Burning of Benedict Arnold Festival torches the traitor, a CT native

This Connecticut town never forgets a traitor.

Hundreds are expected to gather in New London Saturday for the Burning of Benedict Arnold Festival, during which a paper mâché figure of the disgraced American Revolutionary is torched to mark the anniversary of when Arnold led a group of more than 1,600 British soldiers to burn most of the city to the ground in Sept. 1781.

“I like to jokingly refer to it as the original Burning Man festival,” organizer Derron Wood said.

For close to a century, cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia held yearly traitor-burning events, but those died out during the Civil War.

Wood, who also serves as the artistic director of New London’s Flock Theatre, revived the festival in 2013.

It became a part of the state’s Connecticut Maritime Heritage Festival, and after a hiatus due to the pandemic, returned last year.

“This project and specifically the reaction, the sort of hunger for its return, has been huge and the interest in it has been huge,” said Victor Chiburis, the festival’s co-organizer.

Participants, some decked out in period costume, march with a fife and drum corps on New London’s Bank Street to its Waterfront Park, where its mayor, Michael E. Passero, shouts, “Remember New London,” and torches the effigy.

A military officer, Arnold was appointed by then-General George Washington and given control of West Point, where Washington had his headquarters during the war.

However, it was discovered that Arnold, who hailed from Norwich, was giving information to the British and planning to surrender West Point to enemy forces.

Arnold staged the attack on New London a month before the British troops surrendered at Yorktown to end major fighting during the Revolution.

With Post Wires