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

by Andro Linklater

  Earle, Robert G. “The Taverns of Colonial Philadelphia.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 43, no. 1 (1953).

  Ekirch, Arthur A. “The Idea of a Citizen Army.” Military Affairs 17, no. 1 (Spring 1953).

  Folch, Vincent. “An Interview of Governor Folch with General Wilkinson.” American Historical Review 10 ( July 1905).

  Hay, Thomas R. “Letters of Mrs. Ann Biddle Wilkinson from Kentucky, 1788–1789.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 56 ( January 1932): 33–55.

  ———. “Some Reflections on the Career of General James Wilkinson.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 21 (March 1935): 471–94.

  Herrera, Ricardo A. “Self-Governance and the American Citizen as Soldier, 1775– 1861.” Journal of Military History 65, no. 1 ( January 2001).

  Hollon, Eugene W. “Zebulon Montgomery Pike and the Wilkinson- Burr Conspiracy.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 91, no. 5 (December 3, 1947).

  Horsmann, Reginald. “American Indian Policy in the Old Northwest, 1783–1812.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 18 ( January 1961): 35–53.

  Ireland, Owen S. “The Ethnic- Religious Dimension of Pennsylvania Politics, 1778– 1779.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 30, no. 3 ( July 1973).

  Jackson, Donald. “Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, and the Reduction of the United States Army.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124, no. 2 (April 29, 1980).

  Johnson, Leland R. “The Doyle Mission to Massac, 1794.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 73, no. 1 (Spring 1980).

  Kimball, Jeffrey. “The Battle of Chippawa: Infantry Tactics in the War of 1812.” Military Affairs 31, no. 4 (Winter 1967–68).

  McDowell, George T. “General James Wilkinson in the Knickerbocker History of New York.” Modern Language Notes 41, no. 6 ( June 1926).

  Murphy, William J., Jr. “John Adams: The Politics of the Additional Army, 1798– 1800.” New England Quarterly 52, no. 2 ( June 1979).

  Nelson, Paul David. “Citizen Soldiers or Regulars: The Views of American General Officers on the Military Establishment, 1775–1781.” Military Affairs 43, no. 3 (October 1979).

  ———. “Legacy of Controversy: Gates, Schuyler, and Arnold at Saratoga, 1777.” Military Affairs 37, no. 2 (April 1973).

  Prucha, Francis Paul. “The United States Army as Viewed by British Travelers, 1825– 1860.” Military Affairs 17 (Autumn 1953).

  Quaife, M. M. “General James Wilkinson’s Narrative of the Fallen Timbers Campaign.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 16, no. 1 ( June 1929).

  Radbill, Kenneth A. “Quaker Patriots: The Leadership of Owen Biddle and John Lacey.” Pennsylvania History 45, no. 1 ( January 1978).

  Reps, John. “New Madrid on the Mississippi.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 18, no. 1 (March 1959).

  Royster, Charles. “ ‘The Nature of Treason’: Revolutionary Virtue and American Reactions to Benedict Arnold.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 36, no. 2 (April 1979).

  Schaffel, Kenneth. “The American Board of War, 1776–1781.” Military Affairs 50, no. 4 (October 1986).

  Shepherd, William R. “Papers Bearing on James Wilkinson’s Relations with Spain, 1787–1816.” American Historical Review 9, no. 4 ( July 1904).

  ———. “Wilkinson and the Beginnings of the Spanish Conspiracy.” American Historical Review 9 (April 1904).

  Skelton, William B. “The Confederation’s Regulars: A Social Profile of Enlisted Service in America’s First Standing Army.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 46, no. 4 (October 1989).

  ———. “Social Roots of the American Military Profession: The Officer Corps of America’s First Peacetime Army, 1784–1789.” Journal of Military History 54, no. 4 (October 1990).

  Smithers, Harriet. “English Abolitionism and the Annexation of Texas.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 32 (1929).

  Stewart, Donald H. “The Press and Political Corruption During the Federalist Administrations.” Political Science Quarterly 67, no. 3 (September 1952).

  Szaszdi, Adam. “Governor Folch and the Burr Conspiracy.” Florida Historical Quarterly 38, no. 3 ( January 1960).

  Tapson, Alfred J. “The Sutler and the Soldier.” Military Affairs 21, no. 4 (Winter 1957).

  Turner, Frederick J. “Documents on the Blount Conspiracy, 1795–1797.” American Historical Review 10, no. 3 (April 1905).

  Upham, George Baxter. “Burgoyne’s Great Mistake.” New England Quarterly 3, no. 4 (October 1930).

  Wade, Arthur. “A Military Offspring of the American Philosophical Society.” Military Affairs 38, no. 3 (October 1974).

  Wheeler, Joseph Towne. “The Maryland Press, 1777–1790.” Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1938.

  Whitaker, Arthur P. “Another Dispatch from the United States Consulate in New Orleans.” American Historical Review 38, no. 2 ( January 1933).

  ———. “The Commerce of Louisiana and the Floridas at the End of the Eighteenth Century.” Hispanic American Historical Review 8, no. 2 (May 1928).

  ———. “Harry Innes and the Spanish Intrigue: 1794–1795.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 15, no. 2 (September 1928).

  ———. “James Wilkinson’s First Descent to New Orleans in 1787.” Hispanic American Historical Review 8, no. 1 (February 1928).

  ———. “Spanish Intrigue in the Old Southwest: An Episode, 1788–89.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 12, no. 2 (September 1925).

  Wilkinson, James. “Letters of Gen. James Wilkinson Addressed to Dr. James Hutchinson, of Philadelphia.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 12 (1888): 55–64. ———. “A Paper Prepared and Read by His Great-Grandson James Wilkinson.” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1918).

  Wood, Gordon S. “The Real Treason of Aaron Burr.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 143, no. 2 ( June 1999).

  Wright, Louis B., and Julia Macleod. “William Eaton’s Relations with Aaron Burr.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 31, no. 4 (March 1945).

  BOOKS

  Abernethy, Thomas P. Western Lands and the American Revolution. New York: Appleton-Century, 1937.

  Adams, Henry. History of the United States of America under the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. 9 vols. New York: Scribner, 1921.

  Aron, Stephen. How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

  Boyd, Thomas A. Mad Anthony Wayne. New York: Scribner, 1929.

  Burnard, Trevor. Creole Gentlemen: The Maryland Elite, 1691–1776. New York and London: Routledge, 2002.

  Clark, Thomas D., and John W. Guice. Frontiers in Conflict: The Old Southwest, 1795– 1830. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.

  Crackel, Theodore J. Mr. Jefferson’s Army: Political and Societal Reform of the Military Establishment, 1801–9. New York and London: New York University Press, 1987.

  Cress, Lawrence Delbert. Citizens in Arms: The Army and the Militia in American Society to the War of 1812. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.

  ———. “Reassessing American Military Requirements, 1783–1807.” In Against All Enemies: Interpretations of American Military History from Colonial Times to the Present, ed. Kenneth J. Hagan and William R. Roberts. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986.

  Cronon, William, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin, eds. Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992.

  Davis, W. H. The History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 1905.

  Dunaway, Wilma A. “Speculators and Settler Capitalists: Unthinking the Mythology about Appalachian Landholdings, 1790–1860.” In Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Mary Beth Pudup, Dwight Billings, and Altina Waller. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

  Faragher, John M. Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinoi
s Prairie. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

  Ferling, John. Almost a Miracle. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

  ———. A Wilderness of Miseries: War and Warriors in Early America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.

  Ford, Paul L., ed. The Works of Thomas Jefferson. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904–5.

  Foster, Thomas, ed. The Collected Works of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796–1810. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003.

  Frothingham, Thomas G. Washington: Commander- in- chief. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930.

  Gayarré, Charles. History of Louisiana. New York: William J. Widdleton, 1867.

  Guy and Sheridan, eds. Contested Ground: Comparative Frontiers on the Northern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998.

  Halliday, E. M. Understanding Thomas Jefferson. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

  Hay, Thomas R., and M. R. Werner. The Admirable Trumpeter: A Biography of General James Wilkinson. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1941.

  Holmes, Jack D. L. Gayoso:The Life of a Spanish Governor in the Mississippi Valley, 1789– 1799. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965.

  Hudleston, F. J., Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne: Misadventures of an English General in the Revolution. Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing, 1927.

  Jacobs, James Ripley. The Beginning of the U.S. Army, 1783–1812. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947.

  ———. Tarnished Warrior: Major- General James Wilkinson. New York: Macmillan, 1938.

  Kennedy, Roger G. Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

  Kohn, Richard H. Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802. New York and London: Free Press, 1975.

  Kukla, Jon. A Wilderness So Immense:The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America. New York: Knopf, 2003.

  Land, Aubrey C. Colonial Maryland— A History. Mishawaka, IN: Kraus International, 1981.

  Linklater, Andro. The Fabric of America: How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged Our National Identity. New York: Walker Books, 2007.

  ———. Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy. New York: Walker Books, 2002.

  Mackesy, Piers. The War for America: 1775–1783. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

  Masteron, William Henry. William Blount. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954.

  Mathews, Catherine van C. Andrew Ellicott: His Life and Letters. New York: Grafton Press, 1908.

  McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

  Melish, John. Travels in the United States 1806, 1807 & 1809. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1811.

  Merrell, James. Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.

  Middleton, Arthur Pierce. Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era. Newport, VA: Mariners’ Museum, 1953.

  Nelson, Paul David. Anthony Wayne, Soldier of the Early Republic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

  ———. General Horatio Gates: A Biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976.

  Nobles, Gregory H. American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest. New York: Hill & Wang, 1997.

  Prucha, Paul. The Sword of the Republic: The US Army on the Frontier, 1783–1846. New York: Macmillan, 1969.

  Quimby, Robert S. The U.S. Army in the War of 1812: An Operational and Command Study. Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997.

  Randall, Willard S. Benedict Arnold, Patriot and Traitor. New York: William Morrow, 1990.

  Richards, Leonard L. Shays’s Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final Battle. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

  Robertson, David B. The Constitution and America’s Destiny. St. Louis: University of Missouri, 2005.

  Roosevelt, Theodore. The Winning of the West. 3 vols. New York: Putnam, 1894–96.

  Rutman, Darrett B., ed. The Old Dominion: Essays for Thomas Perkins Abernethy. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1964.

  Sakolski, A. M. The Great American Land Bubble:The Amazing Story of Land-Grabbing, Speculations, and Booms from Colonial Days to the Present Time. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932.

  Scott, Winfield. Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott. 2 vols. New York: Sheldon, 1864.

  Shepherd, William R. Guide to the Materials for the History of the United States in Spanish Archives. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1907.

  Skelton, William B. An American Profession of Arms:The Army Officer Corps, 1784–1861.

  Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1992.

  Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

  Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950, 1978.

  Stagg, J. C. A. Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

  Szatmary, David. Shays’ Rebellion:The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980.

  Taylor, Alan. The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf, 2006.

  Turner, Frederick J. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt, 1921.

  Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969.

  Wright, Robert K. The Continental Army. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1983.

  Young, Alfred F., ed. The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1976.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Measuring America

  The Fabric of America

  Praise for An Artist in Treason

  “Wilkinson may be the most unscrupulous character in all of American history . . . This biography of Wilkinson, who, writes Linklater, had ‘one of the most extraordinary careers as a secret agent in the history of espionage,’ is probably the best we have; it certainly is the most smoothly written.”

  —Gordon S. Wood, New York Review of Books

  “What makes this tautly written narrative so timely is that it reminds us that the myth of American Manifest Destiny and the virtuous inevitability of our sway over a continent is just so much hogwash . . . [A] meticulously researched, well-written book.”

  —Washington Times

  “Linklater skillfully captures this sociopathic rogue who, for all his defects, still commands attention from everyone trying to understand the 50 years after 1775. His charisma reaches across two centuries to perplex and fascinate any reader of this fast-paced and fully researched work.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A well- wrought study of far- reaching treachery in the early years of the United States.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “This fascinating and richly detailed book is a useful resource for studying America’s early struggles with internal interference and external opposition.”

  —Library Journal

  Copyright © 2009 by Andro Linklater

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Walker & Company, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Published by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., New York

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR.

  First published by Walker & Company in 2009

  This e-book edition published in 2010

  eISBN: 978-0-8027-1720
-7

  Visit Walker & Company's Web site at www.walkerbooks.com

  Table of Contents

  East of the Mississippi River

  West of the Mississippi River

  Introduction: A Test of Loyalty

  1 The Penniless Aristocrat

  2 Citizens and Soldiers

  3 Wooing General Gates

  4 The Triumph of Saratoga

  5 Betraying General Gates

  6 Love and Independence

  7 The Kentucky Pioneer

  8 Spanish Temptation

  9 Cash and Conspiracy