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Liverpool, 2 August 1771. 1 p. manuscript in ink, 8” x 7.25”, tissue reinforcement to verso of left margin, tipped onto single leaf, 12.25” x 8.75”, bearing typed notes by a later owner. The whole tipped onto black bifolium with typed title piece: “Benedict Arnold as a Lumber Merchant Year 1771.” Later pencil annotation to the document in the lower-left corner. CONDITION: Good+, several tears (most repaired), some spotting and toning.

A manuscript receipt documenting Benedict Arnold’s activity as a lumber merchant just a few years before the American Revolution.

This document records the sale of twenty-three planks of mahogany wood (comprising 2,284 feet) from Jamaica, which were received in Liverpool on August 2nd, 1771. The wood was transported by the ship Unity commanded by the British Captain Robert Norris. It was sold for 38.14 pounds, from which was deducted nineteen pounds of “Charges,” including town duties, “Cartage,” a “Measurer’s bill,” and a “Commission,” presumably for the agent, one “W Wallace,” whose signature appears at the bottom of the document. One of these deductions is “for 1 plank wh[ich]. was made use of as a Rudder.” The buyer, one “Cross S Harling[?],” is given three months to pay the balance. A pencil note by a former owner indicates that three rows of figures in the lower-right corner of the document were written by Arnold, but a close comparison with Arnold’s hand, particularly his number formation, does not appear to confirm this.

Like his father, Benedict Arnold (1741–1801) was a successful merchant and trader. In his late teens he worked as chief clerk for his mother’s cousin, Dr. Daniel Lathrop, and sailed to Canada, England, and the West Indies on business. “When Dr. Lathrop landed the lucrative contract to provide medical supplies for the British Northern Army, it was Arnold who delivered them to British forces besieging Quebec. He learned that businessmen could make huge—and perfectly legal—profits in wartime.” In 1762 Arnold opened a shop in New Haven, selling “books for students across the green at Yale College and cosmetics, jewelry, and what [he] called ‘a very elegant assortment of Metzotinto Pictures, Prints, Maps, Stationery-Ware and Paper-Hangings for rooms’” (Randall). Just a few years later, in 1867, Arnold and his partner Adam Babcock owned three ships involved in the lumber trade, although the Unity was evidently not one of them. Its captain, Robert Norris, was a slave trader, and between June 6th and June 26th, 1770—just a year before this receipt was written—Norris noted in his log for a slaving voyage (now held by the National Museums Liverpool) three instances of slave uprisings, all of them involving female captives: “The slaves made an Insurrection which was soon quelled…with the loss of two woman slaves” (June 6th); “the slaves attempted another Insurrection after the death of a girl slave” (June 22nd); and “a few of the slaves got off their Handcuffs but were detected in Time” (June 26th). Some 227 of the African captives on The Unity had been purchased by Norris in Abomey (the capital of Dahomey in West Africa), where women were trained as warriors.

A document of Benedict Arnold’s business dealings with England, tinged with a connection to the slave trade.

REFERENCES: Log of ‘Unity’ for a Slaving Voyage at National Museums Liverpool online; Durn, Sarah. “The Untold Stories of the Women Who Led Slave Revolts” (2023) at Atlas Obscura online; Kelley, Jack. “Who was Benedict Arnold, Before he Became America’s most Notorious Traitor” (2023) at Crime Reads online; Randall, Willard Sterne. “Why Benedict Arnold Did It” (1990) at American Heritage online.

Item #8669

Price: $950.00