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

by Andro Linklater

  45 “the new Board of War is Composed”: James Craik to Washington, January 6, 1778, GWP.

  46 “New Jersey is our country”: Quoted in Warren Burger, “Obstacles to the Constitution,” Supreme Court Historical Society, 1977.

  46 “If he has an Enemy”: Henry Laurens to the Marquis de Lafayette, January 12, 1778, LCC.

  46 “General Gates was to be exalted”: Washington to Patrick Henry, March 28, 1778, GWP.

  46 “I have been a Slave to the service”: Washington to Richard Henry Lee, October 17, 1777, GWP.

  46 “I have never seen any stroke of ill fortune”: Tench Tilghman to Robert Morris, October 21, 1777, quoted in Preston Russell, “The Conway Cabal,” American Heritage Magazine, March/April 1995.

  46 The great storm that held up JW in Reading, see Memoirs, 1:338–40, and froze the defeated Brunswickers, see Letters of Brunswick and Hessian Officers during the American Revolution, translated by William Stone, but drove others landing on Staten Island to think of deserting and swamped the huts of Washington’s drenched troops.

  47 “The Prospect is chilling”: John Adams diary, September 16, 1777, AFP. Crammed into a small, German-speaking town, other delegates voiced equally depressed comments, for example, Cornelius Harnett of North Carolina: “It is the most Inhospitable Scandalous place I ever was in.”

  47 “and poaching in the heavyest Rain”: John Adams to Abigail Adams, October 28, 1777, AFP.

  48 JW’s account of the dinner party with Stirling is studiously vague—“conversation too copious and diffuse for me to have charged my memory,” Memoirs, 1:331–32— so it is not entirely clear whether he or McWilliams misquoted Conway’s letter to Gates.

  49 “Had I known that he had fallen in love”: Adams to Thomas McKean, November 26, 1815, AFP.

  49 The figures for British armaments captured at Saratoga are taken from the official returns to Congress, October 31, 1777, JCC.

  49 “make the best and most immediate use of this intelligence”: Letter by Richard Henry Lee and James Lovell to the U.S. representatives in France, October 31, 1777.

  50 “Your Name Sir will be written”: Henry Laurens to Horatio Gates, November 5, 1777, JCC.

  50 “I have not met with a more promising military genius”: Gates to John Hancock, October 20, 1777, JCC. On November 6, 1777, the Continental Congress meeting in the courthouse of York, Pennsylvania, passed the following resolution: “That Colonel James Wilkinson, adjutant general in the northern army, in consideration of his services in that department, and being strongly recommended by General Gates as a gallant officer, and a promising military genius . . .” JCC.

  50 “My dear General and loved Friend” JW to Gates, November 1, 1777, Memoirs, 1:335. JW also referred to his discomfort at finding Congress had already heard unofficially from the general: “Through the industry of your friends, whom you indulged with copies the articles of the treaty (with their diabolical comments I suppose) reached the grand army before I did the Congress.”

  51 Gates “was too polite to make the Lieut. General and his troops prisoners of discretion”: Quoted in David Duncan Wallace, The Life of Henry Laurens (New York, 1915), 247.

  51 “Had an Attack been carried”: JW to Congress, November 3, 1777, manuscript letter in Papers of the Continental Congress.

  52 “a weak General or bad Counsellors”: Washington to Conway, November 4, 1777, GWP.

  52 “Your modesty is such”: Conway to Washington, November 5, 1777, GWP.

  52 “your generosity and frank disposition”: General Thomas Mifflin to Gates, November 28, 1777, Memoirs, 1:371.

  52 “No punishment is too severe”: Gates to Mifflin, December 4, 1777, PCC.

  53 “Those letters have been stealingly copied”: Gates to Washington, December 8, 1777, GWP.

  53 “I am under the disagreeable necessity”: Washington to Gates, January 4, 1778, GWP.

  53 “read [Conway’s] letter publicly in my presence”: Memoirs, 1:372–73. JW’s full self-exculpation was wonderfully sinuous: “Conscious as I was that I had never spoken of that letter with evil intentions, or at all except when it was mentioned to me; and considering it, as it really was, nothing more than the vehicle of the opinions of an individual . . . which General Gates himself had not treated confidentially because he had read it publicly in my presence as matter of information from the grand army; I felt no personal solicitude about it, nor could I ascribe to it the importance which was subsequently given to it; and therefore I did not dream of the foul imputations it was destined to draw down upon me, and the strife and trouble it would occasion me.”

  53 “communicated by Colonl. Wilkinson to Major McWilliams”: Washington to Gates, January 4, 1778, GWP.

  54 “I never had any sort of intimacy”: Gates to Washington, January 23, 1778, GWP.

  54 In an attempt to clear up the inconsistency between Conway’s letter and JW’s misremembered version, Stirling asked him to produce the original letter. Stirling to Wilkinson, January 6, 1778, Memoirs, 1:382–83. JW replied angrily, “I may have been indiscreet, my Lord, but be assured I am not dishonourable.”

  54 “I always before heard”: Abraham Clark to William Alexander, January 15, 1778, PCC. In this letter Clark voiced an oddly prescient suspicion: “If he betrayed the Confidence of his Pattron he may do the same by his Country.”

  55 “dissention among the principle Officers of the Army”: Ibid.

  55 “I earnestly hope no more of that time”: Gates to Washington, February 19, 1778, GWP.

  55 “I am as averse to controversy”: Washington to Gates, February 22, 1778, GWP.

  55 “the very improper steps”: Anthony Wayne to Colonel Walter Stewart, quoted in Stewart’s letter to Gates, Memoirs, 1:390. JW also quoted General Charles Lee’s comment to Gates, March 29, 1779: “With respect to Wilkinson, I really think he had been a man more sinned against than any.”

  55 “I ever was sensible of Wilky’s volatility”: Ibid.

  55 “Your generous Conduct at Albany”: Colonel Robert Troup to JW, quoted in JW’s letter to Washington, March 28, 1778, GWP.

  55 “General Gates had denounced me”: Memoirs, 1:385. The version of what happened between him and Gates is inescapably JW’s. It can be partially confirmed by Gates’s reply, quoted in full in the Memoirs, and by JW’s letter of March 28, 1778, to Washington, in which he recounted substantially the same sequence of events.

  57 “My Lord shall bleed for his conduct”: JW to Gates, February 22, 1778, Memoirs, 1:385–86.

  57 “flitted away like a vision of the morn”: Ibid., 1:391.

  57 “passed in a private company during a convivial Hour”: JW to Stirling, March 18, 1778, ibid., 1:391–92.

  57 “under no injunction of secrecy”: Stirling to JW, ibid., 1:392.

  58 “he seemed a good deal surprized”: Washington to Stirling, March 21, 1778, GWP.

  58 “after the act of treachery”: JW to Laurens, March 29, 1778, Memoirs, 1:409–10.

  58 “improper to remain on the files of Congress”: Quoted in Jacobs, Tarnished Warrior, 47.

  58 JW passes over the second duel, but Jacobs’s description in Tarnished Warrior is taken from contemporary accounts: New York Packet (Fishkill, NY), September 17, 24, October 8, 1778; and Continental Journal and Weekly Advertiser, November 12, 1778.

  CHAPTER 6: LOVE AND INDEPENDENCE

  JW’s recollections skip over the period between his leaving the army and his arriving in Kentucky almost six years later. However, his period as clothier general is well documented in the War Department Papers, as well as the Papers of George Washington and Papers of the Continental Congress. The Biddle family connections are based on Radbill, “The Leadership of Owen Biddle and John Lacey,” and Hay, “The Letters of Mrs. Ann Biddle Wilkinson.” The main sources for Pennsylvania politics are Wood, Creation of the American Republic; Reed, Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed; William S. Hanna, Benjamin Franklin and Pennsylvania Politics (Stanford, CA: 1964); and Ireland, “The Ethnic- Rel
igious Dimension of Pennsylvania Politics, 1778–1779.”

  62 JW’s ownership of Trevose: Jacobs, Tarnished Warrior, 55–59.

  62 land “sold for three pounds an acre”: Benjamin Franklin, “Information to those who would remove to America,” September 1782, Writings, 8:603–14.

  62 For Arnold’s time in Philadelphia, see Randall, Benedict Arnold.

  62 “borrowed a sum of money of the Commissaries”: JW to Joseph Reed, May 1779, quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 45.

  63 “If your Excellency thinks me criminal”: Arnold to Washington, May 5, 1779, quoted in Randall, Benedict Arnold.

  63 “If we review the rise and progress”: Silas Deane to Robert Morris, quoted in Linklater, Measuring America, 166.

  64 “Men without Cloathes to cover their nakedness”: Washington to John Bannister, April 21, 1778, GWP.

  64 The duties of the clothier general were a work in progress until the last years of the war. For their changing nature, see Wright, Continental Army.

  64 “The clothing department has occasioned more trouble to me”: Quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 48.

  64 “For when a Soldier is convinced”: Washington to James Mease, April 17, 1777, quoted in Wright, Continental Army.

  64 “I am again reduced”: Washington to General William Heath, November 18, 1779, quoted in Erna Risch, “Supplying Washington’s Army,” Special Studies Series, ed. Maurice Matloff (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1981).

  65 “I shall expect to see you”: Washington’s correspondence with JW is quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 50–52.

  65 For JW’s Philadelphia distractions, see Hay, Admirable Trumpeter.

  66 “Is it not a possible Thing to revive”: General Huntington to Jeremiah Wadsworth, May 5, 1780, quoted in Royster, “Nature of Treason.”

  67 For the profound shock of Arnold’s treason, see Royster, “Nature of Treason.” Next to Washington himself, no one could be thought more patriotic. In 1776, Mercy Otis Warren thought “the name of Washington and Arnold [would be linked] to the latest posterity, with the laurel on their brow.”

  67 “Address of Confidence”: Jacobs, Tarnished Warrior, 62.

  68 “Direct the Commander-in Chief”: New York’s 1780 petition cited by Baack, “Forging a Nation State.”

  68 “I should be wanting in Personal Candour”: JW to Samuel Huntington, president of Congress, March 27, 1781, PCC.

  69 “I think General Wilkinson too desponding”: Reed to General Lacy, commander of the Pennsylvania militia, quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 52.

  69 “It is a pity so good an officer is lost to the service”: Nathanael Greene to Clement Biddle, June 26, 1780, quoted in Reed, Life and Correspondence.

  69 without “cash or credit”: Wilkinson to Henry Lee, quoted in Davis, “By Invitation of Mrs. Wilkinson,” 156.

  CHAPTER 7: THE KENTUCKY PIONEER

  For JW’s early years in Kentucky, the Harry Innes Papers are indispensable. Yet the chaos of land titles as illustrated in Abernethy, Western Lands and the American Revolution; Aron, How the West Was Lost; Sakolski, Great American Land Bubble; and Dunaway, “Speculators and Settler Capitalists”— allied to JW’s habitual exaggeration—lend mystery to his speculations.

  71 “The vallies are of the richest soil”: John William de Braham, “De Braham’s Account,” in Early Travels in the Tennessee Country: 1540–1800, ed. Samuel Cole Williams ( Johnson City, TN, 1928).

  71 “more frequent than I have seen cattle in the settlements”: “The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon,” in John Filson, The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucké (Wilmington: James Adams, 1784).

  71 “The country might invite a prince” quoted in Archibald Henderson, The Conquest of the Old Southwest etc, 1740–1790 (New York: Century, 1920).

  72 “A person not quite tall enough”: Humphrey Marshall, History of Kentucky, 1:165.

  72 For JW’s links to Hugh Shiell, see Hay, “Letters of Mrs. Ann Biddle Wilkinson.” 73 JW’s “wonderful address” in borrowing money: William Leavy, “A Memoir of Lexington and Its Vicinity,” Kentucky Historical Society Register 40 (April 1942).

  73 JW’s traveling hardships were described in “Letters of General James Wilkinson,”

  Kentucky Historical Society Register 24 (September 1926).

  73 John Lewis dealings: July 3, 1784, agreement with JW for locating land, John Lewis papers, First American West:The Ohio River Valley, 1750–1820, LoC.

  73 “Be sure you bring a double stock of great variety”: JW to Scott, July 4, 1784, ibid.

  74 “Our country is now a continued Flower Bed”: JW to Scott, quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 62.

  74 “It is impossible for me to describe the torture,” “I feel so Stupid”: Ann Wilkinson to John Biddle, February 14, 1788, Hay, “Letters of Mrs. Ann Biddle Wilkinson.”

  74 A detailed study of Kentucky’s chaotic system of land registration and confusion over multiple claims appears in Wilma A. Dunaway, “Speculators and Settler Capitalists,” in Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the Nineteenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 1995). In 1821 Judge Joseph Story attributed the confusion to the decision to allow settlers to appropriate land “by entries and descriptions of their own, without any previous survey under public authority, and without any such boundaries as were precise, permanent, and unquestionable.” “An address delivered before Members of the Suffolk Bar” (Boston, 1829).

  76 “And when arrivd at this Heaven in idea”: “Memorandum of M. Austin’s Journey from the Lead Mines in the County of Wythe in the State of Virginia to the Lead Mines in the Province of Louisiana, 1796–1797,” American Historical Review 5 (1899–1900): 525–26.

  76 “The titles in Kentucky w[ill] be Disputed for a Century”: Quoted in Dunaway, “Speculators and Settler Capitalists.”

  76 “under the necessity of employing about £40 of your cash”: JW to Shiell, “Letters of James Wilkinson.”

  76 “far from affluent”: Memoirs, 2:109.

  77 The many Danville conventions were made necessary by the impossibility of achieving any agreement between the large speculator settlers and the smaller landholders whose titles were less secure. The arguments could be as fierce as they were inscrutable.

  77 “There is nothing which binds one country”: GW to Richard Henry Lee, August 22, 1785, GWP.

  77 “The People of Kentucky alone,” “I pleased myself”: JW to James Hutchinson, “Letters of James Wilkinson.”

  78 “They shall be Informed”: JW to unknown correspondent, April 1786, quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 77.

  79 “throw them into the hands eventually of a foreign power”: James Monroe to James Madison, quoted in Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (Richmond: University of Virginia Press, 1990).

  79 “this country will in a few years Revolt”: Harry Innes to Patrick Henry, quoted in Linklater, Fabric of America, 98.

  79 “an outrage . . . generally disavowed”: JW to Francisco Cruzat, quoted in Whitaker, “James Wilkinson’s First Descent to New Orleans in 1787.”

  CHAPTER 8: SPANISH TEMPTATION

  From the moment that JW descended to New Orleans, his actions become the subject of at least three differently motivated accounts: JW’s version in volume 2 of his Memoirs, designed to demonstrate his patriotism; Daniel Clark’s Proofs of the Corruption of General James Wilkinson and His Connexion to Aaron Burr, composed, as the title suggests, to prove the opposite; and the relevant legajos in the Papeles Procedentes de Cuba, together with some other documents in the Archivo General de Indias, written in triplicate to show that JW’s influence and information were being used to Spain’s best advantage. Apart from those already cited, the later historians involved are William Shepherd, an early pioneer in the Spanish archives, Isaac Joslin Cox, and Arthur P. Whitaker.

  81 “a considerable annual supply of tobacco”: Memoirs, 2:113.

  82 “thence round the western shores of L
akes Erie and Huron”: John Jay’s account of negotiations with the Spanish envoy Count d’Arande in Paris in July 1782, quoted in The Life of John Jay: With selections from his correspondence and miscellaneous papers by his son, William Jay (1833: repr. 2000), Bridgewater, VA: American Foundation Publications, 2:472.

  82 JW’s first journey to New Orleans: Arthur P. Whitaker, “James Wilkinson’s First Descent to New Orleans in 1787,” Hispanic American Historical Review 8, no. 1 (February 1928).

  83 Humboldt’s estimate might have been too low; silver production in Mexico mint in 1783 is estimated to have been 23.1 million pesos in Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, Apogee of Empire: Spain and New Spain in the Age of Charles III (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).