An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson
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Sending the letter and the newspapers on to Madrid, Miró added his own balanced view of what had happened. “You will find an account of the bold act which General Wilkinson has ventured upon, in presenting his first memorial in a public convention,” he told Valdes. “In so doing, he has so completely bound himself [to us], that, should he not be able to obtain the separation of Kentucky from the United States, it has become impossible for him to live in it, unless he has suppressed, which is possible, certain passages which might injure him.”
That delicate cocktail of hope and distrust became the hallmark of Wilkinson and Miró’s relationship. Each liked, exploited, and was compelled by political and financial necessity to forgive the other. “I am aware that it may be possible that his intention is to enrich himself at our expense, by inflating us with hopes and promises which he knows to be vain,” Miró acknowledged to Valdes. “Nevertheless, I have determined to humor him.”
On his side, Wilkinson always assumed that his efforts to deceive were no more than those practiced on him by the governor and Navarro. Or as he put it in his autobiography, “It is but reasonable to presume, that they had duties and obligations to consult as well as myself; and . . . it was fair that they should play back upon me my own game, to the best advantage.” In fact, apart from taking a cut of Wilkinson’s profits, Miró handled Wilkinson with remarkable integrity, noting his failures and weaknesses, but never cheating or blackmailing him. From this uneven base grew an astonishingly firm friendship, the most enduring of Wilkinson’s oddly dependent relationships, and one that seamlessly evolved into that between spy and handler.
UNDER THE LAYERS OF DECEPTION that Wilkinson was beginning to practice with growing ease lay unavoidable truths. The first was his financial extravagance. The second was the realization that his one hope of economic rescue lay in New Orleans. The third was that others wanted to take his place in Spanish affections. All these were thrown into sharp focus by the response of the royal council in Madrid to his memorial.
No direct comment was sent to Miró, but in May 1788, Spain’s chief minister, José, Count of Floridablanca, had instructed the Spanish minister in Philadelphia, Diego de Gardoqui, of a change in official strategy. The Mississippi would remain closed, but Spain should boost the population of its North American colonies by trying “to attract to our side the inhabitants of the Ohio and Mississippi.” In response, Gardoqui became an enthusiast for inducing Americans to migrate to Louisiana and Natchez by offering them free land, access to the river, and religious toleration.
All at once Wilkinson’s privileged position was threatened by the readiness of other prominent Americans to take advantage of Gardoqui’s offer. George Rogers Clark, the hero of the capture of Vincennes from the British, asked for permission to settle in Louisiana, as did Friedrich von Steuben and Daniel Boone, while John Sevier, victor of Kings Mountain in the south and founder of the short- lived Franklin colony, assured Gardoqui that the settlers in eastern Tennessee were “unanimous in their vehement desire to form an alliance and treaty of commerce with Spain, and put themselves under her protection.” In December 1788, Wilkinson’s own partner Isaac Dunn hurried into Frankfort with news that Gardoqui had approved a proposal by Colonel George Morgan to settle one hundred thousand people on several million acres in Louisiana. His project had already reached the stage of receiving permission to create a town on the Mississippi that its owner called New Madrid.
As a result, every word of Wilkinson’s letter to Miró in February 1789—and the lies about the convention made up only a small part—was designed to demonstrate his unique usefulness and loyalty to Spain’s interests. Bundled up with his writing was a letter from his old commanding officer, General Arthur St. Clair. It had been sent to Dunn and described St. Clair’s distress at hearing that “our friend Wilkinson” was a leader of the Kentucky secessionists, whose goal “would completely ruin this country.” Unaware that Dunn was part of the conspiracy, St. Clair pleaded, “Should there be any foundation for these reports, for God’s sake, make use of your influence to detach Wilkinson from that party.” This was proof, Wilkinson confided to Miró, “that the part which I play in our great enterprise, and the dangers to which I am exposed for the service of his Catholic Majesty, are [publicly] known.”
As though this were not enough, Wilkinson also told the Spanish governor that in November 1788 he had been contacted by John Connolly, a British spy sent to investigate the loyalties of western settlers by Lord Dorchester, governor of Canada. Connolly’s cover was the pretense of trying to recover Kentucky properties confiscated during the war, but it was blown as soon as he entered the newly established Northwest Territory beyond the Ohio River. “My Information is, that he is sent to tamper with the People of Kentuckey and induce them to throw themselves into the Arms of Great Britain,” St. Clair, the territorial governor, informed John Jay in Philadelphia, “. . . [and] if that cannot be brought about, to stimulate them to Hostilities against the Spaniards, and at [any] rate to detach them from the united States.”
Connolly had visited Wilkinson expecting him to be sympathetic and promised British money, ammunition, and ships to help the Kentuckians “open the navigation of the Mississippi.” But by Wilkinson’s account, instead of welcoming an insurrection that was both anti- Spanish and anti-American, he made Connolly the victim of an audacious sting. “I employed a hunter, who feigned attempting his life,” Wilkinson boasted to Miró. “As I hold the commission of a Civil Judge, it was, of course, to be my duty to protect him against the pretended murderer, whom I caused to be arrested and held in custody. I availed myself of this circumstance to communicate to Connelly [sic] my fear of not being able to answer for the security of his person, and I expressed my doubts whether he could escape with his life. It alarmed him so much, that he begged me to give him an escort to conduct him out of our territory, which I readily assented to.” In return, Connolly supposedly promised to keep Wilkinson informed of British plots against Louisiana.
The story is not entirely credible, and no evidence suggests that Miró took at face value, even though Wilkinson promised that he wrote “as a good Spaniard.” But the reminder that Spain could not afford to ignore Kentucky’s disaffected settlers served Miró’s purpose. Convinced that the threat they posed to Louisiana had to be neutralized, he regarded Gardoqui’s intervention as a piecemeal solution. His preferred strategy remained that put forward in Wilkinson’s memorial. That plan was Miró’s plan, just as Wilkinson was Miró’s man, and the Louisiana governor still pressed Madrid for a favorable response.
ADDING URGENCY TO Wilkinson’s appeal was a misfortune that had blasted his first hopes of growing rich from trade. In September 1788, the Speedwell, the ship carrying the cargo of luxuries that Clark, Dunn, and Wilkinson intended to sell to Kentuckians, left New Orleans. Its voyage upriver was slow, and she had only just entered the Ohio River in November. There she was caught by ice that formed unseasonably early that winter. Before her precious cargo could be off- loaded, the hull was crushed, and she sank to the bottom with Wilkinson’s investment of more than $6,000.
To recoup the expense, he assembled another, larger fleet to take goods down the Mississippi. Short of funds, he was forced to borrow from wealthy speculators such as John Lewis of Louisville, and the boats were sent south as soon as the ice began to break in the spring of 1789. When they arrived in New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana—“the man I love and the friend I can trust”—immediately agreed to buy 235,000 pounds of Wilkinson’s tobacco, “on the grounds” as Miró informed Madrid, “that it was important to keep the General contented.”
To calm Wilkinson’s fears that he was being displaced, Miró also found time in his fourteen-hour working day to write and assure him “that I still continue to hold you as the principal actor in our favor,” and to submit for his consideration Sevier’s proposal that the settlers in Tennessee should become Spanish subjects. “I hope that, gathering all the information which you may deem necessar
y,” Miró continued, “you will give me your opinion on this affair, in order that I may shape my course accordingly.” He signed himself “your most affectionate friend.”
Despite this reassurance, Wilkinson felt it necessary to see Miró in person and in June 1789 followed his boats down to New Orleans. He arrived to discover that his trading ambitions had suffered a second devastating blow. His partner, Isaac Dunn, had killed himself days earlier from despair at his wife’s infidelity and his own debts. Later, Wilkinson estimated his losses from the tragedy to have amounted to ten thousand dollars. He may have exaggerated, but not by much. At the end of the 1789 season, when Joseph Ballinger, a courier from New Orleans, arrived with two barrels of silver to pay the farmers of Lincoln County for the tobacco they had entrusted to Wilkinson, there was not enough to cover what was owed them. Their anger and abuse began the erosion of Wilkinson’s popularity in Kentucky.
The financial loss made him still more dependent on Miró’s goodwill, but to his alarm the royal council in Spain showed itself hostile to his secessionist plans. Its first direct reaction to his memorial was only delivered to New Orleans early in 1789. Both the eighteen-month delay and the woolly quality of the response help to explain Spain’s inability to deal with the swiftly changing events in the Mississippi basin. Demonstrating its failure to understand the central point of Wilkinson and Miró’s strategy, that access to the river was the key to political influence in the region, the council declared that the Mississippi should be opened to American trade, subject to a mere 15 percent duty on goods sold. Although this eliminated much of the settlers’ incentive to put themselves under Spanish rule, the council also declared that migration to Louisiana was to be encouraged. Finally, in a direct rebuff to Wilkinson and Miró, a ban was placed on any help being given to Kentucky’s secessionist movement.
The need to counter the damage of this new policy kept Wilkinson in New Orleans during the summer of 1789. Amid efforts to disentangle the legal mess left by Dunn’s suicide, he and Miró spent three months discussing the proper strategy for Spain to follow. The outcome was a second memorial, written in September. That it was a joint collaboration, not just with Miró but with the free-trade philosophy of Navarro, was apparent from a striking passage extolling free enterprise over Spain’s mercantile economy that restricted trade to its own colonies and ships: “Our navigation being confined at present to Spanish vessels, and our commerce to a few Spanish ports and islands, rivalry [i.e., competition], which is the vital principle of commerce, is dead, and the immediate consequences follow; our merchandise in dry goods [i.e., textiles and clothing] is now sold at from 75 per cent. to 150 per cent. more than in North America, and the freightage of one cask of tobacco from New Orleans to any part of Europe costs as much as four casks from any part of the United States to the same place.”
Their solution was to urge the council to make New Orleans a free port open to all trade from the sea, although river traffic would still be restricted. But by now the United States had both free enterprise, and, since the inauguration of George Washington as president in April, a democratic, federal government that “although untried and of doubtful success,” as Wilkinson grudgingly put it, “has inspired the people in general with the loftiest hopes.” Nevertheless, he believed a window of opportunity existed before this new, formidable entity could unify the conflicting ambitions of east and west. “To seize this interval,” he declared, “and to take advantage of the occasion are certainly the true policy of Spain, are my longings, are my desire.”
Some requirements remained unchanged—the Mississippi had to be closed, immigration encouraged, influential men given commercial advantages to illustrate the advantage of Spain’s protection—but the secessionist cause now had to overcome the effects of U.S. patronage. Many of Kentucky’s “notables,” once loudly in favor of independence, had fallen silent after being appointed as federal judges, revenue officers, or tax officials, so Spain should be ready to buy their loyalty back and pay them “to accomplish the above- mentioned separation and independence from the United States.” For a cost of twenty thousand dollars a year, Wilkinson estimated, Spain could procure the support of the most influential men in Kentucky. The alternative, as he bluntly predicted, was that “instead of forming a barrier for Louisiana and Mexico, [the settlers] will busy themselves in conquering the one and attacking the other.”
In a separate document, he provided a list of twenty-two people who should be offered bribes. Nearly all were either friends, such as Harry Innes, who, although a federal judge, “would much prefer to receive a pension from New Orleans than one from New York,” or enemies he wanted to buy off, such as Humphrey Marshall, once his partner but now suing him over a failed land deal, and thus “a villain without principles, very artful and could be very troublesome.” As though conscious that he was serving his own purposes, Wilkinson stressed his zeal and loyalty to Spain’s interest. In one passage, he suggested openly switching sides and asked Madrid to grant him “a military commission, because I know that the force of my genius inclines to the science of war, and that in this capacity I can afford the strongest proofs of fidelity, loyalty, and zeal.”
Again the royal council failed to provide a speedy response. To its members, it must have seemed clear that the bribery proposal was designed for Wilkinson’s own benefit, an inference reinforced by his request for a loan of seven thousand dollars. But as a soldier, Miró would have understood the significance of Wilkinson’s request for a Spanish commission. Armies required oaths of loyalty. There were no gray areas about service in a foreign force. It was not like politics. His friend had crossed a line. He was prepared for treachery.
James Wilkinson’s long absence in New Orleans left Nancy distraught once more. “My anxiety about him is so great that I scarce have Composure enough to write,” she told her elderly father that fall, “not a foot steps quick into the House but agitates me, his Continual absence keeps my Mind on the rack.” In 1788 the family had moved from the wilderness back to the comparative civilization of Lexington, whose population was 834 in the 1790 census. “I like living in Lexington far better than in the Country,” she wrote soon after the move. “The Society is much better.” Being close to the store made it easier to receive the bags of tea, coffee, and sugar that were sent from Philadelphia—“I really think I could do better without my dinner than my Tea & Coffee,” she declared—and goods such as earthenware cups and saucers could be bought to replace all the ones the family broke, although she still had to ask her father to send the delicate chinaware that she preferred.
Yet the taste of these comforts only made her hungrier to see her family in Pennsylvania again. “I can’t help wishing more and more every day to Visit you, & my dear children seem to join me most ardently in my wish.” Loyal to her husband, she did not allow herself to write of her deepest feelings about life on the frontier, but her children became her mouthpiece. In revealing asides, she wrote of her eldest son, John, exclaiming that “if he ever gets out of Kentucky he never will return if he can prevent it,” and of two- year- old Joseph crying bitterly for the grandfather he had never seen.
Her health remained delicate. A baby had been stillborn in early 1789 while Wilkinson was absent in Frankfort loading tobacco in the boats, and Nancy was slow to recover. A doctor had suggested that the fresher river air by the Ohio might do her good, and just before he departed for New Orleans, Wilkinson bought a half- acre lot in Louisville from an unreliable French- born speculator named Michael La Cassagne. Louisville was only a quarter of the size of Lexington, but from Nancy’s point of view it had the advantage of being on the Ohio, the main line of communication with the east. But like her hopes of seeing her family back in Philadelphia, the move would happen only if they had the money. In September 1789 when she began to expect her husband back, she wrote optimistically, “I think it Probable we shall spend Part of this Winter at the falls [Louisville], however it will depend greatly on My Jimmy’s Business.”
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ENSHACKLED BY DEBT
JAMES WILKINSON HAD TWO WEAKNESSES as a businessman— his readiness to mistake his gross profit for net gain, and his reluctance to prepare for the worst. On his 1787 voyage, when he had stayed so long in New Orleans, expenses ate up all but $377 of the $10,185 his cargo earned. The following year, tobacco sales brought in $16,372, but expenses, including almost $1,000 for boatmen’s wages, left only $6,251 in silver Mexican dollars for Abner Dunn, brother of his partner, to bring north. In 1789, Wilkinson sent down 342 hogsheads of tobacco, and although almost one third was found to be so rotten it could not be brought to market, the remainder sold for $18,131. Yet once Clark, an investor in the cargo, had been paid his share, Miró had taken his $3,000 cut, and Nolan had paid out other sums, just $49 was left in the Wilkinson and Dunn account. There was nothing to invest in next season’s trade. Whatever credit Wilkinson still had in Kentucky absolutely depended on the goodwill of New Orleans. Without Miró he could not survive.