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

by Andro Linklater

  The threat it posed became more real when Jay’s Treaty was ratified in June 1795, signaling the imminent withdrawal of British troops from the forts they occupied south of the Great Lakes. Once the distraction on its northern border had been removed, the United States became free to enforce its interests in the south. At the same time, the risk of an attack from France had suddenly increased following the invasion of Spain by French armies in 1795. In such circumstances, Louisiana became a legitimate target. From the standpoint of those in New Orleans, her most useful resource appeared to be the secret information and hidden influence of a senior American general.

  Wilkinson had already proved his usefulness in several specific ways. Although Carondelet mistakenly attached particular value to his role in undermining the George Rogers Clark expedition, the most valuable results came from the flow of intelligence he provided about U.S. military intentions and capability, and from the insights he offered about how they might be countered. The most obvious example was his recommendation to Miró to build a fort at New Madrid. Its construction immediately curbed U.S. expansion down the Mississippi and encouraged a surge of settlement into what would become Missouri, not just by Anglo- Americans but by more than a thousand Shawnees and Delawares, who were given land, as Gayoso explained, “with a view to their rendering us aid in case of war with the whites as well as with the Osages.” And as Carondelet found, the fort became increasingly useful as a jumping-off point for agents and couriers who needed to enter the United States.

  In June 1794, Wilkinson passed on General Wayne’s plan to rebuild Fort Massac, near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and strongly advised Spain to counter with an outpost of its own. In response, Gayoso ordered the construction of a stockade almost opposite the mouth of the Ohio. Although it never became a major defense post, Wilkinson’s insistence on the need for more Spanish fortifications on the Mississippi persuaded Carondelet to authorize the creation of a new fortress below New Madrid. In 1795, Gayoso negotiated the necessary transfer of land from the Chickasaws and in the fall traveled north to supervise the building of an ambitious new fort at Chickasaw Bluffs, the site of modern Memphis, Tennessee.

  In Carondelet’s eyes, however, the greatest prize remained the secession of Kentucky, which would in itself safeguard Louisiana. His interest had been aroused early in 1794 by a letter written by Harry Innes at Wilkinson’s instigation that suggested Kentuckians had grown disenchanted with a federal government that had taxed their whiskey for three years and still not secured free navigation of the Mississippi. In April 1795 the general himself added confirmatory evidence by mailing Carondelet a copy of the Kentucky Gazette containing letters from Innes and the state governor, Isaac Shelby, about Kentucky’s growing impatience to have the Mississippi opened to navigation. The possibility of detaching the state excited Caron-delet’s imagination in a way that blinded him to both the reality of the United States’ growing power and the deceitfulness of Agent 13.

  Yet clearly, Wilkinson’s information and advice had earned him such respect in New Orleans, it was difficult to ignore his suggestion. His standing was referred to in a memorandum prepared some years later by an outsider, a patriotic Frenchman, Joseph de Pontalba, who lived in Louisiana but looked forward eagerly to the moment when France again ruled the province. In the paper that he presented to Napoléon in 1800, Pontalba emphasized the pervasive influence exerted on the Spanish authorities “by a powerful inhabitant of Kentucky, who possesses much influence with his countrymen, and enjoys great consideration for the services he has rendered to the cause of liberty, when occupying high grades in the army of the United States; [but] who . . . has never ceased to serve Spain in all her views.”

  Based on his own experience, he pinpointed two essential priorities to be followed by whichever country held New Orleans— and Pontalba was certain this should be France. It must aim to secure the economic loyalties of Kentucky’s citizens by guaranteeing to buy their tobacco, and it should “renew the intelligences which the Government of Louisiana had with the individual of whom I have spoken.” So long as these rules were followed, Louisiana would become a source of prosperity, power, and “the most brilliant destinies” for France.

  But the most concrete tribute to Wilkinson’s value was Carondelet’s decision to make good the loss caused by Owens’s murder. Replying to Wilkinson in July 1795, he promised to send the general another $9,640 on top of the original $12,333. To encourage the renewal of the Spanish Conspiracy, Wilkinson’s friends were to have pensions as well—“You must not entertain the least doubt of the advantages they will derive,” Carondelet declared— and there existed a still more glittering prize. Carondelet could only hint at it, but an independent Kentucky, united with Tennessee and the Northwest Territory, would make a new Mississippi nation requiring its own president. “And G.W. can aspire to the same dignity in the western states that P.W. has in the eastern,” Carondelet suggested beguilingly. That the initials stood for General Wilkinson and President Washington respectively needed no elucidation. Over the next twenty years, the vision of a western United States was to occur in various forms to many people, not least to Thomas Jefferson and his vice president Aaron Burr, but it lodged most tenaciously in the mind of James Wilkinson.

  SPEED WAS ESSENTIAL if the conspiracy to bring about Kentucky’s secession was to succeed. Since Gayoso was already in New Madrid to supervise fort construction on the Mississippi, Carondelet promised that he would be available to confer with members of the Spanish Conspiracy. The latter were to come “authentically empowered by the State of Kentucky to treat with us secretly,” while Gayoso would be authorized on behalf of the Spanish to offer “full execution concerning the navigation of the Misisipi [sic].” Meanwhile Wilkinson could guarantee pensions of two thousand dollars to Innes, Sebastian, the Federalist William Murray, and George Nicholas—reputedly the wealthiest man in Kentucky.

  This proposal was delivered to Wilkinson, still isolated in Fort Washington, by Carondelet’s personal messenger, the resourceful Thomas Power, who came upriver in October 1795. Unfortunately for Power’s attempts at secrecy, his movements were reported to General Wayne. At a public dinner in Cincinnati, Wayne declared Power to be “a spy for the British, a spy for the Spanish, and a spy for somebody else.” No one doubted that the “somebody else” was James Wilkinson.

  It was not difficult to identify something alien in Power. Almost everyone knew him as a Spanish courier— Wilkinson himself referred to him as “the celebrated Power”—and none who met him more than once seems to have liked him. He apparently had no home life—“traveling was my ruling passion,” he admitted— and his letters have a voluble, petulant tone. Furious at being outed by Wayne, he denounced the spying accusation as “ungenerous, illiberal, wanton, groundless, cruel, false, stupid, base and contemptible.” Perhaps his sensitive, emotional nature made him a good spy—Carondelet certainly credited him with an exceptional “power of penetration,” and the secrets he picked up in his restless journeying made him valuable to several different employers.

  Despite the attention Wayne directed at him, Power smuggled a letter from Wilkinson to New Orleans in November 1795. Carondelet lost no time in passing its most important point on to Madrid. “I shall watch all the movements which the army of Gen’l Wayne may undertake,” he told the royal council, “whereof W[ilkinson] will punctually inform me, as I have just had a letter from him on this subject in which he assures me that he will be informed of all that may be done.”

  Confident that Wilkinson intended to deliver both information and Kentucky itself, Carondelet authorized Power to return north with the promised $9,640 and to contact all those concerned with the Spanish Conspiracy.

  WILKINSON’S PROMISE TO PROVIDE informaton on the army’s movements signaled that he was no longer to be kept in isolation. Wayne had not changed his mind about Wilkinson’s treachery, but after three years’ service in the field, Wayne needed rest. Physically, he was suffering from
recurring stomach pains that were described as “gout of the stomach,” a diagnosis invalid in modern medicine, which identifies gout as the crystallization of uric acid in the joints. The association of sharp pain with high levels of stress suggests an ulcer. He was overdue for leave, and Congress wanted him to testify about his military and diplomatic achievements in the west.

  With deep reluctance Wayne finally departed for Philadelphia in December 1795, having left Wilkinson as acting head of the army. His subordinate’s power, however, was severely circumscribed. Wayne had summoned him to Fort Greeneville and coldly presented him with a list of instructions detailing exactly how he was to supervise the duties and movements of the Legion. On the advice of Pickering, secretary of war, Wilkinson was “enjoined not to make any the least alteration to them.”

  This attempt to limit his authority— the final insult in a year of humiliations— ratcheted Wilkinson’s hatred of his superior to a new level of toxicity. To Harry Innes, he made it clear that he was ready to risk dismissal to bring Wayne down: “This accomplished, you will most probably have me for a neighbour [in Frankfort], as I am tired of the shackles of Military Life.”

  His first step, however, was to stretch the restrictions on his command. Within days of Wayne’s departure for Philadelphia, Wilkinson issued a general order to the army announcing his “determination to inculcate, to enforce and to maintain a Uniform System of Subordination and Discipline through all Ranks, without Partiality, Prejudice, Favor or Affection.” The implication, that Mad Anthony Wayne had allowed the army’s command structure to be undermined by factionalism, was cleverly judged, since the quarrel between the two generals gave it a basis in reality. Even officers suspicious of Wilkinson supported a return to impartial discipline.

  He followed up his announcement with a prolonged tour of inspection of the line of outposts that stretched to Fort Wayne, as though he needed space after his confinement in Fort Washington. Before he left, orders for rations and pay and clothing sprayed out from Fort Greeneville. Captain Shaumburgh was hurried north to negotiate the handover of Detroit from the British, Colonel Hamtramck was commanded to bring about a peaceful solution to a quarrel with the Chippewa in his area, and supplies and dollars were despatched to Fort Massac to feed and pay the garrison now commanded by Captain Zebulon Pike, father of the future explorer.

  Wherever he went, Wilkinson deliberately spread his influence at the ex- pense of Wayne’s. But as always his chief weapon lay in Congress. The opportunity to strike was provided by a seismic shift in the relationship between Spain and the United States.

  THE CHANGE WAS CAUSED by the war in Europe. In July 1795 a French army came within striking distance of Madrid, forcing Carlos IV’s government to make a hasty peace with France. By the logic of power politics, this set Spain against Britain, forcing Spain to make a new alliance in North America as protection against a possible British attack on Louisiana. The price of friendship with the United States was high, an agreement to open the Mississippi to the flatboats of Kentucky farmers. In October 1795, the Treaty of San Lorenzo was signed between the two nations. It promised not only that the river would be open to trade, but that a clearly defined frontier would be run along the thirty- first parallel between the United States and the Spanish colonies of East and West Florida.

  No one was more directly affected by the treaty than the governor of Louisiana, who had invested thousands of dollars in a conspiracy to detach Kentucky from a country that was now Spain’s ally. Defiantly Carondelet continued with his plan, sending Thomas Power from New Orleans with the promised $9,640 for Wilkinson.

  The arrival of Carondelet’s messenger in May 1796 should have caused the acting head of the army some embarrassment. But in answer to Power’s formal request to travel to Fort Greeneville for their meeting, Wilkinson answered grandly— and conveniently for someone acting as Carondelet’s eyes—that since the United States was at peace with everyone, “the officers of the American army have no concealments to make, and therefore our camps and our forts are free to the ingress and egress of all persons who deport themselves with propriety.”

  Catering to the general’s taste for expensive living, Power had brought a gift of “segars from Havana,” but what cheered Wilkinson’s spirits more was the news that the money promised by Carondelet had finally arrived in the north and was waiting for him at New Madrid. The cash, as Power confided to Gayoso, was urgently needed because of “the [financial] embarrassments of gen. Wilkinson . . . For a long time past he has been expecting this money, the delay of which has been the cause of much trouble to him, involving him in great difficulties.” To escape detection and avoid the risk of another murder, he and Power agreed that the dollars should be packed in barrels of sugar and coffee ostensibly being sent for sale in Louisville with no more than a thousand coins in each barrel so that the extra weight would not be noticed.

  Power was back in New Madrid within ten days of leaving Fort Greeneville, but without written authorization from Wilkinson to pick up the money on his behalf. This minor problem, caused by the general’s reluctance to entrust compromising material to someone so liable to be searched, had large consequences. Since it would have taken months to obtain permission from New Orleans, Colonel Tomás Portell, commandant of the fort at New Madrid, agreed to make the handover anyway, but he and Power wrote formal explanations for Carondelet to show why they had ignored his instructions. Thus of all the payments Wilkinson received from Spain, none was better documented than this sum of $9,640, and none would figure more prominently in the accusations leveled against him.

  Yet it was already clear to Wilkinson at least that the San Lorenzo treaty had snuffed out any lingering prospect of Kentucky’s secession. Granted their long-held wish, the western settlers no longer had any motive for leaving the Union. That was the assumption made in Philadelphia, and accepted by Madrid. In New Orleans, Natchez, and New Madrid, however, the colonial administration thought otherwise. For Carondelet and Gayoso, the Spanish Conspiracy remained alive, and neither had any intention of abandoning the Mississippi forts built on Wilkinson’s recommendation to limit American expansion. Having fortified and garrisoned the Chickasaw Bluffs post, Gayoso even went on to construct an armed stockade almost opposite the mouth of the Ohio itself. In the summer of 1796, Carondelet wrote explicitly to Benjamin Sebastian, and the other members of the conspiracy, “It may be confidently asserted, without incurring the reproach of presumption, that his Catholic Majesty will not carry the above mentioned treaty into execution.”

  Sebastian, who personally worked on details of the conspiracy with both Gayoso and Carondelet during the first half of 1796, was rewarded with a pension and was authorized to offer $100,000 to the usual list of “notables” who could help bring about secession. As the linchpin of the entire conspiracy, Wilkinson was to be recompensed still more highly, not simply with fame and the governorship of the future Mississippi republic, but with the solid inducement of one hundred thousand acres in Illinois.

  SECURE IN THE KNOWLEDGE that $9,640 was waiting for him in New Madrid, Wilkinson was more concerned with the opportunity that suddenly presented itself of destroying General Anthony Wayne. Taken with the two other treaties of 1795—the Jay agreement establishing good relations with Britain and the Greeneville treaty with the western confederation—San Lorenzo left the United States without an obvious enemy, and, as Wilkinson’s allies adamantly insisted, without the need for a large army commanded by a major general. With the support of Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party, the House voted in April 1796 for an army of two thousand led by a brigadier general. The issue of personalities loomed so large that Chauncey Goodrich, a Federalist congressman from Connecticut, called it a plot “to get rid of General Wayne and place the army in the hands of a Jacobin and what is worse a western incendiary.”

  The president, however, still clung to his vision of an inclusive United States that depended on a large army. In a paper presented to Congress in Februar
y, Timothy Pickering, the secretary of war, declared the Legion to be essential “to preserve peace with the Indians, and to protect theirs and the public lands.” The pendulum began to swing back, and helped by Wayne’s presence in Philadelphia, the Federalist majority in the Senate voted in May to keep the major general and the Legion. Since money had to be saved, they would instead abolish Wilkinson’s rank. Suddenly Wayne seemed about to win. As the heat of a Washington summer grew intolerable, however, a compromise deal was hammered out that reduced the army but retained both generals until the military budget was discussed again the following year.

  Nevertheless, the contest between the two men remained in the balance, with Wilkinson acutely vulnerable to any revelation about his Spanish connections. That same summer, Wilkinson became aware of the widening circle of Kentuckians contacted by Power as part of the conspiracy. Fearful that someone would mention the name of the ringleader, Wilkinson pleaded with Gayoso, “For the love of God, my friend, enjoin greater secrecy and caution in all our concerns . . . Never suffer my name to be written or spoken. The suspicion of Washington is wide awake.”

  Not only was Spanish security lax, but the barrels of money in New Madrid that were due to come up the Ohio in July or August were lethal evidence of his treachery. The danger of discovery was underlined when one of Wilkinson’s messengers was arrested as he returned from New Madrid by the commander of Fort Massac, Captain Zebulon Pike. With flattery, good humor, and the promise of promotion, Wilkinson cajoled Pike into releasing the messenger. The captain duly became a major, and the friendship forged in such unlikely conditions ensured that a few years later his son, Zebulon Pike the explorer, would become Wilkinson’s right-hand man. But the incident showed that any boat coming up the river was liable to be stopped and searched.