Andro Linklater - An Artist in Treason - The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson

30 “to remedy his polite manners”: Memoirs , 1:156. Washington would have attached him to a regiment commanded by the notoriously rough-tempered Nathanael Guest had JW not protested, so Hartley represented the soft option.

31 Every recorded word written about Ann Biddle makes her sound adorable— adventurous, tenderhearted, generous- spirited—just as Peale painted her. For John Biddle and the Indian King, see Earle, “The Taverns of Colonial Philadelphia”; for other members of the family, see Hay, “Letters of Mrs. Ann Biddle Wilkinson,” and Radbill, “Quaker Patriots: The Leadership of Owen Biddle and John Lacey.”

CHAPTER 4: THE TRIUMPH OF SARATOGA

In addition to Nelson, General Horatio Gates , and his “Legacy of Controversy,” sources used include Wright, Continental Army ; Upham, “Burgoyne’s Great Mistake,” and Hudleston’s Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne .

33 “My young heart leaped with joy”: Memoirs , 1:154.

33 “I would to God, gentlemen could for once know their own minds”: Ibid.

34 “John Burgoyne wagers”: Quoted in Frothingham, Washington: Commander- in-chief . 34 “The perfidy of mankind”: Memoirs , 1:172.

34 “It wrung my heart”: Ibid., 1:174–75. Gates’s order, issued on May 24, 1777, read in full, “Colonel James Wilkinson is appointed deputy adjutant- general to the army in the northen department; all orders written or verbal coming from him are to be considered as the orders of the general in chief.” Schuyler read a copy of JW’s letter to Gates and commented, “I admire warmth and affection in young gentlemen of your age . . . I hope you may find cause to give me a share of the regard you now bear General Gates.”

35 “these Mortals must be led and not drove”: Horatio Gates to Joseph Trumbull of Connecticut, quoted in Nelson, “Citizen Soldiers or Regulars.”

35 “Gates’ arrival raised us as if by magic”: Udney Hay to Governor Clinton, August 13, 1777, quoted in Nelson, “Legacy of Controversy.”

36 “He has great merit”: General St. Clair to Gates, quoted in Memoirs , 1:352.

36 “His conduct . . . endeared him to me”: Matthew Lyon, deposition to Ezekiel Bacon’s committee of the House of Representatives, 1811, ibid., 3:341.

37 “Such an explosion of fire I had never heard”: James Phinney Baxter, The British Invasion from the North: The Campaigns of General Carleton and Burgoyne with the Journal of Lieut. William Digby (Albany, NY: Munsell’s, 1887).

37 The battle of Freeman’s Farm: Memoirs , 1:263–66. JW’s account places him at the center of events from the days before the battle when he purportedly took out the reconnaissance party that found Burgoyne’s army and selected Bemis Heights as a strongpoint for Gates’s force. During the fighting at Freeman’s Farm, he also claimed to have gone to the battleground in person and strengthened the morale of the commanders Henry Dearborn and Daniel Morgan, the latter having been reduced to tears. Without corroboration it is impossible to know what degree of credibility, if any, should be attached to these claims. However, the angry accusation of Richard Varick, Arnold’s staff officer, confirms that JW’s intervention was responsible for effectively removing Arnold from his command.

39 “he is an old gamester”: October 4, 1777, Gates to Governor George Clinton, quoted in Nelson, “Legacy of Controversy.”

39 “Our cannon were surrounded”: Baxter, British Invasion.

40 “the likeliest young man I ever saw”: Lyon to Thomas Jefferson, August 12, 1802, TJP.

40 JW’s leading role in the negotiations for Burgoyne’s surrender are described in Memoirs , 1:290–317, and largely substantiated by Nelson and Hudleston. Burgoyne’s ascription of failure to “the fortune of war” rather than his own inadequacy was characteristic.

43 JW blamed his illness on “the strong excitements produced by the important scenes in which I had been engaged”: Ibid., 1:321.

CHAPTER 5: BETRAYING GENERAL GATES

Necessarily JW’s private quarrel with Gates is told without corroboration. But his role in the betrayal of the Conway cabal was very public, fully documented in the George Washington Papers, and both the Journals of the Continental Congress and the Letters of Delegates to Congress.

44 “The standing corps which I have seen are disciplined”: John Burgoyne, A State of the Expedition from Canada (London, 1780).

44 “to Coax, to wheedle and even to Lye”: Schuyler to Washington, November 22, 1776, quoted in Randall, Benedict Arnold, Patriot and Traitor .

44 “We can allow a certain Citizen to be wise”: John Adams to Abigail Adams, October 26, 1777, AFP.

44 “From a well-regulated militia we have nothing to fear”: John Hancock, 1774, quoted in Kohn, Eagle and Sword .

45 “We want you in different places”: James Lovell to Gates, November 22, 1777, quoted in June Lloyd’s “BeWare of Your Board of War,” Pennsylvania Historical Society, Pennsylvania Legacies , November 2008.

45 “The northern army has shown us”: Benjamin Rush (anonymously) to Patrick Henry, January 12, 1778, Letters of Benjamin Rush , vol. 1, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951).

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.