An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson (40 page)

The direction of the hints was always the same— Wilkinson could no longer depend on Jefferson’s support. When the letters drew no response, Dayton took more drastic action. In the summer of 1806, he financed a Kentucky newspaper,
Western World
, and supplied it with a series of stories exposing Wilkinson as “a Spanish pensioner.” In great detail, and with much imagination, it described how he had been commissioned into the Spanish army, how his money arrived in leather bags, and how he repeatedly tried to get Kentucky to secede from the Union. The motive was clear, to make him unemployable by the federal government and thus force him to fall in with Burr’s plans.

Not entirely by coincidence, the governor’s enemies in St. Louis began to step up their attacks. During the winter of 1805–6, Bruff and Hammond had sent repeated complaints about his behavior to Congress and petitioned for his removal. Once the allegations of the
Western World
began to be published, they openly predicted that he would be replaced before the end of the year. In the summer of 1806, one critic, Seth Hunt, even specified the month, September, and the identity of his successor, Samuel Hammond.

W
ILKINSON WAS NOWHERE MORE VULNERABLE
than in his concern about Jefferson’s commitment to him. The most consistent feature of his time as governor of Louisiana was neither his friendship with the Creoles nor his vendetta with the settlers, but his unstinted efforts to cement his personal relationship with the man who’d appointed him. His behavior suggested something akin to the emotional seduction that he once displayed toward his generals.

Early in September 1805, just before Burr’s arrival, Wilkinson sent east a stunning array of gifts designed to appeal to the president. Packed into a wooden trunk were twenty-seven mineral samples—iron ore from the Platte and Osage rivers, lead and galena from the upper Missouri, pumice stone from the Yellowstone, crystallized gypsum and salt rock from the Arkansas— evidence of enough wealth beneath the earth, he explained, “to employ Thousands of Hands, and to produce Millions of Dollars.” With the help of a Ricara or Pawnee chief, named Ankedoucharo, who spoke seven languages including the lingua franca of the Plains Indians, sign language, the governor also assembled for the president a rough census of the eight thousand Plains Indians living southwest of the Missouri. Finally and most enticingly of all, he sent Jefferson a Native American map drawn on buffalo hide showing the courses of the Platte and Yellowstone rivers and what might have been a geyser in the area of what is now the Yellowstone National Park, thirteen hundred miles to the west.

Nothing was better calculated to earn Jefferson’s gratitude than a gift of Indian lore. But Wilkinson’s sumptuous offering also had an official justification. In addition to making him governor of Louisiana Territory, the president had appointed Wilkinson to be commissioner for Indian affairs, and therefore responsible for putting into practice Jefferson’s policy of relocating Native Americans away from land wanted by settlers. In a report sent with the specimens, Wilkinson suggested that northern Louisiana could be made a repository for Native Americans living in the more desirable south, although this would be “opposed by busy and short- sighted politicians” in the Louisiana Territory. Because it was important to keep white settlers out of land intended for Indians, he urged the president to prevent “Aliens and Suspicious Characters mingling with the Natives, and to suspend all Commerce with them at your discretion.”

On the document Jefferson’s firm tick of approval can be seen beside the paragraph with Wilkinson’s proposals, indicating that president and commissioner were at one on the future of the Louisiana Territory. Recognizing that the policy would not be popular, Wilkinson promised to carry out his president’s instructions “without regard to personal consequences.”

Although it was impossible to read Jefferson’s sphinxlike mind, he clearly valued what Wilkinson could offer. The general had kept the army loyal, shown a passion for western exploration, defied unpopularity to carry out the president’s Indian policies, justified the Red River expedition, and written the new Articles of War, which were about to receive congressional approval. The reward had been the decision to entrust him with almost unlimited power in the west. But Wilkinson’s anxiety to earn Jefferson’s good opinion only increased.

To satisfy the president’s desire for knowledge about the west, he sent off a series of expeditions to explore the unknown country beyond him. Led by Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, the first departed northward a few weeks after the governor’s arrival in St. Louis with a mission to explore the headwaters of the Mississippi and clear any British fur traders from the area. Pike fought his way through the swamps and pine forests of northern Minnesota and spent a hard winter near Cass Lake, which he identified as the source of the river— Lake Itasca, the real source, is about thirty miles away—before returning in April 1806. While he was away, Wilkinson dispatched two other lieutenants to explore the country to the west: George Peter was sent up the Osage River, accompanied by the fur trader Pierre Chouteau; and Wilkinson’s son, James Biddle, was directed to the upper Missouri, an enterprise cut short after a soldier was killed in a skirmish with Kickapoo warriors.

Like the maps that had first caught the president’s attention, all this activity was for Jefferson’s benefit. “My last breath, my last drop of blood shall be for Him,” Wilkinson assured Samuel Smith in March 1806, “would that I had more to give.” Yet, whatever he did, the evidence of his treachery was all around.

While the Red River expedition was being planned on the basis of Wilkinson’s maps, Casa Calvo was advising the acting governor of Texas, in accordance with Wilkinson’s “Reflections,” that Spain should “drive back every illegal usurpation toward the region of Texas.” Consequently, when Wilkinson’s old associate Thomas Freeman led the expedition up the river in the spring of 1806, with Wilkinson’s latest protégé, Captain Richard Sparks, in command of the military detachment, Wilkinson’s advice also ensured that a troop of two hundred Mexican cavalry were being dispatched from Nacogdoches under Captain Francisco Viana to intercept them.

The general’s anxieties were understandable. His adherence to Jefferson had begun as political calculation. But no one had entrusted him with more power, and Wilkinson had responded as he always did to those who flattered his vanity—with wholehearted devotion. That Jefferson might withdraw his trust created an almost intolerable anxiety.

I
N THE TWO YEARS
since Wilkinson had written “Reflections,” General Salcedo, the commandant of the Internal Provinces, had moved more than seven hundred troops forward to beef up defenses on the Texas border, and Antonio Cordero, the energetic governor of Chihuahua, had been transferred to take over the forward province of Texas. This aggressive policy had been recommended by Agent 13 as a way of preventing the United States from expanding farther west. Rising tension reached a new pitch in October 1805 when Spanish forces occupied two fortified positions east of the Sabine River, the border with Texas as designated by the United States.

On June 11, 1806, Wilkinson received a letter from Henry Dearborn concerning the military situation in the south. Negotiations had failed to persuade the Spanish to withdraw. The presence of their forces on U.S. territory was effectively an invasion. “You will therefore with as little delay as possible repair to the Territory of New Orleans,” the war secretary ordered, “and take upon yourself command of the Troops in that quarter, together with such Militia or Volunteers as you may need for the defence of the country.”

He was being given the chance of war, with overall command. It would enhance his position as commanding general and bring him “fame and honor,” as he acknowledged. At worst, the mere threat of attack might procure a Spanish bribe to keep the peace. At best, it would allow Burr to make his attack on Veracruz and might lead to the seizure of the Mexican silver mines. It should have been the culmination of all Wilkinson’s preparations.

Instead, Dearborn’s letter threw Wilkinson into rage and despair. All he could see was that his enemies had won. This was what Burr had hinted at, and Hunt had predicted. Until that moment Wilkinson had dismissed their reports as groundless. That very month, his confidence had been reinforced by a letter from Samuel Smith passing on Jefferson’s opinion that he could not have made “a fitter appointment” as governor. Now, as Wilkinson told Dearborn, “your letter [has] corrected my delusions.”

The order to leave St. Louis might be dressed up as a military deployment, but to Wilkinson’s eyes, the harsh reality was to force him out of Louisiana. “Bruff, Lucas &c say it is done to get me out of the way to make room for Hammond,” he told Smith. What made it “more afflicting” was the consequent need to move his now seriously ill wife. To Dearborn, he complained that Bruff’s attempt to stir up trouble between “a General in Chief and a Minister of War” and to “draw down unmerited suspicions upon men of purest honor” was tantamount to treason. But to Smith he raged about the worst betrayal of all: how could Jefferson have praised him one day and condoned his dismissal the next?

The letters to Dearborn and Smith were sent on June 17. Then there was silence. Throughout the summer and fall of 1806, it was as though the commanding general of the U.S. army and Burr’s right-hand man had simply disappeared. In the absence of any communication, neither the federal government nor the conspirators knew what had happened to him. On the Ohio, Aaron Burr and Jonathan Dayton gathered funds, men, and equipment for their next move and wondered why they had not heard from their collaborator. In Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Henry Dearborn debated with increasing anxiety why the army commander was no longer replying to letters or complying with orders. No one knew which way James Wilkinson would jump.

23
T
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ENERAL AT
B
AY

O
N
O
CTOBER
22, 1806, the president summoned a cabinet meeting in the White House to be attended by his senior heads of department, Secretary of State James Madison, Albert Gallatin from Treasury, Henry Dearborn from War, and Gideon Granger, the postmaster general. Three critically important items were on the agenda—the Spanish threat east of the Sabine River, the nature of Aaron Burr’s movements, and the loyalty of General James Wilkinson. The first two matters were quickly dealt with— they agreed that troops should be moved to the most southwesterly city in the United States, Natchitoches, to mount a credible deterrent to Spain, and Burr needed to be “strictly watched” to ensure that he did not put into action any plan that might injure the United States. The third question really tested the best political minds in the nation: “General Wilkinson being expressly declared by Burr to be engaged with him in this design as his Lieutenant or first in command, and suspicion of infidelity in Wilkinson being now become very general, a question is proposed what is proper to be done as to him?”

Gideon Granger, once Wilkinson’s outspoken supporter, was responsible for raising the question. Three days earlier he had taken a sworn statement from William Eaton, formerly the U.S. consul in Tripoli, who had won a famous victory at Derna in 1805 leading a force that included the Marine Corps against the Barbary pirates in North Africa. Eaton claimed that after his return to the United States, Aaron Burr had approached him and “laid open his project of revolutionizing the western country, separating it from the Union, establishing a monarchy there, of which he was to be the sovereign, New Orleans to be his capital; organizing a force on the Mississippi, and extending conquest to Mexico.” Burr offered to appoint Eaton second- in-command of the army that was to be led by General James Wilkinson.

The extravagance of the plot invited skepticism, and Eaton, who was seeking compensation from the government for debts he had incurred in North Africa, was not entirely reliable. When he originally brought his story to the attention of the president earlier in the year, Jefferson had dismissed it, saying he had “too much confidence in the integrity and the attachment to the Union of the citizens of [the western] country to admit an apprehension.” The ease with which the cabinet disposed of the Burr question suggests that even at this late date his plans were not their chief concern. The real problem lay with the most powerful man in the Mississippi Valley, and its urgency was contained in the phrase “suspicion of infidelity in Wilkinson being now become very general.”

The one person in the cabinet who had up to that point consistently refused to entertain any such suspicion was the president himself, and the consequences were starkly obvious. In New Orleans, the Creole population was close to rebellion against Claiborne’s government, and the Spanish ambassador, Carlos Martinez de Casa-Yrujo, had let it be known that both Burr and Dayton had approached him with plans to exploit the unrest and use it to split off the western states from the Union. Everyone in the room must have been aware that the fate of the country now depended on what Wilkinson decided to do.

If he acted as a loyal commander against Spain, its invasion was easily countered. If he acted as a Spanish agent, the consequences were incalculable. Protected by the army, New Orleans was safe. Left vulnerable, it could fall to assault from the Mississippi or to an internal revolt. Unsupported by Wilkinson, Burr could be contained. Supported by Wilkinson, and the military following he could count on, Burr’s conspiracy became a genuine insurrection. The cabinet agonized over these questions, and Dearborn, at least, could have been forgiven for wanting to say to the president, “You were warned.”