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

172 The Little Turtle saga, “Could I be made instrumental”: JW to John Adams, December 26, 1797, quoted in James Wilkinson (grandson), “Paper Prepared and Read,” and John Adams’s reply, Adams to JW, February 4, 1798, The Works of John Adams , ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown, 1856).

173 “I most sincerely wish an inquiry”: Wilkinson, “Paper Prepared and Read.”

173 “I esteem your talents”: Adams, Works.

174 “How is the subordination of the military to the civil power to be supported?”: “Review of the Propositions of Mr. Hillhouse,” 1808, ibid., vol 5.

174 “that provisions will always be made at Headquarters”: JW to Samuel Hodgdon, July 7, 1797, WDP.

175 “My Ann unusually hearty”: JW to Owen Biddle, December 24, 1797, quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter , 169.

175 Ellicott report on Captain Guion’s behavior: Ellicott to Pickering, February 10, 1798, Ellicott Papers, LoC.

175 “Observed everywhere, I dare not communicate”: JW to Gayoso, March 5, 1798, legajo 2374.

CHAPTER 17: ELLICOTT’S DISCOVERY

My admiration and affection for Andrew Ellicott led me to include a study of him in The Fabric of America , and together with his Journal and the Andrew Ellicott Papers in the Library of Congress, this provides much of the background to this chapter.

177 “My Love,—I have at length worried the Spaniards out”: Ellicott to Sarah Ellicott, quoted in Mathews, Andrew Ellicott , 128.

177 JW’s visit to Ellicott’s camp followed by Clark’s to Loftus Heights were explored in Clark, Proofs , 62, 64, 79–80, and in Memoirs , 2:37, 133, 183.

178 “My friend, you are warranted”: Quoted in Linklater, Fabric of America .

180 Ellicott’s report: Ellicott to Pickering, November 8, 1798, quoted in Memoirs , 2:171. The original letter from Gayoso to Power was dated October 23, 1798.

180 “I have seen a letter of Mr. Power’s”: Ellicott to JW, December 16, 1798, quoted in Memoirs , 2:172.

180 “a beastly, criminal, and disgraceful intercourse”: Testimony of Thomas Freeman, April 10, 1811, at the court- martial of JW.

CHAPTER 18: THE FEDERALIST FAVORITE

The short-lived expansion of the army in the wake of the XYZ affair receives detailed attention from military historians cited earlier; it forms part of Theodore Crackel’s Mr. Jefferson’s Army and is the particular focus of Murphy, “John Adams: The Politics of the Additional Army, 1798–1800.”

182 “Four times from 1786 to 1792”: Pontalba’s memorandum, Gayarré, History of Louisiana , 410.

183 JW’s mutually admiring relationship with Hamilton was reported in Memoirs , 1:442–51, and as JW admitted, the latter’s friendly attitude “excited my admiration and gladdened my self love.”

183 “I am aware that some doubts have been entertained of him”: Hamilton to Washington, June 15, 1799; Washington to Hamilton, June 25, 1799, PGW.

184 “The anxiety of my wife at the idea of our separation”: JW to Gayoso, May 14, 1799, legajo 2375.

184 “a few cranberries”: JW to Gayoso, May 15, 1799, ibid.

184 “Would you take the trouble”: JW to Gayoso, Arpil 20, 1799, ibid.

184 “I left Mrs. Wilkinson”: JW to Ellicott, June 12, 1799, Ellicott Papers, LoC.

185 The ban on wearers of the “French cockade”: Reported in Centinel , quoted in Crackel, Mr. Jefferson’s Army.

185 “when a clever force has been collected”: Hamilton to Sedgwick, February 2, 1799, The Works of Alexander Hamilton , federal ed., ed. Henry Cabot Lodge (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), vol. 10.

185 “whenever the Government appears in arms”: Hamilton to McHenry, March 18, 1799, ibid.

186 “brave, enterprising, active and diligent”: Hamilton to Adams, September 7, 1799, quoted in Memoirs , 2:157.

186 Washington’s last strategic advice: Washington to Hamilton, September 15, 1799, PGW.

186 “I cannot more safely consign my own Interest”: quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter , 184.

CHAPTER 19: JEFFERSON’S GENERAL

The constitutional importance of JW’s relationship with Jefferson makes the military studies of this period exceptionally useful, especially Crackel’s distinguished Mr. Jefferson’s Army , Skelton’s counterbalancing An American Profession of Arms , and Jackson’s “Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, and the Reduction of the United States Army.”

188 “Blooming still as Hebe”: JW to Hamilton, March 24, 1800, Lodge, Works of Alexander Hamilton.

188 “I defy the most prized of mortal”: JW to Hamilton, June 27, 1800, ibid.

189 “Through all parts of the Country”: Adams to McHenry, May 8, 1800, Adams, Works of John Adams.

189 Absolutely no evidence suggests that JW was responsible for the War Department fire—except for the answer to the age-old question asked of any unsolved crime: Cuibono? Who benefited from the fire?

191 “It is understood on all sides”: Thomas Cushing to JW, February 26, 1800, quoted in Crackel, Mr. Jefferson’s Army.

191 “The Army is undergoing a chaste reformation”: Jefferson to Nathanael Macon, May 14, 1801, ibid.

191 “possessing a knoledge”: Jefferson to JW, February 23, 1800, PTJ.

192 Opinions differ about the effectiveness of Jefferson’s policy of political cleansing (JW was ultimately the chief beneficiary), but no one could doubt the result he intended. 193 “What do you think of the surveyor-general’s office”: JW to Ellicott, March 1801, Ellicott Papers.

193 “I now find that I am inevitably ruined”: Quoted in Linklater, Fabric of America.

193 Ellicott wrote Jefferson: Ellicott testified on January 30, 1808, that he had sent this letter to Jefferson in “the month of June 1801,” Clark, Proofs , 148.

194 “I was determined not to [cut my hair]”: Bissell to D. Bissell, July 9, 1802, quoted in Jacobs, Beginning of the U.S. Army, 1783–1812.

194 In the battle of Butler’s queue, what must have most hurt Wilkinson’s vanity was the ridicule directed at him in Washington Irving’s satire Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History of New York , published in 1809. Irving caricatured JW as the bombastic General Jacobus Van Poffenburgh, with “large, glassy blinking eyes which protruded like those of a lobster.” The best line in the book went to Butler, who told his friends on his deathbed, “Bore a hole in the bottom of my coffin right under my head, and let my queue hang through it, that the d—d old rascal may see that, even when dead, I refuse to obey his order.”

195 “placed under the protection of faithful officers”: Elbridge Gerry to Jefferson, May 4, 1801, PTJ.

196 “ ‘To which of the political creeds do you adhere?’ ”: Quoted in Crackel, Mr. Jefferson’s Army.

196 On October 7, 1802, the result of JW’s boundary-making was a treaty with the Choctaws signed at Fort Confederation, containing the following clause: “The said Choctaw Nation, for, and in consideration of one dollar, to them in hand paid, by the said United States, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, do hereby release to the said United States, and quit claim forever, to all that tract of land [in southern Alabama measuring about a million and a half acres].”

197 JW’s application for the surveyor general’s post was made on May 30, 1802.

197 “In the first case . . . my intimacy with the inhabitants”: Quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter , 195.

198 “If Mr Monroe succeeds all will be well”: JW to Jacob Kingsbury, February 27, 1803, quoted in Crackel, Mr. Jefferson’s Army.