LancasterHistory.org welcomes Stephen H. Case on Thursday, November 16 to present on his book, Treacherous Beauty: Peggy Shippen, The Woman Behind Benedict Arnold’s Plot to Betray America. While war was raging between England and its rebellious colonists, Peggy Shippen befriended a suave British officer and then married a crippled revolutionary general twice her age. She brought the two men together in a treasonous plot that nearly turned George Washington into a prisoner and changed the course of the war. Peggy Shippen was Mrs. Benedict Arnold.

Peggy was to the American Revolution what the fictional Scarlett O’Hara was to the Civil War: a woman whose survival skills trumped all other values. Had she been a man, she might have been arrested, tried, and executed. And she might have become famous. Instead, her role was minimized and she was allowed to recede into the background—with a generous British pension in hand. Raised in Philadelphia, Peggy had close ties to Lancaster; her grandfather Edward Shippen lived in Lancaster and is buried at St. James Episcopal Church.

Stephen H. Case, co-author with Mark Jacob, is an attorney with a long and distinguished career, and is managing director and general counsel of Emerald Development Managers LP, which provides equity capital for start-up businesses. He also is a trustee of the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. Previously, he was for over 35 years a partner in the international law firm now called Davis Polk LLP; chairman of the board of Motors Liquidation Company, which liquidated and dissolved the original General Motors Corp.; and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.

Event information: This event takes place in Ryder Hall at LancasterHistory.org. A reception begins at 4pm, followed by the presentation at 4:30pm. The event is free and open to the public.