An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson (39 page)

The “improper” phrase would come back to haunt Wilkinson when it was assumed to refer to his complicity in Burr’s plans. But in a letter liable to fall into the wrong hands, the general might have wanted to keep other sensitive topics secret—his wish to see Burr replace Claiborne as governor of Orleans Territory, and, as it turned out, Burr’s intention of involving Daniel Clark himself in his schemes. Clark always dismissed this last option. He vigorously denied any ties to Burr and made much of the fact that he saw the colonel only once during his twelve days in New Orleans. Clark’s actions, however, belied his protestations.

As he had anticipated, Burr found his hints of secession rapturously welcomed by the alienated French community in New Orleans. Their anger at Claiborne’s governorship had boiled over the previous fall, and two spokesmen, sent to Washington to protest against the destruction of their democratic rights, predicted widespread revolt unless his policies softened. Burr’s Veracruz venture also drew support from an informal network of traders calling themselves the Mexico Association, who hoped to back a coup d’état there, and from a group of Ursuline nuns hoping for the restoration of Catholic rule. Nevertheless, the high point of Burr’s short visit to New Orleans was a magnificent dinner given in his honor by the French merchants who dominated the city.

When he started to return north in late June, heading initially for a second consultation with Andrew Jackson, the support of New Orleans and its wealthy inhabitants must have become a factor in his plans. The exact nature of those plans were still a mystery, but in September 1805 a curious letter sent by Clark to Wilkinson shed some light on them.

Ostensibly Clark’s message was a warning about the “many absurd and evil reports circulated here . . . respecting our ex- Vice-President . . . The tale is a horrid one, if well told. Kentucky, Tennessee, the state of Ohio, with part of Georgia and part of Carolina, are to be bribed with plunder of the Spanish countries west of us to separate from the Union; this is but a part of the business.” The writer’s tone was amused and disbelieving. One wild rumor struck him as particularly incredible: “You are spoken of as his right hand man.” Like every public figure of his time, however, Clark appreciated the likelihood of his mail being opened, and his message carried an inner private meaning.

In the winter of 1805, after sending this letter, Clark made the first of two trading voyages to Veracruz, during which he made extensive notes of the military forces in the area, and, according to John Graham, secretary at the time of the Orleans Territory, who saw his report, “particularly of the garrison-towns between Vera Cruz and Mexico [City].” At a time when war with Spain seemed imminent, Graham was intrigued and later testified that he made “several inquiries of Mr. Clark concerning Mexico; he was of opinion it might be invaded with every prospect of success. I asked him, whether, if the United States should undertake the invasion he would bear a part; he evidenced an unwillingness to have any thing to do with an expedition carried on by the government; but expressed himself willing to join in such an enterprize undertaken and carried on by individuals.”

Clark’s motives for aligning himself with Burr’s schemes were both personal and political. He had just been frustrated by Governor Claiborne in his attempt to be appointed the Orleans Territory representative to Congress, but he was also infuriated by the treatment of the Creoles. “I have encouraged, and will continue to encourage, the outcry and opposition to [U.S.] measures,” he promised Wilkinson in 1804, and the strength of his feelings was widely known. “He has often said that the Union could not last,” Claiborne reported, “and that, had he children, he would impress early on their minds the expediency of a separation between the Atlantic and Western States.”

These evident sympathies for the goals that Burr had in mind give a different meaning to the letter Clark sent Wilkinson. Rather than a general warning, his real intention was to share in coded form Burr’s latest thinking. The plan that Clark described looked very like the old Spanish Conspiracy that was so familiar to them both. Thus the critical sentence about Wilkinson being “spoken of as his right hand man” had a double significance.

On September 11, about the time when this letter was sent, Aaron Burr himself came in person to St. Louis for another meeting with the man who appeared more and more clearly to be the linchpin of all his plans. The priorities of James Wilkinson were not what he expected.

O
N HIS JOURNEY NORTH,
Burr had held extensive consultations with two militia generals, Andrew Jackson in Tennessee and John Adair in Kentucky. Although the details of their conversations remained private, their shape was clear. Both generals publicly stated that once war was declared with Spain, they would lead the militia and thousands of volunteers to seize the Floridas and “Mexico,” an ambiguous label that referred sometimes just to Texas, but sometimes included the Floridas, and occasionally all the Spanish border provinces including the silver state of Chihuahua. It was a prospect they both eagerly looked forward to.

In contrast to their ebullient spirits, Burr found Wilkinson depressed, exhausted by his battles with the settlers, but affected more deeply than anything else by his wife’s deteriorating health. Nancy Wilkinson had developed tuberculosis and, during the steamy heat of the St. Louis summer, suffered difficulty in breathing. Her illness added a bitter note to Wilkinson’s patronizing onslaughts against his enemies. One particular target, Judge John Lucas, who combined speculation with his official position as a land commissioner, was accused not only of venality, but of attacking Wilkinson “because I do not acknowledge his superiority, because I sometimes wear a cocked hat and a sword, and am fond of a clean shirt, which are Eyesores to him, [and] because my infirm wife rides daily for her Health in a carriage, which he considers aristocratic.” In the months ahead, Wilkinson’s erratic behavior would bewilder friend and foe, but one explanation for it lay in the anxiety he felt for his wife’s condition.

His gloomy outlook cast a shadow over his first meeting with Burr. A major difference arose over Burr’s belief that the western settlers could be induced to secede from the United States. According to his own account, Wilkinson exclaimed, “My friend, no person was ever more mistaken! The western people disaffected to the government! They are bigoted to Jefferson and democracy.”

Having lived in the west for more than twenty years and spent ten of them unsuccessfully promoting the Spanish Conspiracy, it was understandable that he should have been exasperated by the easterner’s assumption that sentiments in the west were as volatile as in the 1780s. In the argument that ensued, Burr apparently questioned the depth of Wilkinson’s commitment to the plan to invade Mexico, demanding angrily, in the governor’s recollection, “ ‘whether I could be content to vegitate or moulder in that d—d government?’ meaning the government of Louisiana.” Wilkinson replied in subdued terms that “I was making arrangements to retire to private life; that I was tired of the erratic life I had long led; and that the delicate situation of my wife, to whom I owed more than I could render, made it necessary.”

Quite implausibly, the governor claimed that this was when Burr first broached his Mexican plan: “But suppose some grand enterprize should present, which would lead direct to fame and fortune?” This lie apart, there clearly was a disagreement between them, because a second, hurried meeting was held as Burr was leaving. By way of compromise, they apparently decided to put aside the matter of secession and concentrate on what was essential for Burr, Wilkinson’s proposals to march on Santa Fe. War would bring out Jackson and Adair, and so long as the army was engaged in the west, New Orleans would be defenseless, and its French inhabitants would willingly turn it over to Burr. Beyond that, any conflict around Santa Fe would draw Spanish troops away to the north of Mexico, leaving little opposition to an invasion of Veracruz in the south.

Their discussions took place at a time of high alert, when the mounting tensions over the border between Louisiana and Texas seemed to make war with Spain inevitable. In the summer, the U.S. representatives in Spain, James Monroe and John Armstrong, broke off negotiations and secretly advised the president simply to seize Texas. Days before Burr’s arrival, Wilkinson had actually sent the war secretary a lucid and obviously well-considered proposal for invading Mexico by way of Santa Fe, approaching the city either by the Santa Fe trail or the Arkansas River, and employing “a Corps of 100 Artillerists, 400 Cavalry, 400 Rifle men and 1100 Musquetry.” An otherwise bizarre proposal to bring along “a band of Irish Priests who have been educated in Spain, (of whom I have a dozen)” indicated that the general planned not merely to seize “the Northern Provinces” but to take permanent possession. Clearly Wilkinson envisioned the silver-bearing Sierra Madre as a prize.

That fall, Dearborn wrote to advise Wilkinson that the army should be kept on alert. In a rare show of harmony, he commented approvingly on the general’s plan to invade Mexico with guns and priests: “I am not sure that a project of that kind may not become necessary.” In November, after Burr’s departure, Wilkinson promised Dearborn, “If I do not reduce New Mexico, at least, in one campaign, I will forfeit my command.”

It was Aaron Burr’s habit, according to the modern editor of his papers, “to hear what he wanted to hear.” What he evidently heard was that Wilkinson intended to move against Santa Fe shortly. People he tried to recruit testified later that Burr talked as though the Veracruz attack was part of the official strategy to invade Mexico. What he did not hear was the caveat that the general added when he told Dearborn of his invasion plan, that it would only take place “should we be involved in a War, (which Heaven avert).”

They parted with sufficient goodwill for Wilkinson to give Burr an introduction to Governor William Harrison of Indiana Territory, and a warm letter asking him to consider appointing Burr as the territory’s delegate to Congress. Soon after the col onel’s departure, however, the governor received another warning, this time from Dearborn: “There is a strong rumor that you, Burr, etc are too intimate. You ought to keep every suspicious person at arms length, and be as wise as a serpent and as harmless as a dove.” Wilkinson’s reaction was carefully designed to distance himself from Burr but without giving him away.

In a friendly message to Robert Smith, secretary of the navy, and brother of Samuel, Wilkinson dropped in a significant phrase: “Burr is about something, but whether internal or external, I cannot discover. I think you should keep an eye on him.” So vague was the wording that Smith did not notice its import and did nothing to act on it. The tone was not so much a warning from someone anxious about possible insurrection as insurance by someone concerned to protect his own back. Should war come, and Burr encourage secession in Kentucky and Tennesee, General Wilkinson could at least claim to have alerted the government.

Yet the general remained troubled. In December 1805, he contacted his old friend John Adair, fishing for information about Burr’s secessionist plans. Adair sent a teasing reply. “You observe to me,” he wrote in January 1806, “that I ‘have seen Colonel Burr, and ask me what was his Business in the west?’ Answer. Only to avoid a prosecution in New York. Now, Sir, you will oblige me by answering a question in turn for I know you can, Pray how far is it, and what kind of way from St. Louis to Santa Fé, and from thence to Mexico?” The answer he received sounded boastful on first reading, but more cautious on the second. “Do you know that I have reserved these places for my own triumphal entry,” Wilkinson declared, “that I not only know the way but all the difficulties and how to surmount them? I wish we could get leave, Mexico could soon be ours.”

Since Jefferson’s policy was to avoid the expense of fighting, no leave was given for attack. In the absence of war, Wilkinson would not move. As a result, Aaron Burr and his chief of staff, Jonathan Dayton, were forced to resort to blackmail.

D
ESPITE FAILING TO GET
any encouragement for his plans from Governor Harrison, Burr immediately set about fund-raising on his return to Philadelphia. During the winter he was promised more than fifty thousand dollars, ostensibly to buy land west of the Mississippi on the Ouachita River. Burr’s son- in-law, Joseph Alston, governor of South Carolina, provided substantial financial guarantees, but the most generous supporter was Jonathan Dayton, who personally lent twenty thousand dollars. He did so on the specific understanding that the commanding general would be an active participant. Dayton had known Wilkinson since 1794 and was well-informed about his connection to the Spanish Conspiracy. But he had not been in contact with the general since their meeting at Cincinnati in June 1805.

Apart from a note sent shortly after Burr left St. Louis, Wilkinson had in fact ceased to communicate with the leaders of the conspiracy. “Nothing has been heard from the Brigadier since October,” Burr wrote in exasperation in April 1806. By contrast Burr had written several times to Wilkinson to keep him in touch with the conspiracy’s development. “On the subject of a certain speculation, it is not deemed material to write till the whole can be communicated,” Burr told him guardedly in December. And in April 1806 when it appeared that not enough funds were available, he announced, “The execution of our project is postponed till December: want of water in Ohio [i.e., money] rendered movement impracticable other reasons rendered delay expedient. The association is enlarged, and comprises all that Wilkinson could wish.”

The general’s silence clearly alarmed Burr and Dayton. They needed war with Spain, and when it failed to materialize, they realized that he would have to be forced to cooperate. As early as December 1805, Burr wrote suggesting that had war broken out earlier in the year, “[General] Lee would have been commander in chief: truth I assure you.” A month later in another letter, he retailed the gossip of Washington insiders that a road that Wilkinson claimed to have built through Tennessee had never really existed—“One, professing to be your friend, whispered to me soon afterwards that this conversation was calculated to do you injury”— but, Burr added innocently, Jefferson knew all about the allegation, “and I could not perceive that any inference unfriendly to you was drawn from the fact.”