An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson (37 page)

With a warrant issued for his arrest in New York, Burr took refuge with Charles Biddle in Pennsylvania. Lacking any obvious outlet for his energies, he returned to the topic that Wilkinson had raised. During the rest of the year, they exchanged ciphered messages and held occasional meetings From these emerged the outline of what became known as the Burr conspiracy.

T
HE CONSPIRATORS MADE AN INCONGRUOUS PAIR.
The general growing stouter, increasingly rosy and swollen in the face, and addicted to ever more Ruritanian uniforms; the colonel, tall, elegantly dressed, an eighteenth-century aristocrat, who took it as a truth that “a gentleman is free to do whatever he pleases so long as he does it with style.” John Adams wrote that he had “never known, in any country, the prejudice in favor of birth, parentage, and descent more conspicuous than in the instance of Colonel Burr.” Marriage had made Wilkinson part of the Biddles’ influential circle, but Burr, grandson of the great Calvinist theologian Jonathan Edwards, “was connected by blood,” as Adams put it, “to many leading families in New England.” Wilkinson had never been to college, and most of his life had been spent on the frontier or in the coarse world of licentious soldiery, while Burr, the successful New York attorney and brilliant politician who came within a single vote of being the third president, had been educated at Princeton and had never strayed far from the Atlantic coast, rarely even beyond its law courts and drawing rooms.

Yet they shared some notable characteristics. Both grew up fatherless and indulged by wealthy relatives. Each displayed a mesmerizing ability to win influential friends, outstanding initiative and courage during the Revolutionary War, and in peacetime a taste for extravagance that drove them to stretch morality to the point of illegality in the pursuit of money. In Burr’s case, he sold political favors and made a flagrant attempt to turn the credit-issuing powers of the Manhattan water company into a full banking service. And by the time they began discussing operations in Mexico, both were facing a bleak future, according to one astute observer, the French ambassador, General Louis-Marie Turreau.

“Mr. Burr’s career is generally looked upon as finished; but he is far from sharing that opinion, and I believe he would rather sacrifice the interests of his country than renounce celebrity and fortune,” Turreau told Talleyrand in March 1805. Wilkinson, he wrote, “complains rather indiscreetly, and especially after dinner, of the form of his government, which leaves officers few chances of fortune, advancement, and glory, and which does not pay its military chiefs enough to support a proper style.”

Nevertheless, those who had dealings with Burr and Wilkinson made a sharp distinction between the two. Both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, natural opposites in other matters, shared a visceral antagonism to Burr and his ambitions. Jefferson expressed his dislike circumspectly, noting that from their first encounter in the 1790s “his conduct very soon inspired me with distrust” because Burr had no principles and “was always at market” for political gain. Hamilton, on the other hand, did not mince his words, writing, “[Burr] loves nothing but himself. He is sanguine enough to hope every thing—daring enough to attempt every thing— wicked enough to scruple [at] nothing.” By contrast, despite their doubts about Wilkinson’s financial dealings with the Spaniards, both were ready to entrust him with power, Hamilton by recommending his promotion to major general in 1799, and Jefferson by confirming him as army commander in 1801. If either of the conspirators at Richmond Hill were to betray the other, everything suggested it would be Burr.

W
ILKINSON’S MAPS AND NOTES SHOWED
two obvious ways of entering Mexico from the United States. The first was championed by the French general Victor Collot, who explored the Mississippi Valley in 1796. In his book,
Voyage dans l’Amérique Septentrionale
, Collot selected Santa Fe as the most desirable point of access. Troops could either descend from the Missouri River in the north, following a line that would become the Santa Fe Trail, or ascend the Arkansas River from the Mississippi. Because the final approach “presents neither mountains nor rivers which might be serious obstacles,” Collot concluded, “one may easily appreciate how important it is for Spain that these two passages be closed.”

Much of Collot’s geography was wrong, but his military instinct was right. So long as a commander chose the right rivers to follow through the dry land that lay beyond the Mississippi, Santa Fe could be reached without overwhelming difficulty. And from Santa Fe, the royal road, El Camino Real, led due south to Chihuahua and Mexico City. The route left New Orleans more than one thousand miles to the east. The city could be ignored in any advance through Santa Fe.

The alternative was to sail directly to Veracruz on the coast of Mexico and march less than two hundred miles inland to Mexico City. In every way it was simpler than the Santa Fe route, except that the commander would have to decide what to do about New Orleans, the port where his army had to be assembled for embarkation to Mexico. If it could not be cajoled into giving its support willingly, New Orleans would have to be captured.

After his first discussions with Wilkinson, Burr contacted the British ambassador, Anthony Merry, to enlist Britain’s aid. The plan, Merry tersely informed London, was “to effect a separation of the Western Part of the United States from that which lies between the Atlantick and the Mountains, in its whole Extent.” What Burr wanted, as he soon made clear, was a squadron of British warships from the West Indies to prevent the United States navy from reaching the mouth of the Mississippi. This would stop New Orleans from being reinforced from the sea and allow a force bound for Veracruz free passage to the coast of Mexico.

From an early stage, therefore, the colonel favored a plan for, directly or indirectly, the secession of the western states, and an invasion of Mexico through Veracruz. The general’s interests, by contrast, were always drawn toward Santa Fe. Nor was his name mentioned in Merry’s report, even though the secessionist plan outlined there was essentially the Spanish Conspiracy in British colors. Long experience had inoculated Wilkinson against any scheme that involved detaching the western states from the Union.

I
N
J
ANUARY
1805, the president nominated James Wilkinson to the Senate to be governor of the new Louisiana Territory. The choice drew immediate criticism in Congress that “it was anti- republican to unite civil and military office in one person,” and in defending it Jefferson had to contradict his own principle that “no military man should be so placed as to have no civil superior.” Louisiana Territory, the president claimed, was a military outpost— an officer administered each of its five districts—thus requiring a general to be in command. But the casuistry did not alter the reality. From his headquarters in St. Louis, Brigadier General James Wilkinson would not only have command of an army whose troops were increasingly concentrated in the south and the west, but would also exercise civilian control over an area that reached from Canada to the Arkansas River, and from the Mississippi westward to the indeterminate border with the Spanish empire.

Criticism was not confined to Congress. From Kentucky, Judge Joseph Daveiss wrote in alarm to the president, “You have appointed General Wilkinson a governor of St. Louis, who I am convinced has been for years, and now is, a pensioner of Spain.” Almost apologetically, the judge referred to the earlier warning given to Jefferson: “I am told that Mr. Ellicott, in his journal, communicated to the office of state the names of the Americans concerned [in the Spanish Conspiracy]. If this is true you are long since guarded; but I suspect either that it is not, or has escaped you; or you have considered the affair dead.” Jefferson immediately acknowledged the importance of his allegation and requested “a full communication of everything known by you.” Daveiss’s reply revealed, however, that he was relying on Humphrey Marshall’s suspicions dating back to the 1780s and had nothing more substantial to offer than gossip about the barrels of money Wilkinson had received. In Washington, where the general’s role was becoming more important, it was easy to dismiss this as politically motivated abuse.

Within the administration, Wilkinson’s warmest supporter was Gideon Granger, the postmaster general, who described the general that spring as “one of the most agreeable, best informed, most genteel, moderate & sensible Republicans in the Nation.” What most of Jefferson’s cabinet felt was best expressed by Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, when he said, “Of the General I have no very exalted opinion; he is extravagant and needy and would not, I think, feel much delicacy in speculating on public money or public lands. In both these respects he must be closely watched . . . But tho’ perhaps not very scrupulous in that respect and although I fear he may sacrifice to a certain degree the interests of the United States to his desire of being popular in his government, he is honorable in his private dealings and of betraying it to a foreign country I believe him altogether incapable.”

This profound misjudgment by Jefferson’s sharpest political adviser points to the difficulty that everyone would shortly face in deciding where the general’s loyalties really lay. Unmistakably he was capable of betraying his country: since his payment of twelve thousand dollars, he had twice briefed the Spanish ambassador, the Marqués de Casa-Yrujo, on U.S. strategy, and when spring came, Captain Pedro Vial’s column was roaming the headwaters of the Missouri in search of Lewis and Clark. As tensions about the border grew angrier in the early months of 1805, leading to talk of war, the advantage of having Agent 13 in command of the U.S. army and governor of a border province must have seemed unmistakable to his Spanish handlers. Yet even they could hardly have known which way he would jump if hostilities did break out.

The governor’s post carried with it a salary of two thousand dollars a year, as well as the power of patronage, the chance of bribery, and a preferential position for land speculation in the wide-open prairies beyond the Mississippi River. Nevertheless, when Charles Biddle, Nancy’s cousin and Burr’s friend, wrote to congratulate Wilkinson on the appointment, his reply alluded to an entirely different advantage. It would take a year to show how rewarding the post would be, Wilkinson said, but “in the meantime I can only say the country is a healthy one and I shall be on the high road to Mexico.”

His florid style always made the import of such remarks equivocal— was this rhetoric or reality? For a plain-talking frontiersman such as John Adair, his old comrade-in- arms and expert in horseflesh, it had to be real. In December 1804 he had written Wilkinson lamenting the failure of the United States to declare war on Spain and thereby provide an excuse for invading Mexico. “The Kentuckians are full of enterprise,” he assured the general, “and, although not poor, as greedy after plunder as ever the old Romans were. Mexico glitters in our Eyes— the word is all we wait for.” In June 1805, Adair received a teasing reply. It was an apology for Wilkinson’s failure to introduce him to Aaron Burr, who “understands your merits, and
reckons
on you.” The general promised to make up for it when they next met. “I will tell you
all
. We must have a
peep
at the unknown world beyond me.” The world beyond Louisiana was Mexico.

For every adventurer, not just those in Kentucky, the dream of seizing Mexico’s silver and gold mines did indeed dazzle the imagination.

O
N
M
ARCH
4, 1805, Jefferson’s new vice president, George Clinton, was sworn in and Colonel Aaron Burr ceased to have a job. A few days earlier, at Wilkinson’s recommendation Congressman Matthew Lyon from Kentucky had gone to Burr with a plan for reviving his political career. His suggestion was that the colonel should immediately relocate to Tennessee, where his national reputation would almost guarantee his immediate election to the next Congress. Lyon was forced to wait for almost an hour to see Burr at his lodgings in Washington because the former vice president was locked in conference with Wilkinson and Jonathan Dayton, an old political ally of both men’s.

When Burr at last emerged, he made his lack of enthusiasm for the Tennessee project apparent by informing Lyon that his first priority was to go to Philadelphia—“He talked as if the business was indispensable,” the congressman commented. The reason for this visit, kept secret from Lyon, was to make another approach to the British minister, Merry. According to the report that was later sent to London, Burr asked for “two or three frigates and the same number of smaller vessels to be stationed at the mouth of the Mississippi to prevent its being blockaded by such force as the United States could send.” He also wanted a loan of about $350,000. Neither money nor ships were forthcoming, but Aaron Burr’s preference for invading Mexico by the Veracruz route was unmistakable.

In April, having had his appointment as governor reluctantly confirmed by the Senate, General James Wilkinson set out for St. Louis with Nancy and his son James Biddle, now a lieutenant, and an entourage of officials and their families, including his secretary, Joseph Browne, Burr’s brother-in-law. During the winter, Burr and Wilkinson had communicated with each other using a cipher devised by Wilkinson and based on his Spanish model. Since Burr was about to undertake an exploratory journey to New Orleans, they would now follow the same route as far as the Mississippi River. Fresh from his meeting with Merry, Burr wrote Wilkinson to say he would wait for him in Pittsburgh until May 1 but no longer because he had a pressing schedule and “there is so much uncertainty and contingency in your march with a family.”

By the time the general arrived in Pittsburgh, the former vice president had left, and Wilkinson with his followers floated down the Ohio in a small convoy of boats without encountering anyone of importance. Waiting for him at Cincinnati, however, was Jonathan Dayton. Since almost everything that Dayton did was tainted by corruption, few people believed Wilkinson’s explanation that they were discussing the construction of a canal to bypass the Falls of the Ohio. It was noted, too, that when Burr had passed through earlier, he had spent much of a day in conversation with Dayton Burr had then made a detour into Tennessee to consult with Andrew Jackson, and during the five days he spent with the Tennessean, Wilkinson drifted ahead of him. Early in June, the general came to the grassy hillside where Fort Massac overlooked the river, and the convoy docked there.