Treason Site
Village of Haverstraw, Rockland County, New York
Marker Inscription
Within these woods, in the early morning hours of September 22, 1780, American General Benedict Arnold and British Major John Andre plotted the surrender of American fortress at West Point. While attempting to return to British lines, Andre was captured… transcription continues on the marker
This transcription may be incomplete
Our source stores marker text in a field capped at 255 characters, and this inscription appears to have been cut off. We won’t guess at the missing words — the inscription is the primary source, and inventing it would be worse than leaving it short.
Have you stood in front of this marker? Send us the full text or a photo of the sign and we’ll complete the record.
The Story
On a September night in 1780, American General Benedict Arnold met secretly with British Major John André along the Hudson to arrange the surrender of the vital fortress at West Point. André was seized while attempting to return to British lines, exposing the conspiracy and cementing Arnold's reputation as the archetypal American traitor. This marker recalls the wooded ground tied to that betrayal.
Why it matters
It marks how perilously close a trusted Continental general came to handing the British a war-changing victory, a cautionary tale of loyalty and treason in the young republic's fight for independence.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the fall of 1780, the war for American independence had settled into a grinding contest of endurance. Five years of fighting had drained the Continental cause of money and supplies, and no one could yet say which side would outlast the other. Everything the young nation had bled for still hung in the balance.
The Hudson River was the great prize. It reached like a blade into the heart of the colonies, and holding it kept the American states connected and the British fleet at bay. The fortress at West Point, commanding a narrow bend of the river, was the linchpin of that defense — heavily fortified and guarded by a massive chain strung across the water.
This marker stands in the wooded lands near Haverstraw, in the borderland along the lower Hudson where American and British spheres overlapped. It was dangerous, watchful country, and it was here, in the small hours of a September morning, that one man's ambition nearly undid everything.
People & events
The traitor at the heart of this story was Benedict Arnold — a general who had fought brilliantly for the American cause before deciding to sell out the very fortress he was sworn to defend. In secret correspondence with the British, he agreed to surrender West Point in exchange for reward and rank.
To seal the bargain, he met with Major John André, a polished British officer acting as the go-between for the plot. In the darkness of the early morning of September 22, 1780, the two came together along the Hudson's western shore, working out the details that would have opened the river to the enemy.
But fate turned against them. Trying to slip back toward British lines, André was intercepted near Tarrytown by three vigilant militiamen — John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart — who found hidden papers that exposed the entire conspiracy. Arnold received warning just in time and escaped downriver aboard a British warship. André, caught in civilian dress with the evidence on him, was condemned as a spy and hanged at Tappan on October 2, 1780.
Its place in the American story
The plot hatched in these hours is the reason the phrase "a Benedict Arnold" still means a traitor. Few personal betrayals in any nation's history have lodged so permanently in its memory, and this one did because of what was nearly lost.
Had West Point fallen, the British might have severed the Hudson and split the rebelling states apart at their most vulnerable moment. The Revolution's survival, in that autumn, depended not on a great victory but on a plot foiled almost by accident — a reminder of how fragile the whole enterprise truly was.
The story also endures because of its moral shadows. The American general escaped to live out his days under a cloud of contempt, while the enemy officer he conspired with went to the gallows with a composure that won grudging admiration even from his captors. That uneasy contrast has kept the tale alive for more than two centuries as a parable of loyalty and treachery in the making of the United States.
If you visit
Don't expect a battlefield here — expect woods, and let that be the invitation. The power of this place lies in what your imagination supplies: a clandestine meeting in the dark, and a nation's fate riding on it. Read the marker, then look at the trees around you and picture the scene it describes.
You are in the Hudson valley country near Haverstraw, in Rockland County, a landscape steeped in Revolutionary events. There is something fitting about the ordinariness of the setting — a reminder that the most consequential moments of history don't always happen in grand halls, but sometimes in quiet, wooded places off the main road.
For travelers following the Revolution along the Hudson, this is a rewarding pause. Take a slow moment to stand with the story, and consider how narrowly the young country slipped past disaster on a September morning in these very woods.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Benedict Arnold
- · John André
Related events
- · Benedict Arnold's treason
- · Plot to surrender West Point
- · Capture of Major André
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Treason Site
Town of Clarkstown, NY
In the tense autumn of 1780, American General Benedict Arnold conspired with British Major John André to hand over the strategic Hudson River fortress at West Point — one of the most infamous acts of treason in the nation's history. André was captured while trying to reach British lines, and the plot unraveled, turning Arnold's name into a byword for betrayal. This marker stands near where that fateful meeting took place.
André Captors' Monument
Village of Tarrytown, NY
Here on September 23, 1780, three local militiamen — John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart — stopped a traveler on the road near Tarrytown and discovered he was Major John André, the British adjutant general carrying papers that exposed Benedict Arnold's plot to surrender West Point. Their refusal of André's bribes unraveled one of the Revolution's most dangerous conspiracies. André was later hanged as a spy, and the three captors became early American heroes.
Guard Hill Revolutionary War Lookout
Town of Bedford, NY
During the Revolutionary War, the high ground of Guard Hill offered a sweeping view over the surrounding Westchester countryside — the kind of vantage point that decided the fate of armies. It was important enough to be labeled "a commanding height" on the survey maps drawn by Robert Erskine, the Scottish-born engineer who served as Surveyor-General to the Continental Army and mapped the terrain George Washington's forces fought over. Throughout the war years, American observation patrols climbed to this summit to watch for enemy movement across a region that sat perilously between the British stronghold in New York City and the Patriot lines to the north.
York Road
Paterson, NJ
In the autumn of 1780, this stretch of road carried George Washington and his Continental soldiers between the Dey Mansion at Preakness—which served as the general's headquarters that year—and Acquackanonk Landing on the Passaic River. The war in the North had settled into a tense, watchful phase after the fighting shifted southward, and northern New Jersey became a corridor of constant troop movement, its farm roads and river landings vital to keeping the army fed, supplied, and positioned. A quiet route today, York Road once echoed with the march of the army that would ultimately win American independence.