I guess that's the thing about such visionary Yankee eccentrics: there's the good (they don't just go along with everyone else) and the bad (they can get really far from ordinary, normal or commendable behavior). You can see this sort of mix in a lot of science professors and inventors and self-made millionaires.
The strange thing is that "traitor Tupper's" papers ended up in the Smithsonian. So maybe America didn't hold a grudge.