An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson

by Andro Linklater

  OF ALL THE CONGRATULATORY LETTERS he had received, Gates was proudest of the one sent by General Conway, a veteran of the French army, who had also served under Europe’s supreme military expert, Frederick II, king of Prussia. “What pity there is but one General Gates!” Conway wrote admiringly. “But the more I see of this Army the less I think it fit for general Action under its [present] Chiefs & discipline. I speak [to] you sincerely & wish I could serve under you.” Not surprisingly, Gates showed this flattering tribute to his young chief of staff.

  What McWilliams remembered from his convivial talk with Wilkinson was a remark criticizing Washington that the young man claimed to have read in Conway’s letter: “Heaven has been determined to save your Country; or a weak General and bad Counsellers would have ruined it.” As a good staff officer, McWilliams duly reported this subversive comment to General Stirling when the general had sufficiently sobered to appreciate its importance.

  The next day when the rain had eased and Colonel James Wilkinson was recovered from his carousing, he continued on his way, a young man at ease with the world. His self-confidence showed in his handwriting, the letters well- formed, forward-sloping with capitals extravagantly looped. It was evident too in the casual manner he conveyed his vital message to Congress.

  Having broken his journey once, he did so again, spending two days with the Biddles in Easton, Pennsylvania. Since Nancy’s happpiness depended upon her Jimmy’s “wretched existence,” she must have been overjoyed to see him, with his dark, curly hair, bright black eyes, and amused expression, and no doubt was bewitched by his tales of valor and importance. Two days could hardly have been enough for what they had to say, and even John Adams, irritated beyond measure by the delay, acknowledged later, “Had I known that he had fallen in love with so fine a woman as his after wife really was, my rigorous heart would have somewhat relented.”

  Even after he finally arrived in York, Wilkinson made the exasperated delegates wait yet another day while he assembled all Gates’s papers in the correct order. Impatiently Samuel Adams exclaimed that such a laggard should be presented with “a horsewhip and spurs.”

  Despite the irritation caused by their late arrival, the documents dispelled the delegates’ gloom and despondency. Between September 19, Burgoyne’s first defeat at Freeman’s Farm, and the final surrender on October 17, almost nine thousand British and Hessian troops had been killed, captured, or rendered incapable of fighting. The total represented close to one quarter of all the British forces on American soil. Their weapons, 4,647 muskets, together with bayonets, cutlasses, and 72,000 rounds of ammunition, fell into American hands, as well as 42 cannon, more than 1,000 cannonballs, and dozens of barrels of gunpowder. For an army as starved of equipment as Gates’s, this feast was as welcome as the 5,791 enemy who were now their prisoners. But the wider implications of the victory made the news of Saratoga even more welcome.

  Within hours of receiving Gates’s report, Congress sent off a summary to Benjamin Franklin and his fellow ambassadors in France saying, “We rely on your wisdom and care to make the best and most immediate use of this intelligence to depress our enemies and produce essential aid to our cause in Europe.” In particular, news of the British surrender was to be employed to secure the “public acknowledgment of the Independence of these United States,” and to remind France and her allies “how essential European Aid must be to the final establishment and security of American Freedom and Independence.” A similar message went to American negotiators attempting to borrow money in the Netherlands.

  Franklin used the information well, but so, too, did the newspapers and a flood of private letters. Once news of Burgoyne’s capitulation reached Europe, neither French ministers nor Dutch bankers could mistake the fighting in North America for a short- lived rebellion. Within four months the conflict would be transformed into an international war.

  To express the overwhelming significance of Saratoga, Congress called for a day of thanksgiving to be celebrated throughout the United States on December 18. “Your Name Sir,” Henry Laurens assured Gates, “will be written in the breasts of the grateful Americans of the present Age & sent down to Posterity in Characters which will remain indelible when the Gold shall have changed its appearance.”

  In the elated atmosphere, it was impossible to deny General Gates anything. The delegates ordered a gold medal to be struck in his honor, and they passed a vote of thanks to him, to each of his two senior commanders, Benedict Arnold and Benjamin Lincoln, and to all the officers and men of his army. But one request stuck in the congressional craw, his wish to have his chief of staff, James Wilkinson, promoted to the brevet rank of brigadier general.

  The idea of a twenty-year-old general was startling in itself, but it also offended the principle that promotion should take place strictly on grounds of seniority, with rare exceptions being made for outstanding bravery on the battlefield. Wilkinson was no more than a staff officer who had never actually led troops in battle, and scores of more senior colonels were desperate to be considered for the next opening as a general. Yet he had unmistakably earned Gates’s admiration and trust—“I have not met with a more promising military genius,” the general declared unequivocally, and Wilkinson’s services were “of the [highest] importance to this army.”

  No one wanted to confront the Revolution’s savior head-on, but the question of Wilkinson’s promotion served as an excuse for Washington’s supporters, primarily from the south, to criticize Gates’s judgment on other matters. While they discussed the recommendation, Wilkinson was left to kick his heels in the narrow streets and crowded taverns of York. In a letter sent on November 1 to “My dear General and loved Friend,” he affected to be unconcerned by the delay to his promotion—“my hearty contempt of the follies of the world will shield me from such pitiful sensations”— but the rest of his message showed how closely he had been listening to the talk in Congress. Gates had failed to inform Washington of his victory, a deliberate breach of military protocol that amounted to insubordination, and this had aroused particular resentment among southerners. And Gates had left himself vulnerable through the lenient terms of surrender that he had offered to Burgoyne. “Excuse me,” Wilkinson ended, “had I loved you less, I should have been less free.”

  The “treaty of convention” signed by Burgoyne had not technically amounted to a surrender, and it had stipulated that his men were not to be treated as prisoners, but repatriated to Britain on condition that they did not again take up arms to fight the United States. This last requirement, releasing prisoners on parole, was common practice—hundreds of captured American soldiers had been set free on an equivalent understanding— but the sheer numbers involved at Saratoga caused consternation. Besides, once home, Burgoyne’s men would be assigned duties that would release thousands of other troops for service in America. Gates seemed to have let an enemy who was at his mercy wriggle away almost unscathed. South Carolina’s Henry Laurens voiced the southerners’ concern by suggesting that Gates had become “a little flattered” by Burgoyne and been “too polite to make [him] and his troops prisoners.”

  Colonel Wilkinson was summoned to explain how this had come about and, in doing so, demonstrated why Gates thought so highly of him. With the confidence of an officer who had seen the battlefield and conducted much of the negotiation in person, the young colonel pointed out that military necessity had dictated the terms offered by General Gates. Burgoyne’s forces were well entrenched in a strong defensive position, and another British army, four thousand strong, was approaching up the Hudson River threatening Gates’s supply lines. The situation made it essential to negotiate a quick surrender or to assault Burgoyne’s position. “Had an Attack been carried against Lt. General Burgoyne,” Wilkinson explained, “the dismemberment of our army must necessarily have been such as would have incapacitated it for further action [in] this Campaign. With our armies in Health, Vigour and Spirits, General Gates now awaits the commands of the Honourable Congress.”


  The New Englanders seized on Wilkinson’s masterly presentation. Not only did it clear Gates of incompetence and show him instead to be the master of a dangerous military situation, it offered Congress a way of circumventing his promise to repatriate British troops. Since Gates was not acting freely but under pressure from British attack, the United States need not feel honorbound to abide by the spirit of the agreement. Once the letter of convention was examined, the lawyers in Congress easily picked it apart to prevent repatriation.

  The next day, November 6, 1777, on the recommendation of the Board of War, the Continental Congress resolved, “That Colonel James Wilkinson, adjutant general in the northern army, in consideration of his services in that department, and being strongly recommended by General Gates as a gallant officer, and a promising military genius, and having brought the despatches to Congress giving an account of the surrender of Lieutenant General Burgoyne and his army on the 17 day of October last, be continued in his present employment, with a brevet of brigadier-general in the army of the United States.”

  Thus, at the age of twenty, James Wilkinson became a general. Brevet rank was temporary and confined to a particular campaign, but for the moment he was the youngest American-born general in the Continental Army. The opportunities that awaited him were almost unlimited.

  BY HORRIBLE SYMMETRY, on the very day James Wilkinson was made a general, Stirling passed on to the commander in chief an account of Wilkinson’s dinner- table boasting on the night of the great storm. Three days later, on November 4, General Washington wrote a terse note to Thomas Conway with the information that he knew of Conway’s comment to Gates about the country being ruined by “a weak General or bad Counsellors.”

  The new inspector general replied denying he had used the phrase, although the real one about the army not being “fit for general Action under its [present] Chiefs” was no better. Then with breathtaking arrogance, Conway observed patronizingly to Washington, “Your modesty is such that although your advice is commonly sound and proper, you have often been influenced by men who were not equal to you.” What might have remained a private quarrel became public when Conway sent Henry Laurens, president of Congress, both the original letter to Gates and this exchange with Washington. Alarmed by news that the Conway letter had been leaked to Washington, Mifflin begged Gates to keep his correspondence and the links between them secret, otherwise “your generosity and frank disposition . . . may injure your best friends.” Gates immediately began a furious search for the culprit—“No punishment is too severe for the wretch who betrayed me,” he declared, and subjected every member of his staff to questioning. Wilkinson had been delayed on his return from York by the need to see Nancy Biddle again, but in early December he was put through the same procedure. Wilkinson might have confessed at that point—Gates, he acknowledged, forgave people easily— but instead he professed utter outrage at the mere imputation of guilt.

  “[The situation] makes me the more unhappy,” an embarrassed Gates confided to Mifflin, “as a very valuable and polite officer was thrown into a situation which must increase his disgust.” But Wilkinson was not simply disgusted. To divert suspicions, he pointed the blame elsewhere. The bearer of Conway’s incriminating letter was Gates’s aide Lieutenant Colonel Robert Troup, and soon after it was delivered,Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s aide, had visited Gates’s camp. During this visit, Wilkinson suggested, Troup “might have incautiously conversed on the substance of General Conway’s letter with Colonel Hamilton.”

  Gates’s fatal mistake was to believe Wilkinson. In high indignation, he at once wrote to Washington to remonstrate with him for having acquired access to Gates’s private correspondence illicitly. “Those letters have been stealingly copied,” he protested, “but, which of them, when, or by whom, is to me, as yet, an unfathomable Secret.” To underline the seriousness of the charge, he declared that he intended to forward his letter to Congress so that with Washington’s help its members could discover the person responsible. “Crimes of that Magnitude ought not to remain unpunished,” he concluded sententiously.

  Everything about this communication was calamitous for Gates. The plural “letters” told Washington, who had not realized it till then, that Conway had been in contact with Gates more than once. The demand for help in tracking down the perpetrator revealed that he did not know who was really responsible for leaking the “weak General” sentence, while Washington did. Worst of all, Gates’s decision to involve Congress required Washington to do the same—“I am under the disagreeable necessity of returning my answer through the same channel”—so making public the connection between Gates and Conway. Neither then nor forty years later when he came to write his Memoirs did Wilkinson ever admit that he had done anything wrong. Instead he argued that he was justified in attempting to throw the blame elsewhere because Gates had “read [Conway’s] letter publicly in my presence.” Thus it was technically possible for either Troup or Hamilton to have overheard its contents.

  Washington’s reply must have come as a cold shock to Gates. No one had stolen the material, Washington wrote, it had been “communicated by Colonl. Wilkinson to Major McWilliams.” Furthermore, Wilkinson had passed it on so openly that “I considered the information as coming from yourself; and given with a friendly view to forewarn, and consequently forearm me, against a secret enemy [General Conway]. But in this, as in other matters of late, I found myself mistaken.”

  This devastating letter did not arrive in Albany until January 22, 1778, but from the moment Gates caught his commander in chief’s tone of mockery, he must have guessed the cabal had lost any remote chance of achieving its object. The Washington who had come close to despair in December after learning of Conway’s appointment might have been hassled into resignation. The Washington with morale high enough to make fun of his challenger was not going to be moved.

  The change was apparent from the groveling tone of Gates’s reply. He denied any friendship with Conway—“I never had any sort of intimacy, nor hardly the smallest acquaintance with him”; he claimed the “weak General” passage was “a wicked forgery . . . fabricated to answer the most selfish and wicked purposes”; and finally he declared that James Wilkinson was personally responsible for “sowing dissensions among the principal officers of the army, and rendering them odious to each other by false suggestions and forgeries.” It amounted, in Gates’s opinion, to “positive treason”—the first time the charge had been laid against Wilkinson, and unique in being the only occasion it was wholly unjustified.

  Sensibly, Wilkinson found it necessary to spend January 1778 inspecting fortresses in the western hills of New York. On his return to Albany at the end of the month, he learned that Gates had left to take up his post as president of the Board of War in York Town, and that he himself had been appointed, early in January, secretary to the board. There was also a letter from Stirling asking him to confirm the “weak General” quotation, since Conway had denied using it. Realizing at last that he had been outed, Wilkinson replied, acknowledging, “It is possible in the warmth of social intercourse, when the mind is relaxed and the heart unguarded, that obsevations may have elapsed which had not since occurred to me.”

  With what must have been a sense of foreboding, he then set off toward York, along the same path he had traveled in such glory in October. He reached York in the last week of February, and by then the Conway cabal was at an end—almost entirely as a result of Wilkinson’s disreputable behavior.

  By definition, a cabal is a secret intrigue, and when the bitter exchanges of Washington, Gates, and Conway were made public, most members of Congress were shocked by the maneuverings and hostility that had gone on behind the scenes. “I always before heard [General Conway] mentioned as having great Military Abilities, and this was all I had ever heard concerning him,” Abraham Clark, a New Jersey delegate, confessed. “The kind of Correspondence he carried on with General G[ates] was not known at the Time of his promotion. His Letters to General Washi
ngton is of late date. Was the business now to be done Congress would probably Act otherwise.”

  The Marquis de Lafayette liked to boast that at dinner on January 31 he had broken up the plot by forcing Gates and Mifflin to drink to Washington’s health, but in reality the publication of their letters in December and early January sealed their fate. Whatever their arguments about the effectiveness of the militia and the dangers of a standing army, the delegates all accepted that “dissention among the principle Officers of the Army must be very injurious to the Publick interest.” Combined with the protests delivered to Congress from nine generals against Conway’s promotion and from forty-seven colonels against Wilkinson’s, it rapidly destroyed all confidence in the ability of the cabal’s triumvirate to run the army.

  By mid-February, when Dr. William Gordon asked whether he had ever contemplated resignation, Washington felt able to brush the suggestion away, denying that anyone had “ever heard me drop an expression that had a tendency to resignation.” Soon afterward, Gates hauled up the white flag.

  “I earnestly hope no more of that time, so precious to the public, may be lost upon the subject of General Conway’s letter,” he wrote on February 19. “I solemnly declare that I am of no faction.” To which Washington replied magnanimously, “I am as averse to controversy as any Man,” and promised to bury the attempted coup “in silence and, as far as future events will permit, oblivion.”