An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson

by Andro Linklater

  In April 1798, the growing arrogance of France’s military government provoked a crisis in its dealings with the United States. The flashpoint was the diplomatic insult, known as the XYZ affair, when three representatives of Foreign Secretary Talleyrand demanded a bribe of fifty thousand pounds sterling, approximately $150,000, before the U.S. ambassadors could present their credentials. The news provoked an outraged Congress to authorize a dramatic increase in the army. In a first installment, twelve regiments, each of one thousand men, were to be raised to create what was called the New Army, and this was followed by further increases until Congress had approved a force of more than forty thousand men. In overall command was George Washington, newly promoted to lieutenant general, with two major generals, Alexander Hamilton and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, as operational commanders, all superseding Wilkinson in seniority. Yet astonishingly he did not appear to resent his demotion.

  That George Washington had been placed in supreme command of the New Army made the loss easier to bear, but it was Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s deputy, who found the key to Wilkinson’s volatile loyalties.

  As early as February 1799, when the recruits began to come in, Hamilton had promised Wilkinson that he wanted their relationship to result in “great mutual satisfaction.” When Wilkinson replied offering his full support, Hamilton suggested to Washington, “It strikes me forcibly that it be right and expedient to advance this gentlemen to the grade of major general.” Hamilton had only sporadically met Wilkinson since the Conway cabal, but he clearly understood Wilkinson’s temperament. “I am aware that some doubts have been entertained of him,” Hamilton acknowledged, “and that his character, on certain sides, gives room for doubt. Yet he is at present in the service; is a man of more than ordinary talent, of courage and enterprise . . . and will naturally find his interest as an ambitious man in deserving the favour of the government; while he will be apt to become disgusted if neglected, and through disgust may be rendered really what he is now only suspected to be.” On June 25, George Washington agreed to recommend to the president “promoting Brigadier Wilkinson to the Rank of Maj[o]r General.” Conspicuously he said nothing about the brigadier’s abilities, only that “it would feed his ambition, soothe his vanity, and by arresting discontent, produce the good effect you contemplate.”

  Their reading of his character showed insight, and Wilkinson responded to the encouragement as they had hoped. But what Washington and Hamilton could not imagine was how deeply ingrained his double life had become. In a curious way, it freed him from any sense of social obligation. His ambition might be fed and his vanity soothed, but the only real constraints that affected him were a desire to be popular and a fear of being found out. With one notable exception, he never seems to have felt that he was betraying anyone, merely that he was seizing an opportunity.

  THE EXCEPTION WAS HIS WIFE. Sensitive, gentle, and, in middle age, possibly depressive, Nancy had a neediness that Wilkinson had to meet. Whether from love, or an egocentric desire not to let her down, he always struggled to fulfill her wants. Hamilton’s request that he come to Philadelphia in early 1799 to advise on the disposition of the New Army consequently threw Wilkinson into a dilemma. It was a necessary step toward promotion, but Nancy became distraught at the prospect of being left alone in Natchez. “The anxiety of my wife at the idea of our separation, gives us both agony, and so sensibly affects her whole frame, that I shall not be able to tear myself from her as soon as I expected,” Wilkinson confided to Gayoso in May.

  She had arrived from Pittsburgh just a few months earlier, and her reluctance to return to a frontier society could be guessed from a line in one of Wilkinson’s letters to Sargent begging him to write her with some words “commendatory of the climate and society [of Natchez].” Coached by her popular, outgoing husband, she had brought with her suitable gifts to offer southern society, including “a few cranberries, a northern berry valuable for its rarity in this quarter and its fine aromatic flavor when properly prepared,” for Gayoso’s American wife, Margaret.

  During those months an unmistakable intimacy grew up between the two families, despite the barbed relations between the husbands. The Wilkinsons rented Gayoso’s exquisite estate of Concordia, perched high above the Mississippi, and they planned for their children to exchange visits. Gayoso might exert some discreet blackmail on Wilkinson, and Wilkinson might complain of his landlord, “The Mingo asks too much for his dirty acres,” but when Nancy pleaded to be allowed to accompany her husband back to Pennsylvania, Wilkinson had no hesitation in enlisting Gayoso’s help: “Would you take the trouble to point out the dangers and the incommodations of the voyage? It would have great weight with my Ann, and will oblige me, but the thing must appear like a suggestion of your own— you perceive I treat you with the intimacy and unreserve of a Brother.”

  Aside from the habitual distaste for honesty, his tendency to enlist others in dealing with his wife does suggest a tenderness toward her that no one else evoked. It even softened his feelings toward Ellicott. As he was about to sail from New Orleans, he wrote the boundary commissioner, “I left Mrs. Wilkinson with our friend Walker at Concord House, in tolerable health but deep affliction. My own solicitude exceeds anything I have before experienced on Her account and my absence will be shortened by every means in my power. I shall find pleasure in reporting your progress to the President, and rendering you any service in my power.”

  THESUMMERIN PHILADELPHIA sealed an unlikely friendship with Hamilton, based personally on a shared excess of physical energy, and professionally on a desire to reform the army. Since neither wanted to see French ideas of liberty and equality undermining its discipline, Wilkinson was drawn into the Federalist strategy of weeding out any officer who was a Republican sympathizer and, in the words of a critic, “has had the audacity to mount the French cockade.” This threatened to make the New Army an overtly political animal—“We were very attentive to the importance of appointing friends of the Govern[ment] to military stations,” Hamilton assured McHenry.

  It was exactly what Republicans had warned would happen once a standing army was permitted— professional soldiers would be loyal to the government and could be used to intimidate its opponents. Their fears had been reinforced by the restrictions on public criticism of the government brought in under the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. When the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures, under the covert prompting of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, resolved that the acts were unconstitutional, it drew from Hamilton, the army’s operational commander, a reaction that was the stuff of Republican nightmares. The resolves, he told Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts on February 12, 1799, were evidence of “a regular conspiracy to overturn the government,” and armed force was the proper response: “when a clever force has been collected let them be drawn towards Virginia, for which there is an obvious pretext— and then let measures be taken to act upon the laws, and put Virginia to the test of resistance.”

  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

  JEFFERSON’S GENERAL

  THE 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.

  DURING THAT WINTER WHILE FORT FAYETTE, 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.