An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson (32 page)

Even John Adams declared, “This man is stark mad,” when he learned of Hamilton’s proposal. But significantly, he responded to the riots led by Captain John Fries that broke out in western Pennsylvania over taxes in March 1799 by sending in the army. Although barely remembered compared to the more notorious Whiskey Rebellion by the same people, Fries’s revolt had much greater consequences for the military.

Hamilton insisted that overwhelming force had to be employed because “whenever the Government appears in arms it ought to appear like a
Hercules
and inspire respect by a display of strength.” Accordingly five companies of professionals accompanied by artillery were ordered to join the militia. But the reports of armed soldiers searching Pennsylvania homes and tearing women and screaming children from their beds quickly triggered a wave of anger against the government. Scores of petitions flooded into Congress against standing armies and the alien and sedition laws. In his newspaper,
Aurora
, the influential editor William Duane warned ominously that “[people] may see from this what they have to expect from a military force under the orders of the administration.”

Detained in the south by his concerns over Nancy, Wilkinson missed the popular fury, but once in Philadelphia he associated himself closely with Hamilton’s increasingly beleaguered command. That August, in response to the major general’s request, he produced within ten days a long, detailed report for the future disposition of the army. Stressing the importance of defending the nation at its borders, he also recommended closing down forts in the interior and transferring their garrisons to ports and defensive positions on the frontier, especially in the south, where they could repel any attack from the French. Hamilton was delighted. He passed the report to Washington, praising it as “intelligent and interesting,” and wrote to Adams with a new plea for Wilkinson’s promotion on the grounds that he was “brave, enterprising, active and diligent, warmly animated by the spirit of his profession and devoted to it.”

Washington, however, gave the report a cool reception. Voicing his military opinion in September for virtually the last time before his death, he returned to the strategy that had served him so well— not committing troops too early, keeping the main force in reserve, being ready to counterattack at speed. It followed that the bulk of the army should be located in the north, “from where it could descend the [Mississippi] like lightening, with all its munitions and equipments; which could be accumulated with ease, and without noise, at the upper Posts, and make the surprise more complete.” Distilled into those vivid words was the military wisdom learned in the war that won independence, the fighting on the back foot against superior numbers, the dazzling ripostes at Trenton and Princeton, and the final victory over an enemy that had never been allowed to land a decisive blow. Nevertheless, he said, he offered his wisdom “more for consideration than decision.”

The strategic argument was never resolved. Three months later Washington was dead, war with France was averted by Adams’s diplomacy, and Wilkinson was back in Fort Adams. He left Hamilton a farewell message just before he sailed from Baltimore in November: “I cannot more safely consign my own Interest than to the delicacies and the sensibilities of your own bosom . . . 20 years a Brigadier, a patient one too. I pant for promotion.” But Hamilton could no longer help. Incensed by the Federalists’ use of troops, the Democratic- Republicans in Congress had made, as Jefferson declared in December, “the disbanding of the army” a priority. Adams, too, wanted to clip Hamilton’s wings. In the spring of 1800, Congress voted to abolish the New Army and the provisional and volunteer forces that had been so enthusiastically endorsed a year earlier. The reduction made major generals redundant and left a brigadier general in command of the old army once more.

19
J
EFFERSON’S
G
ENERAL

T
HE INSTINCT OF “THE COMMANDING GENERAL”
as Congress now referred to Wilkinson, was as always to strengthen his political base. He had the endorsements of Washington and Hamilton to add to that of the president, but his connections to Jefferson’s party suffered from his association with Hamilton’s military policies. Already antimilitarist Republicans such as Elbridge Gerry and the freshman congressman Edmund Randolph were calling for the elimination of his rank as well.

Barely two months after arriving back in the south, he sailed again from New Orleans to return north, this time with Nancy—“Blooming still as Hebe,” he reported, “and fully qualified quickly to repay for the pain and pangs of absence”—and their two sons. By July, he was in Georgetown, neighboring the new federal capital, where the next president would officially reside. There he went to work.

The intimacy with Hamilton was kept warm with a gift sent to New York of pecan nuts and orange shrubs for his family, and a male- bonding letter commenting on the luscious “women of figure” Wilkinson had met at a ball in Havana. “I defy the most prized mortal to behold them steadily for a second,” he confided nudgingly, “without strong emotions of admiration and desire.” Science was what excited Thomas Jefferson, and so rare Indian pottery and weaving brought from Louisiana and Texas, courtesy of Nolan, were dispatched, with a superb map of the territory, to Monticello.

For Aaron Burr, the Federalist candidate for the presidency, and a friend of Nancy’s cousin Charles Biddle, there were meetings and coded letters whose import would not become clear until five years later, and the kind of godfatherly exchanges that led to Burr’s securing a place at Princeton College for Wilkinson’s youngest son, Joseph. Even faithless John Adams, who had failed to push for Wilkinson’s promotion to major general, received a sociable invitation to a party in the muddy wasteland of the District of Columbia. Mrs. Thornton, wife of William, the Capitol’s architect, wrote in her diary of seeing the president’s secretary stumbling “across the fields to Mrs General Wilkinson’s party . . . [whence came] the enlivening strains of a military band with which his company was entertained.” All that could be done politically was done.

The need to bolster his position was underlined by the unwelcome arrival of a letter from Andrew Ellicott in August. Despite its friendly tone and congratulations on being made “head of the army again,” the reminder that the scientist had returned from the wilderness was a cause for concern. It was fortunate therefore that shortly before the general left Washington, one further event helped his cause, although no one could tell who was responsible.

In May, John Adams had dismissed James McHenry, a Hamilton ally, in a fine outburst of fury: “Through all parts of the Country, Sir, Your conduct in the Department is complained of. Every member of Congress I have spoken with tells me that you want capacity to discharge its duties . . . You cannot, Sir, remain longer in Office.” Until the fall, when Samuel Dexter took over, the War Department had no leader, and overwhelmed officials besought the commanding general to help them deal with its business. For several months, Wilkinson had unrestricted access to the records containing the many accusations against him that had accumulated since he rejoined the army. In November, while Dexter was away, a fire broke out in a building that had been “locked for two weeks,” as the
Federal Gazette
pointed out, destroying all the records. Suspicions tended to rest on Treasury Secretary Oliver Wolcott Jr., who was first at the scene, although he had nothing to gain from the blaze. A few days later, Brigadier General James Wilkinson and his wife left town for military headquarters in Pittsburgh.

Whatever or whoever caused the fire, he must have felt he was free. In July 1799, his blackmailing friend and dear enemy Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, who knew all Wilkinson’s secrets from the Spanish side, had contracted yellow fever and died. Now most of the official papers on the American side had gone up in smoke. However the election turned out, one of his friends, Jefferson or Burr, would become president, and his future could unfold without his being haunted by the old suspicions.

D
URING THAT WINTER WHILE
F
ORT
F
AYETTE
, the army’s headquarters, was being refurbished, the Wilkinsons resumed their dominance of Pittsburgh’s small but growing society. This was congenial to both. Nancy was among friends, and the brigadier general was in unchallenged command. He was by nature hospitable and generous, and as a garrison town, Pittsburgh could be relied on to provide the appreciative audience he needed. A portrait painted by Charles Willson Peale a little earlier shows him plump and authoritative, his bright, dark eyes gleaming from a jowly pink face, and the bristly gray hair no longer curling but brushed straight back from his high forehead. Not even Peale’s flattering technique can disguise the double chin or the hard expression, but there is also the alertness and appetite for sensation that made him attractive.

His talk was wide-ranging and engaging. In 1800 no one had seen more of the United States, both geographically and socially, than Wilkinson. His extensive travels had made him familiar with life in New Orleans and Michigan and much in between. He had known well the first two presidents—and would surely be a friend of the third— as well as Miami chiefs, clothing contractors, and sutlers. He attended lectures at the American Philosophical Society as equably as he faced Little Turtle’s bullets at Fallen Timbers. He was a passionate gardener and adored music—any fifer or trumpeter who showed talent could expect a transfer from his frontier fort to a soft life at headquarters. He preferred his cigars to come from Havana, and his Madeira to be served chilled. He still showed off—a habit that sounded increasingly pompous— but he encouraged his friends to do the same.

Young men with a taste for adventure were exhilarated by his theatrical style, and it showed not only in their devotion to him but in the operatic phrasing they learned from him. Thus a quarrel with the genial Gayoso prompted Philip Nolan to term him “a vile man and my implacable enemy,” while Zebulon Pike compared the clouds around the summit of Pikes Peak to “the ocean in a storm, wave piled on wave and foaming.”

On formal parades, Wilkinson chose to wear the peacock uniform that he dressed in for Peale’s portrait. The shoulders were decorated with epaulets the size of platters overflowing with gold braid, each studded with a single enormous silver star denoting the rank of a brigadier; the facings on the topcoat were yellow, as was the waistcoat, the buttons gold, and white ruffles exploded from beneath an elaborately knotted black silk stock. The display was excessive, but served a purpose. Both personally and professionally, he was the army’s figurehead. In a society deeply suspicious of a large, standing force of regular soldiers, it was no bad thing for military morale to see the senior general so obviously proud of his position.

Presumably he would have worn his full dress uniform at the formal party the Wilkinsons planned to celebrate the inauguration of the new president.

On February 17, 1801, however, the long drama of the hung election between Burr and Jefferson was at last resolved. With each receiving seventy-three electoral-college votes, the decision had gone to the House of Representatives, where thirty-five ballots had failed to break the agonizing tie. On the thirty-sixth, the stalemate broke, and the moment it was known that Jefferson would become the next president, Wilkinson’s faithful subordinate Major Thomas Cushing sent an urgent warning to Richmond: “It is understood on all sides that an entire new administration is to be formed and that many other alterations are to take place.” For the army, change could only be bad. Abruptly Wilkinson departed for Washington, leaving Nancy to stand in for him, welcoming the officers “in front of her apartments where a large collection of ladies were previously assembled,” before leading the entire company to listen to the handpicked band and watch a fireworks display.

P
OLITICALLY,
C
USHING EXPECTED THE ARMY
“to go to the right about,” meaning it would turn to face in the opposite direction from in the Adams administration. Thomas Jefferson put it more diplomatically, explaining, “The Army is undergoing a chaste reformation.” But Cushing’s version was more accurate. When the commanding general arrived in Washington, he found the beginnings of a bloodbath, ostensibly designed to save five hundred thousand dollars a year.

The army’s authorized strength was 5,438 men. Even before he was appointed, the new secretary of war, Henry Dearborn, intended to cut this by one third. The Military Peace Establishment Bill, which he began preparing the day after Jefferson’s election, set the new level at 3,300 men distributed among three regiments— two of infantry and one of artillery. It required at least one in three of the 269 serving officiers to be dismissed, and the immediate question was, who should be weeded out? On February 23, Jefferson asked Wilkinson to transfer Captain Meriwether Lewis, paymaster of the First Infantry Regiment, to the presidential staff because he needed someone “possessing a knoledge [
sic
] of the Western country, of the army & it’s [
sic
] situation [who] might sometimes aid us with informations of interest, which we may not otherwise possess.”

Today, it is Lewis’s knowledge of the “Western country” that receives most attention, but his familiarity with “the army and its situation,” and specifically its officers, was Jefferson’s first priority. By July 1801, Lewis had listed every officer and rated each according to his professional abilities and his political affiliation. The military category was divided into “1st Class,” “Respectable,” and “Unfit,” while the political had labels that ranged from “Republican” through “Apathy” and “no known affiliation” to “Opposed to the Administration” and “Most violently opposed to the administration and still active in its vilification.”