An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson (28 page)

He should have been beyond reach of his enemies. Aggressive, harsh, and insensitive he might be, but General Anthony Wayne had “done the Business.” When he moved his headquarters to the recently evacuated British fort at Detroit on the Michigan peninsula in August, it marked the beginning of a new epoch in the expansion of the United States that emerged directly from the campaign he led in 1794. The northern frontier had been opened. The U.S. Public Lands Survey was moving through Ohio, transforming the territory into property that could be owned with clear title, unlike the chaos in Kentucky. Ahead lay the prairies.

The greatest test of George Washington’s inclusive vision for his country would come when these mighty grasslands were occupied. Critically it depended upon the existence of General Wayne’s victorious army. Neither settler nor Indian could have ignored that overwhelming force. Had it remained in existence, it might have made possible a coherent, organized westward expansion that did not sweep aside the rights of Native American owners. That at least was the president’s dream.

Instead Wayne faced a double-edged onslaught, politically on the size of the Legion, and judicially on his generalship. The stress produced an exacerbated attack of the stabbing pains in his stomach that became so severe he was often unable to leave his army cot. As winter closed in, Wayne moved eastward, planning to take his headquarters back to Pittsburgh. In December he arrived at Presqu’isle, a harbor on Lake Erie, and there the stomach ulcer, if that is what it was, finally burst. His subordinates watched helplessly as he writhed in excruciating agony. “How long he can continue to suffer such torture is hard to say,” wrote one on December 14, 1796, having seen his general convulsed all day by uncontrollable pain. But at two o’clock the following morning, death at last relieved Major General Anthony Wayne from all his torments.

F
OR WASHINGTON AND
MCHENRY,
the loss of Wayne was a blow in itself, but the timing made it worse. The army could not wait long for a new chief: orders had to be given, courts-martial appointed, detachments moved, officers transferred, the chain of command kept taut. To promote anyone other than the politically popular second- in- command during the last weeks before John Adams became president, when the existing administration was not so much a lame duck as a dead duck, would have been impossible. Whatever the executive’s suspicions about Wilkinson’s connections with Spain, he was the only possible candidate. Consequently, the highest post in the army devolved automatically onto James Wilkinson and was tacitly approved by President George Washington in February 1797.

In his last message to Congress as president, Washington made a final appeal on behalf of his Indian policy when he asked congressmen to exempt the cavalry from their bill to reduce the size of the army. “It is generally agreed that some cavalry, either militia or regular, are necessary,” he pointed out, “and . . . the latter will be less expensive and more useful in maintaining the peace between the frontier settlers and the Indians.” Three days later, on March 3, Congress ignored Washington’s plea, cut the army by one third, and, by abolishing the rank of major general, confirmed that the brigadier general should be its “commander- in-chief.”

In November 1796, General James Wilkinson had urged his Spanish handler, Baron Hector de Carondelet, to “point out with precision the object to be pursued, and, if attainable, you shall find my activity and exertions equal to your most sanguine expectations.” Barely three months later, on March 4, 1797, he attended President John Adams’s inauguration as a guest of honor, and commander in chief of the U.S. army.

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had passed since James Wilkinson, land speculator and free trader, first traveled to New Orleans and declared that self-interest justified his transfer of loyalties to His Catholic Majesty. As a colonel, he found that the need for a spy’s income reinforced his original decision. And so long as Anthony Wayne, the friend turned hated rival, was his superior, jealousy pointed him in the same direction. But as Brigadier General James Wilkinson, commander in chief of the U.S. army, it was less clear where his interests lay.

Wilkinson did not lie when he declared that his strength lay in military matters. His tactical sense was obvious in a brilliant analysis of the army’s disposition that he drew up for Alexander Hamilton in 1798, and unlike Wayne, he had an insatiable hunger, matched only by Washington’s, for the software of war—maps and intelligence about the territory in which he might need to fight. His theatrical temperament gave him an instinctive understanding of the mysterious effect that display and smartness have upon soldiers’ morale. When applied to a peacetime army, starved of funds, lacking any obvious enemy, and usually split up into small, isolated garrisons, it was an invaluable insight. In place of anything more substantial, Wilkinson offered what he had in abundance, energy, personal warmth, and a sense of style, especially in his flamboyant, self- romanticizing portrayal of a general, to which most of his officers responded positively.

It was not a large stage on which he played— across the Atlantic, the French had thirteen armies totaling around eight hundred thousand men under arms, and Wilkinson’s entire force was equivalent to about half a brigade in one of them. Knowing his ambition, his Spanish handlers could not believe that he would be satisfied with so small a part. Hector de Carondelet was genuinely bewildered when Wilkinson dispatched a formal notification to New Orleans in May 1797 that U.S. troops were being prepared to take over Spanish forts on the east bank of the Mississippi in accordance with the San Lorenzo treaty. Thomas Power was sent north to find out whether the general was still tempted by the wider horizons that Spain and the defection of Kentucky could provide.

“You will endeavour to discover, with your natural penetration, the General’s dispositions,” Carondelet wrote. “I doubt that a person of his character would prefer, through vanity, the advantage of commanding the army of the Atlantic states, to that of being the founder, the liberator in fine, the Washington of the Western states. His part is as brilliant as it is easy; all eyes are drawn toward him; he possesses the confidence of his fellow-citizens and of the Kentucky volunteers; at the slightest movement the people will name him the General of the new republic; his reputation will raise an army for him, and Spain, as well as France, will furnish him the means for paying for it.” In a separate letter sent by Philip Nolan to Wilkinson himself, Carondelet reminded him of the land in Illinois that was to be his and promised that his pay would be doubled and he could “depend upon an annual bounty of four thousand dollars which shall be delivered to you at your order and to the person you may indicate.”

Nevertheless, Wilkinson’s state of mind might have been guessed from the manner in which Power was treated. There was no invitation to enjoy the freedom of “ingress and egress” to American forts. The general was inspecting the northerly fort of Mackinac when Power arrived in Detroit, but he immediately ordered the notorious Spanish courier confined to barracks until his return.

When they did meet in September, Power noted that “General Wilkinson received me very coolly.” Undeterred, Power outlined an unlikely plot that began with Wilkinson seizing Fort Massac and calling for Kentucky’s independence, at which point Spain and France would send him the artillery, weapons, and money needed to establish the new independent republic of the Mississippi. This was the ultimate goal of the Spanish Conspiracy, which had, as Power rightly stated, always been Wilkinson’s idea. If he did not like the scenario, he might at least suggest some alternative. Instead, Power reported, the general summarily dismissed Carondelet’s thinking as deluded—“chimerical” was his actual word—because the Treaty of San Lorenzo had given the western settlers all that they required.

In his account of their conversation, Power quoted him as saying, “The fermentation which had existed for four years was now subsided, &c.; that Spain had nothing else to do but to give complete effect to the treaty
which
had overturned all his plans, and rendered useless the work of more than ten years
. And . . . he had, as he said, destroyed his cyphers and all his correspondence with our government, and that his duty and his honour did not permit him to continue it.”

Quite clearly, as commander in chief Wilkinson had decided to give up his double life. He wanted no more communication with New Orleans, Power said, because he feared that “the secret of his connections with our government had been divulged through want of prudence on our part.” Having brought his career as a spy to a close, the general ordered Power to be escorted off U.S. territory by Captain Shaumburgh and taken to the nearest Spanish fort.

The messenger resented not just this offhand treatment, but that he had been so totally misled. Before their meeting, he had assured Carondelet of Wilkinson’s adherence to the conspiracy—“the ambitions and politics of this General are a certain guaranty to me that he will support our plans”—and having spoken to Sebastian, Power had been convinced that “the principal characters of the place are united to us by ambition and interest.” Although Power attempted a feeble defense, suggesting that “the influence of General Wilkinson in Kentucky has become very limited,” it was undeniable that without his support the conspiracy was over. “If [my mission] has not had a more happy issue,” Power pleaded, “it ought not be attributed in any manner to indiscretion, or other deficiency, on my part, since it is evident that it sprung from a cause which no human penetration could foresee.”

In fact the cause could easily have been predicted. Self-interest guided everything Wilkinson did. Once he had what he wanted, nothing would be allowed to jeopardize his enjoyment of it. Promotion had deprived Spain of its most useful spy.

Wilkinson’s altered outlook was apparent in other, less obvious ways. In freezing winter temperatures, the new commander in chief had immediately undertaken a whirlwind tour of inspection, west to Fort Wayne and south to Fort Washington, then north along the line of forts that Wayne and he had built. The tide of settlement promoted by Wayne’s Greeneville Treaty had already moved farther west, and Wilkinson recommended closing all these posts and sending their garrisons south to strengthen the force being assembled in Fort Washington to take over the Spanish forts. Its command he assigned to one of his favorite young officers, Captain Isaac Guion. In the early summer of 1797, when Power had hoped to meet him, the general hurried north again, to Detroit, then beyond to the farthermost post of all, Michilimackinac, usually contracted to Mackinac, on the northern shores of the Michigan peninsula. In this respect at least, James Wilkinson showed his desire to be a model commander in chief.

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1797, at the time of Wilkinson’s appointment, the secretary of war, James McHenry, gave direction to Wilkinson’s galvanizing energy. In a lengthy memorandum, akin to that prepared by Anthony Wayne a year earlier, McHenry laid down the priorities that the general was to observe— saving money, maintaining discipline, and keeping peace with the Indians. One typical passage on economizing required him to order garrison commanders to have damaged weapons repaired within the fort, but in doing so “it is not deemed expedient to incur any expense.” But the officebound, regulation- minded McHenry had no conception of what it took to maintain order and morale among young soldiers marooned for months within their wooden stockades. Even Thomas Power had a better idea after ten days confined to the barracks in Fort Detroit.

“There is strict discipline observed in the army,” he told Carondelet. “The soldiers are almost all youths from 16 to 26 years of age; they go through some military [drill] with sufficient precision. With respect to the officers, from the lowest to the highest (excepting very few) they are deficient of those qualities which adorn a good officer except fierceness, and are overwhelmed in ignorance and in the most base vice.”

Spanish officers cultivated the manners of the higher classes because the military hierarchy faithfully reflected the gradations of an aristocratic society. No such pattern existed for U.S. officers— Colonel John Hamtramck was the son of a Quebec barber and wigmaker, for example, and the family of Colonel David Strong were Connecticut farmers. No military academy existed to give officers a grounding in their trade— training came from being attached to a company as a cadet; and there was little continuity of service to build a military tradition because fluctuations in the size of the army forced so many officers to leave the service—more than 60 percent of those commissioned in the 1780s had gone by 1795. Finally, American officers had to cope with the particular challenge of maintaining a command structure in an increasingly egalitarian society. This contradiction fascinated British observers.

“In fact the American peasant, though a brave and hardy man, and expert in the use of the rifle and musket, is naturally the worst soldier in the world as regards obedience and discipline,” a British officer, Charles Murray, commented loftily in the 1790s. “He has been brought up to believe himself equal to the officers who command him, and never forgets that when his three years of enlistment are over, he will again be their equal.”

An officer’s right to command rested ultimately on the Articles of War, which required obedience to the orders of a superior, but in most situations the critical factor was an individual’s leadership ability. The fierceness that Power noted, or at least a capacity to impose one’s will, was a necessity. In battle, as Ebenezer Denny had dramatically described at St. Clair’s rout, and Wayne’s Legion proved at Fallen Timbers, ferocious officers could rely on their men to follow their lead. But in peacetime, when about two thousand men were scattered between forty-one military outposts— an average of roughly fifty men at each—other qualities were needed.