one of them, he was surprised it contained instructions to the said major Franks to purchase European and East Indian goods in the city of Philadelphia, to any amount, for the payment of which the writer would furnish major Franks with the money, and the same paper contained also a strict charge to the said Franks not to make known to his most intimate acquaintance that the writer was concerned in the proposed purchase; that these instructions were not signed, but appeared to the deponent to be in the handwriting of major general Arnold, whether or not there was a date to it the deponent doth not recollect; that the other paper contained instructions signed by major general Arnold, directing major Franks to purchase for the said general Arnold some necessaries for the use of his table; that the deponent compared the writing of the two papers and verily believes that they were both written by major general Arnold’s own hand; and soon afterward major Franks came into the room and took the papers away, as the deponent supposes. And further the deponent saith not.
That such a charge involved as much the trial of Major Franks as General Arnold, will at once appear. The statements in the charge argue close association between Arnold and Franks. Yet in Franks’ written record of himself in 1789 he passes over this Philadelphia period thus lightly: “In 1778, after the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British Army & on the arrival of Count D’Estaing I procured Letters of recommendation from the Board of War ... and joined him off Sandy Hook, I continued with that Admiral until he arrived at Rhode Island, where on the failure of the Expedition I returned to Philadelphia where my military duty called me.”
No reference here, nor anywhere in his record, to a closeness of bond between the two which his testimony, now offered from the records, amply proves to have existed.
“The judge-advocate produced major Franks, aid-de-camp to major General Arnold, who was sworn.