting safe passage for Peggy: "Love to my country actuates my present conduct, however it may appear inconsistent to the world, who very seldom judge right of any man's actions."


title: Benedict Arnold

text: The British gave Arnold a brigadier general's commission with an annual income of several hundred pounds, but they paid him only £6,315 plus an annual pension of £360 for his defection because his plot had failed. In December 1780, he led a force of 1,600 troops into Virginia under orders from Clinton, where he captured Richmond by surprise and then went on a rampage through Virginia, destroying supply houses, foundries, and mills. This activity brought out Virginia's militia led by Colonel Sampson Mathews, and Arnold eventually retreated to Portsmouth to be reinforced or to evacuate.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: The pursuing American army included the Marquis de Lafayette, who was under orders from Washington to hang Arnold summarily if he was captured. British reinforcements arrived in late March led by William Phillips who served under Burgoyne at Saratoga. Phillips led further raids across Virginia, including a defeat of Baron von Steuben at Petersburg, but he died of fever on May 12, 1781. Arnold commanded the army only until May 20, when Lord Cornwallis arrived with the southern army and took over. One colonel wrote to Clinton concerning Arnold: "There are many officers who must wish some other general in command." Cornwallis ignored Arnold's advice to locate a permanent base away from the coast, advice that might have averted his surrender at Yorktown.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: On his return to New York in June, Arnold made a variety of proposals for attacks on economic targets to force the Americans to end the war. Clinton was uninterested in most of his aggressive ideas, but finally authorized him to raid the port of New London, Connecticut. He led a force of more than 1,700 men which burned most of New London to the ground on September 4, causing damage estimated at $500,000. They also attacked and captured Fort Griswold across the river in Groton, Connecticut, slaughtering the Americans after they surrendered following the Battle of Groton Heights—and all these deeds were done just a few miles down the Thames River from Norwich, where Arnold grew up. However, British casualties were high; nearly one quarter of the force was killed or wounded, and Clinton declared that he could ill afford any more such victories.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Even before Cornwallis's surrender in October, Arnold had requested permission from Clinton to go to England to give Lord George Germain his thoughts on the war in person. He renewed that request when he learned of the surrender, which Clinton then granted. On December 8, 1781, Arnold and his family left New York for England.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: In London, Arnold aligned himself with the Tories, advising Germain and King George III to renew the fight against the Americans. In the House of Commons, Edmund Burke expressed the hope that the government would not put Arnold "at the head of a part of a British army" lest "the sentiments of true honour, which every British officer [holds] dearer than life, should be afflicted". The anti-war Whigs had gained the upper hand in Parliament, and Germain was forced to resign, with the government of Lord North falling not long after.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold then applied to accompany General Carleton, who was going to New York to replace Clinton as commander-in-chief, but the request went nowhere. Other attempts all failed to gain positions within the government or the British East India Company over the next few years, and he was forced to subsist on the reduced pay of non-wartime service. His reputation also came under criticism in the British press, especially when compared to Major André who was celebrated for his patriotism. One critic said that he was a "mean mercenary, who, having adopted a cause for the sake of plunder, quits it when convicted of that charge". George Johnstone turned him down for a position in the East India Company and explained: "Although I am satisfied with the purity of your conduct, the generality do not think so. While this is the case, no power in this country could suddenly place you in the situation you aim at under the East India Company."


title: Benedict Arnold

text: In 1785, Arnold and his son Richard moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, where they speculated in land and established a business doing trade with the West Indies. Arnold purchased large tracts of land in the Maugerville area, and acquired city lots in Saint John and Fredericton. Delivery of his first ship the "Lord Sheffield" was accompanied by accusations from the builder that Arnold had cheated him; Arnold claimed that he had merely deducted the contractually agreed amount when the ship was delivered late. After her first voyage, Arnold returned to London in 1786 to bring his family to Saint John. While there, he disentangled himself from a lawsuit over an unpaid debt that Peggy had been fighting while he was away, paying £900 to settle a £12,000 loan that he had taken while living in Philadelphia. The family moved to Saint John in 1787, where Arnold created an uproar with a series of bad business deals and petty lawsuits. The most serious of these was a slander suit which he won against a former business partner; and following this, townspeople burned him in effigy in front of his house, as Peggy and the children watched. The family left Saint John to return to London in December 1791.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: In July 1792, Arnold fought a bloodless duel with the Earl of Lauderdale after the Earl impugned his honor in the House of Lords. With the outbreak of the French Revolution, Arnold outfitted a privateer, while continuing to do business in the West Indies, even though the hostilities increased the risk. He was imprisoned by French authorities on Guadeloupe amid accusations of spying for the British, and narrowly eluded hanging by escaping to the blockading British fleet after bribing his guards. He helped organize militia forces on British-held islands, receiving praise from the landowners for his efforts on their behalf. He hoped that this work would earn him wider respect and a new command; instead, it earned him and his sons a land-grant of in Upper Canada, near present-day Renfrew, Ontario.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: In January 1801, Benedict Arnold's health began to decline. He had suffered from gout since 1775, and the condition attacked his unwounded leg to the point where he was unable to go to sea. The other leg ached constantly, and he walked only with a cane. His physicians diagnosed him as having dropsy, and a visit to the countryside only temporarily improved his condition. He died after four days of delirium on June 14, 1801, at the age of 60. Legend has it that, when he was on his deathbed, he said, "Let me die in this old uniform in which I fought my battles. May God forgive me for ever having put on another," but this story may be apocryphal. Arnold was buried at St. Mary's Church in Battersea, England. As a result of a clerical error in the parish records, his remains were removed to an unmarked mass grave during church renovations a century later. His funeral procession boasted "seven mourning coaches and four state carriages"; the funeral was without military honors.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold left a small estate, reduced in size by his debts, which Peggy undertook to clear. Among his bequests were considerable gifts to one John Sage, perhaps an illegitimate son or grandson.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Benedict Arnold's name became synonymous with "traitor" soon after his betrayal became public, and biblical themes were often invoked. Benjamin Franklin wrote that "Judas sold only one man, Arnold three millions", and Alexander Scammell described his actions as "black as hell". In Arnold's home town of Norwich, Connecticut, someone scrawled "the traitor" next to his record of birth at city hall, and all of his family's gravestones have been destroyed except his mother's.


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Arnold was aware of his reputation in his home country, and French statesman Talleyrand described meeting him in Falmouth, Cornwall in 1794:


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Talleyrand continued, "I must confess that I felt much pity for him, for which political puritans will perhaps blame me, but with which I do not reproach myself, for I witnessed his agony".


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Early biographers attempted to describe Arnold's entire life in terms of treacherous or morally questionable behavior. The first major biography of his life was "The Life and Treason of Benedict Arnold", published in 1832 by historian Jared Sparks; it was particularly harsh in showing how Arnold's treacherous character was formed out of childhood experiences. George Canning Hill authored a series of moralistic biographies in the mid-19th century and began his 1865 biography of Arnold: "Benedict, the Traitor, was born…". Social historian Brian Carso notes that, as the 19th century progressed, the story of Arnold's betrayal was portrayed with near-mythical proportions as a part of the national history. It was invoked again as sectional conflicts increased in the years before the American Civil War. Washington Irving used it as part of an argument against dismemberment of the union in his 1857 "Life of George Washington", pointing out that the unity of New England and the southern states which led to independence was made possible in part by holding West Point. Jefferson Davis and other southern secessionist leaders were unfavorably compared to Arnold, implicitly and explicitly likening the idea of secession to treason. "Harper's Weekly" published an article in 1861 describing Confederate leaders as "a few men directing this colossal treason, by whose side Benedict Arnold shines white as a saint".


title: Benedict Arnold

text: Fictional invocations of Benedict Arnold's name carry strongly negative overtones. A moralistic children's tale entitled "The Cruel Boy" was widely circulated in the 19th century. It described a boy who stole eggs from birds' nests, pulled wings off insects, and engaged in other sorts of wanton cruelty, who then grew up to become a traitor to his country. The boy is not identified until the end of the story, when his place of birth is given as Norwich, Connecticut, and his name is given as Benedict Arnold. However, not all depictions of Arnold were so negative. Some theatrical treatments of the 19th century explored his duplicity, seeking to understand rather than demonize it.