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

They were too intimately attached, and she was too sensitive, for Nancy not to have had some idea of the Spanish connection, but it is doubtful that she understood its full complexity. To his dying day, he would publicly insist that every payment from New Orleans was a profit or insurance payment on his tobacco trade, and even to himself he never seemed to acknowledge what was involved. Yet Nancy’s need for little luxuries such as sugar and coffee, and his desire to see her in an elegant carriage, and their joint pleasure in parties and liberal hospitality, were inseparable from his need for Carondelet’s dollars.

NANCY’S ARRIVAL AT Fort Washington was followed barely a month later by the distinctly less welcome appearance of Wayne and a long convoy of boats carrying the Legion, now more than eleven hundred strong. The decision to ship his men down the Ohio was prompted by Wayne’s conviction that they were being corrupted by their proximity to the taverns and brothels of Pittsburgh—“that Gomorrah,” as he called it. A hint of the commander’s state of mind emerged when he landed at Cincinnati and, to Wilkinson’s relief, discovered it to be “filled with ardent poison & Caitiff wretches to dispose of it . . . a man possessed of the least tincture of morality must wish his stay here as short as possible.” The army was moved to a site between the river and a swamp that Wayne named Hobson’s Choice, implying that no alternative place could be found.

But Wayne faced more problems than creating an encampment in rough country. The most serious was the information from Philadelphia that a lack of recruits would limit the size of the Legion to three thousand men, and that to make up the numbers fifteen hundred Kentucky volunteers would have to be taken on. The least of his anxieties seemed to be the conduct of his second- in- command, which, Wayne assured Knox, “bespeaks the officer & merits my highest approbation.” Knox, however, was more cautious and felt it necessary to issue a thinly veiled warning to Wilkinson in May 1793: “I am persuaded your good sense as well as inclination will lead you to unite cordially with General Wayne, and promote a spirit of harmony throughout the whole corps.”

The general’s arrival did indeed bring to the surface the jealousy and bitterness Wilkinson felt at being passed over for command. Through the summer, each of Wayne’s many failings was passed on to the formidable array of political contacts that Wilkinson still maintained in Philadelphia. The most prominent was his brother- in- law, Clement Biddle, the president’s lawyer, who had always received a heavy correspondence from Wilkinson detailing the difficulties he encountered with quarreling officers and inadequate equipment.

The Biddle influence was reinforced by Knox’s liking for Nancy Wilkinson, who, until her return to the Ohio in May 1793, served as a two- way channel of communication between her husband and the War Department. “I have often expressed to her and to Colonel Biddle,” Knox assured Wilkinson that spring, “the pleasure your conduct gave to the President of the United States.” And to reinforce the coziness, the president himself was the recipient of gifts from Wilkinson, such as two kegs of fish taken from the Miami River on the uttermost limits of the United States and presented in the modest hope that “the novelty of the thing may render it acceptable.” Washington accepted the fish, politely agreeing that they were “truly a Novelty here,” but a second gift, sent in April 1793, pleased him more. This was a map drawn by Wilkinson of the country north of the Ohio where war with the Indians could be expected. It was, the president assured him, “the best description extant of the country to which it relates” and “affords me the greatest satisfaction.”

By contrast Wayne’s reputation in Philadelphia was corroded by reports of his “petulant” behavior toward his officers, and his authoritarian regime amounting to what one subordinate called “abject servitude.” Some of the complaints stemmed from the commander’s natural abrasiveness—“There is no calculating on anything but insult and oppression [from him],” one subordinate complained. But Wayne’s behavior clearly became more extreme as the pressure of molding his new army mounted. In November 1793, the general lost all self- control when Major Thomas Cushing complained about an inefficient captain on Wayne’s staff.

Instead of investigating the complaint, Wayne placed the major under arrest and charged a junior officer, Captain Isaac Guion, with unmilitary conduct for daring to offer evidence to substantiate Cushing’s original complaint. When Colonel John Hamtramck, the solid, unexcitable commander of the First Sub- Legion, explained that Wayne’s staff officer really had failed to carry out general orders, Wayne issued him an official reprimand for his “disrespectful” intervention. “There is no doubt about it,” Hamtramck concluded, “the old man really is mad.”

Like others slighted by Wayne, the three officers turned to the convivial Wilkinson for sympathy, and he supported them because he, too, felt disparaged by the autocratic Wayne. “My General treats me with great civility, and with much professed Friendship,” he told Harry Innes in October, “yet I am an O, for he conceals his intentions from me, never asks my opinion, & when sense of Duty forces me to give it, he acts against it.”

To retaliate, Wilkinson instigated a string of pinprick complaints about unsatisfactory supplies at Fort Washington of gunpowder, uniforms, food, and disciplinary power, all of which required Knox to send Wayne irritating reminders ordering him to inquire “into the nature and degree of the Confusion of Stores and Clothing complained of by Brigadier General Wilkinson,” and to remedy instantly “complaints relative to the pay department in the district of Brigadier General Wilkinson.” Even on the question of discipline, Wilkinson found cause for criticism. “Your remarks of the disproportionate punishments of death, or one hundred lashes, are just,” Knox agreed, “and the suggestions of hard labour, seem to promise better success, and I shall communicate the same to Major-general Wayne.”

With growing conviction, Wilkinson believed he could persuade Knox to replace Wayne as commander. When Wayne demanded more troops, Wilkinson sent Philadelphia his plan for a lightning strike into the heart of Indian territory with an army half the Legion’s size. When Wayne declared that he required two hundred cavalry to protect each supply train to the forts, Wilkinson let the War Department know that he had needed only one hundred militia. When Wayne had to order the Kentucky cavalry to come under his direct command, Wilkinson was quick to remind Knox how those same horsemen volunteered to serve under him.

To Wayne himself, however, Wilkinson remained loyal and friendly. “Ever anxious for action & ready for duty,” he wrote Wayne from Fort Jefferson, “you have only to order & the execution will follow, with promptitude & Energy.” As Christmas 1793 approached, a festive invitation was sent to the Legion’s commander: “Mrs. W. ventures to hope your Excellency may find it convenient & consistent to take dinner with Her on the 25th inst. with your suite, & any eight or ten gentlemen of your cantonment you may think proper should attend you; she begs leave to assure you the Dinner shall be a Christian one, in commemoration of the Day, and in Honor of Her Guest, and on my part I will promise a welcome from the Heart, a warm fire, and a big- bellied Bottle of the veritable Lachrymae Christi. We pray you answer.”

LACHRYMA CHRISTI, a sweet, succulent Mediterranean wine, did not come cheap in the land of raw, moonshine whiskey. That the near-bankrupt Wilkinson could afford it on a general’s salary of $104 a month pointed to his successful role as Agent 13. He already had four thousand dollars from Carondelet, but the sudden collapse of the French threat to Louisiana promised still more.