An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson (26 page)

It should have provided the sort of profitable investment in land that Wilkinson had sought ever since he first came west. But by the sort of bad luck that seemed to dog the general’s real estate deals, a surveyor’s error meant that the valuable acres he had bought from Symmes turned out to belong to the U.S. government and were not for sale. Since he had paid with borrowed money and Symmes had run out of funds, Wilkinson again found himself facing creditors, but this time without land he could sell.

In April 1795, a lifeline arrived in the shape of Captain Joseph Collins, who came downriver from Pittsburgh, thereby escaping Major Doyle’s eagle eye. Yet here, too, it seemed that fortune was against Wilkinson. In a message to Gayoso, Wilkinson revealed that Collins had somehow contrived to lose $2,500 in a land speculation that went sour. Since Wilkinson continued to trust Collins as a messenger, he was probably lying slightly and this was actually money owed on the Symmes deal. Nevertheless, once travel expenses, incidental debts, and Collins’s fee as a courier had been paid, Wilkinson was left with just $1,740 instead of the $6,333 he had expected. Altogether, less than one seventh of the money that he had been promised by Carondelet the year before had actually arrived in his hands.

“If my very damned and unparalleled crosses and misfortunes, did not uncash me, I would be with you in flour,” he replied regretfully when an old friend, John Adair, invited him to join a trading expedition to New Orleans that summer. He still hoped to recoup some of the stolen money— “this sum is not lost, but is not within my control”— but even when it was eventually paid, other demands would be made upon it. He was still being sued for $3,000 by his former partner Peyton Short, and Harry Innes continued to demand money to pay off bonds he had underwritten. Small wonder that Wilkinson should have scrabbled so desperately to retain his dual role as general and spy.

H
ECTOR
DE
C
ARONDELET
had many reasons for treating the general generously, and all were conneected to the fragile defense of Louisiana. Its protection depended heavily on alliances made with the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek nations, which lived along its borders. With a stiffening of Spanish regulars and militia operating from forts along the Mississippi, the threat of Indian war parties provided a deterrent to the sort of expeditions that bellicose settlers often talked of sending down the river to attack New Orleans. But the awesome power exhibited at Fallen Timbers by the Legion of the United States was on a different scale. Against such an army Caron-delet had no defense.

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.

S
PEED 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.

W
ILKINSON’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.

T
HE 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.