An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson (52 page)

Since the attack on Kingston would require the army to be shipped across the open waters of Lake Ontario, Chauncey’s squadron of eight vessels had to establish complete dominance over the British. They had shown their superiority each time the two fleets had met, but the British vessels were still at large. However, the decision was unexpectedly simplified when Swartwout announced that only twenty- five boats were available to carry Wilkinson’s soldiers to Kingston instead of the three hundred that were needed. Unanimously, the council decided the army should march down the banks of the St. Lawrence to attack Montreal, leaving Chauncey’s fleet with the task of guarding its entrance against British warships. Once the target was chosen, Wilkinson sent orders to Hampton on Lake Champlain to be ready to move against Montreal from the south.

For the first time since his appointment, the general’s spirits soared. “All things go well here,” he assured Armstrong the following day. Within a short time, he expected Chauncey to defeat the British, his men to become healthy, and Hampton to communicate with him: “I hope he does not mean to take the stud [start sulking]. But if so, we can do without him, and he should be sent home.”

Nothing was quite as simple as Wilkinson in his burst of optimism imagined. Almost half his forces, thirty-five hundred men, were located at Fort George, near Niagara at the west end of the lake. Despite all efforts, Chauncey proved unable to trap the British squadron. One in three of the troops at Sackets Harbor remained sick. Transportation was crippled by a lack of boats and horses. The summer was coming to an end. And Hampton had unmistakably taken the stud, not only refusing to reply to Wilkinson’s messages, but complaining to Armstrong that his “command instead of being a separate one has sunk within that of a district.” To mollify him, Armstrong secretly promised that he intended to take personal command of the operation, then assured Wilkinson that Hampton and his four thousand troops would cooperate “cordially and vigorously.”

None of these concerns affected Wilkinson’s mood. He hired a spy to report on British positions in Kingston. He ordered the construction of a dozen large keelboats capable of carrying sixty men each. He was in command with people around him to execute his orders, and as always the sensation restored his confidence. In that rejuvenated state of mind, he decided to go in person to Fort George to hurry the transportation of the troops there back to Sackets Harbor. It entailed a journey of about 130 miles in an open boat, but the incompetence of the Fort George commander, Brigadier General John Boyd, described by Winfield Scott as “vacillating and imbecile beyond all endurance,” made Wilkinson’s presence necessary.

As the fall approached, time had become vital. Without the supreme commander’s personal intervention, Boyd would certainly fail to bring his soldiers east before the weather broke. Armstrong’s intention to visit Sackets Harbor at the end of the month might also have made escape attractive. “Two heads on the same shoulder,” Wilkinson commented, “make a monster.”

The voyage turned out to be a disaster. For six days he was exposed to sun, rain, and wind. By the time he arrived at Fort George, he was shivering with fever. For the next ten days he was confined to his bed, forced to dictate orders while suffering “much depression of head and stomach.” On September 16 he told Armstrong, “I have escaped my pallet and with a giddy head and trembling hand will scrawl you a few lines,” and most of what followed was devoted to listing the complex problem of transporting several thousand soldiers from one end of the lake to the other. The next day, his health was better, and he returned to his original idea of beginning the campaign with small- scale operations in the west. The British he noted had barely sixteen hundred combatant soldiers opposite him, and, he told Armstrong, he was tempted to have “a sweep at them.” Peremptorily Armstrong replied, “Let not the great objects of the campaign be hazarded,” and ordered him to return to Sackets Harbor as quickly as possible.

In the little ice age of the early nineteenth century, the onset of fall and winter came early. By late September, the weather was rapidly deteriorating, and for days contrary winds delayed the fleet of transports that Wilkinson had finally assembled. Not until early October was he able to sail back into the secluded waters of Sackets Harbor. There he found that he had been comprehensively second-guessed by Armstrong. Sweeping aside the council of war’s plans to move directly down the St. Lawrence against Montreal, the secretary of war had substituted his own project for attacking Kingston. The terse entry in Armstrong’s journal for October 4 told its own story: “General Wilkinson arrived this day in Sackett’s Harbor from Fort George. He immediately visited the Secretary of War in the company of Generals Lewis and Brown, and in the presence of these officers remonstrated freely and warmly against making an attack on Kingston.”

Wilkinson’s fury at having the council of war’s choice overturned had no more effect than his detailed argument that the lack of transport, the certainty of casualties, and the worsening weather made it impossible to assault both Kingston and Montreal. Armstrong was immovable. He had personally developed a detailed plan for capturing Kingston and insisted on its being carried out. A healthy Wilkinson would have fought back. Before Eustis broke his confidence, he had run rings round secretaries of war. Now, weakened by his illness in Fort George, he collapsed, physically and emotionally, and took to his bed.

While he lay there, the first autumn storms arrived, ten days of unremitting wind. Fearful that winter snows would soon follow, leaving too little time to reach Montreal, Wilkinson agreed on October 19 that his army should attack Kingston. Forty-eight hours later, with maddening perversity, Armstrong decided that Kingston should be canceled because the weather was too severe and the risks too high, and its failure “would extinguish every hope of grasping the other, the safer, the greater object.”

Wilkinson learned of this latest twist as he was organizing the embarkation of troops for Kingston and, as he admitted, “in my feeble condition,” could hardly do justice to his emotions. In the end, he felt capable only of demanding from the secretary of war a final, clear order “to direct the operations of my army particularly against Montreal.” He must have known that the operation, harassed by British troops, overlooked by British fortifications, lacking supplies, plans, and intelligence, and at the mercy of the approaching winter, had only a slim chance of success.

Gales out of the northwest made it perilous even to round the cape guarding Sackets Harbor to reach the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Boats were wrecked, soldiers drowned, ammunition lost, and rations ruined. November had come before the fleet of about three hundred vessels at last assembled in the river. By then disease and the diversion of men to other projects had reduced a projected army of more than twelve thousand by a third. Any hope of surprise had been blown away by the long delays caused by the storm. Chauncey proved unable to prevent British gunboats from following them into the St. Lawrence, and British troops allocated to the defense of Kingston were hurried along the riverbank to reinforce the strongpoint at Prescott, halfway to their target, and to harass Wilkinson’s army as it moved toward Montreal.

Yet with a strong column of about twenty- five hundred men including cavalry under Brown’s vigorous command on the north bank, artillery and almost four thousand soldiers on the boats, and another smaller force led by Swartwout on the south bank, Wilkinson’s force was greater than anything the British could put up in opposition. Once Hampton’s regulars and a promised fifteen hundred New York militia were added, their dominance would become overwhelming. The capture of Montreal was not impossible.

The one essential ingredient was forceful leadership. The general’s first test, passing by the fortified town of Prescott that overlooked the river, was successfully negotiated on November 5. Wilkinson had the powder and ammunition transferred from the boats into wagons, then, leaving only skeleton crews aboard, he ordered the fleet to drift down on the current at dead of night and led them himself in an open gig. The moon appearing through a gap in the clouds revealed some vessels to the sentries, but despite a rattle of fire the boats came through with only one casualty. Ahead lay an eight-mile rapid known as the Longue Saut, and beyond that thirty miles of open river to their target.

But the general’s once galvanizing energy was only feebly apparent. For much of the time he veered between two extremes, prostrated in his bunk with a fever that might have been flu or malaria, alternating with periods when, according to the testimony of his fellow general, Morgan Lewis, he “seemed to be in high spirits, which I considered to be assumed to inspire confidence.” To many, however, and in particular to Colonel William King, a messenger from General Hampton, his unpredictable behavior suggested that he was drunk.

King based his suspicions on an encounter with Wilkinson on November 6, the day after passing Prescott, on board the general’s boat. He brought bad news from Hampton and approached Lewis first to ask “whether the old gentleman would be found in a good humour.” General Lewis, who was himself frequently laid low with stomach pains and dysentery, restricted himself to the cold reply that “he might perhaps find the general a little petulant from his indisposition.”

But Wilkinson’s reaction went beyond petulance. When King revealed that three weeks earlier Hampton at the head of twenty- six hundred infantry, cavalry, and artillery regulars had let himself be driven back from the river Chateaugay by a numerically inferior force of sixteen hundred Canadian militia and volunteers, Wilkinson exploded, “Damn such an army! A man might as well be in hell as command it.” Angrily he gave King an order for Hampton to rendezvous with him outside Montreal without fail, and to carry enough supplies for both their armies.

There were other reports of erratic behavior. Colonel Joseph G. Swift, a talented engineer, acknowledged that “under the influence of laudanaum the general became very merry and sang and repeated stories,” but insisted “the only evil of which was that it was not of the dignified deportment to be expected from the commander in chief.” Nevertheless, added to the shouting match with Armstrong at Sackets Harbor, the rumors of intoxication undermined confidence. In retrospect, however, the frustration of seeing the last faint chances of success being relentlessly chipped away must have done more damage to his temper than any drug. Armstrong had also fallen sick at the end of October and formally handed over command of the Montreal operation to Wilkinson. If the expedition failed, there could be no doubt where the blame would fall.

U
NTIL
N
OVEMBER
10, Wilkinson kept a flickering hope of success alive. On land and water British forces maintained a harassing pursuit of the army. Despite his sickness, Wilkinson continued to be sufficiently energetic to keep them at bay. On two occasions, enemy schooners and galleys that had slipped past Chauncey’s uncertain defenses were rapidly turned back by fire from a battery of heavy guns Wilkinson ordered to be unshipped and placed on the bank. On the north side of the river, Brown could always be relied on to outflank and drive off any would- be ambushers. As they approached the rapids of the Longue Saut, however, the boats threatened to race ahead of the marching soldiers, and to slow them down Wilkinson ordered them to anchor early. Overcome by a return of his fever, he took to his bed and gave command to Lewis. Meanwhile Jacob Brown went ahead to explore the land alongside the rapids, leaving John Boyd in command on the north side of the river. The delay also allowed a British pursuing force of about fifteen hundred regulars and militia under Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Morrison to catch up.

Late in the afternoon of that gray, overcast day, Boyd launched a series of ill-organized and uncoordinated attacks against Morrison’s strongly held defensive position on the perimeter of some open ground known as Crysler’s Field. By nightfall, 321 of Boyd’s 3,000-strong force had been killed or wounded, and the survivors were forced to retreat to the river.

Subdued and sullen, Wilkinson’s men boarded the boats, and the next day the long line of vessels hurtled down the rapids. Waiting at the foot of the Longue Saut was another messenger from Wade Hampton. He had one final blow to deliver. Instead of marching toward Montreal as ordered, Hampton had turned back to Lake Champlain, where he intended to go into winter quarters. On November 16 Wilkinson submitted this news to a council of senior officers. Unanimously they agreed that “the attack on Montreal should be suspended for the present season.”

T
HERE COULD BE NO COMING BACK.
He had been given the chance of winning the war and had failed. From Albany, Secretary of War John Armstrong wrote that he found it “quite incredible” that Wilkinson should have been defeated by an inferior force, adding, shamelessly, that if only Wilkinson had taken Kingston, “the upper province [of Canada] was won.” Desperately the general replied by laying the blame on Hampton’s refusal to obey orders and demanded he be arrested for his “outrage of every principle of subordination and discipline.” But it was a useless appeal. Hampton had already resigned, and Wilkinson’s tainted reputation was against him. A man already charged with responsibility for Terre aux Boeufs, participation in the Burr Conspiracy, and being a Spanish pensioner could hardly expect the public to believe he had nothing to do with the failure of the Montreal expedition.

Through the winter, his army shivered and sickened in makeshift huts constructed in the forest by French Mills, now Fort Covington, just south of the St. Lawrence. Inexplicably Hampton had furloughed all his officers before resigning himself. The confusion that ensued cut off supplies of food and medicine coming from Albany. Pneumonia, dysentery, and typhus spread until, as Wilkinson himself admitted, “The mortality spread so deep a gloom over our camps, that funeral dirges were countermanded.” On his own responsibility, the general rented buildings to accommodate 450 patients in the settlement of Malone, ten miles to the south where he had his headquarters. But a steady stream of deserters testified to the demoralization of his army. On January 27, 1814, an official tally of the force at French Mills showed that of the 8,143 men who had left Sackets Harbor, only 4,777 remained ready for duty.