November 2: David S. Franks and Benedict Arnold

On this date in 1780, a court of inquiry at West Point, New York, exonerated Major David S. Franks, the highest-ranking Jew in the army of the American Revolution, of any complicity in Benedict Arnold’s plot to surrender West Point to the British. Franks was a Philadelphia-born Jew of German descent who lived in Montreal on the eve of the revolution. When the Continental Army unsuccessfully invaded Quebec, Franks served as paymaster, and retreated south with the army. He then served as an officer throughout campaigns in the northern colonies, and spent the winter of 1778 with Washington’s army at Valley Forge. Fluent in both French and Spanish, Franks became liaison to the French naval forces that were assisting the revolution, and aide-de-camp to Benedict Arnold, the military governor of Philadelphia. When Arnold was reassigned to command the strategic garrison at West Point, which controlled access to the upper reaches of the Hudson, Franks accompanied him, and when Arnold’s plan to betray the garrison to the British was revealed, Franks fell under suspicion, too. (His cause was not aided by the fact that his New York uncle, also named David Franks, was an active and well-known loyalist.) Franks spent the rest of the revolution working as a diplomatic courier and diplomat while trying repeatedly to clear his name; twice he requested and was granted a court martial in order to achieve that aim. In 1789, Congress granted Franks four hundred acres of land in recognition of his service during the Revolution. His then served as assistant cashier at the Bank of the United States in Philadelphia before dying of yellow fever in 1793 at age 53.
“[E]very part of Major D.S. Franks’ conduct was not only unexceptionable but reflects the highest honor on him as an officer, distinguished him as a zealous friend to the independence of America, and justly entitles him to the attention and confidence of his countrymen.” —The judgment of the court