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

HECTORDE CARONDELET had many reasons for treating the general generously, and all were conneected to the fragile defense of Louisiana. Its protection depended heavily on alliances made with the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek nations, which lived along its borders. With a stiffening of Spanish regulars and militia operating from forts along the Mississippi, the threat of Indian war parties provided a deterrent to the sort of expeditions that bellicose settlers often talked of sending down the river to attack New Orleans. But the awesome power exhibited at Fallen Timbers by the Legion of the United States was on a different scale. Against such an army Caron-delet had no defense.

The threat it posed became more real when Jay’s Treaty was ratified in June 1795, signaling the imminent withdrawal of British troops from the forts they occupied south of the Great Lakes. Once the distraction on its northern border had been removed, the United States became free to enforce its interests in the south. At the same time, the risk of an attack from France had suddenly increased following the invasion of Spain by French armies in 1795. In such circumstances, Louisiana became a legitimate target. From the standpoint of those in New Orleans, her most useful resource appeared to be the secret information and hidden influence of a senior American general.

Wilkinson had already proved his usefulness in several specific ways. Although Carondelet mistakenly attached particular value to his role in undermining the George Rogers Clark expedition, the most valuable results came from the flow of intelligence he provided about U.S. military intentions and capability, and from the insights he offered about how they might be countered. The most obvious example was his recommendation to Miró to build a fort at New Madrid. Its construction immediately curbed U.S. expansion down the Mississippi and encouraged a surge of settlement into what would become Missouri, not just by Anglo- Americans but by more than a thousand Shawnees and Delawares, who were given land, as Gayoso explained, “with a view to their rendering us aid in case of war with the whites as well as with the Osages.” And as Carondelet found, the fort became increasingly useful as a jumping-off point for agents and couriers who needed to enter the United States.

In June 1794, Wilkinson passed on General Wayne’s plan to rebuild Fort Massac, near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and strongly advised Spain to counter with an outpost of its own. In response, Gayoso ordered the construction of a stockade almost opposite the mouth of the Ohio. Although it never became a major defense post, Wilkinson’s insistence on the need for more Spanish fortifications on the Mississippi persuaded Carondelet to authorize the creation of a new fortress below New Madrid. In 1795, Gayoso negotiated the necessary transfer of land from the Chickasaws and in the fall traveled north to supervise the building of an ambitious new fort at Chickasaw Bluffs, the site of modern Memphis, Tennessee.

In Carondelet’s eyes, however, the greatest prize remained the secession of Kentucky, which would in itself safeguard Louisiana. His interest had been aroused early in 1794 by a letter written by Harry Innes at Wilkinson’s instigation that suggested Kentuckians had grown disenchanted with a federal government that had taxed their whiskey for three years and still not secured free navigation of the Mississippi. In April 1795 the general himself added confirmatory evidence by mailing Carondelet a copy of the Kentucky Gazette containing letters from Innes and the state governor, Isaac Shelby, about Kentucky’s growing impatience to have the Mississippi opened to navigation. The possibility of detaching the state excited Caron-delet’s imagination in a way that blinded him to both the reality of the United States’ growing power and the deceitfulness of Agent 13.

Yet clearly, Wilkinson’s information and advice had earned him such respect in New Orleans, it was difficult to ignore his suggestion. His standing was referred to in a memorandum prepared some years later by an outsider, a patriotic Frenchman, Joseph de Pontalba, who lived in Louisiana but looked forward eagerly to the moment when France again ruled the province. In the paper that he presented to Napoléon in 1800, Pontalba emphasized the pervasive influence exerted on the Spanish authorities “by a powerful inhabitant of Kentucky, who possesses much influence with his countrymen, and enjoys great consideration for the services he has rendered to the cause of liberty, when occupying high grades in the army of the United States; [but] who . . . has never ceased to serve Spain in all her views.”

Based on his own experience, he pinpointed two essential priorities to be followed by whichever country held New Orleans— and Pontalba was certain this should be France. It must aim to secure the economic loyalties of Kentucky’s citizens by guaranteeing to buy their tobacco, and it should “renew the intelligences which the Government of Louisiana had with the individual of whom I have spoken.” So long as these rules were followed, Louisiana would become a source of prosperity, power, and “the most brilliant destinies” for France.

But the most concrete tribute to Wilkinson’s value was Carondelet’s decision to make good the loss caused by Owens’s murder. Replying to Wilkinson in July 1795, he promised to send the general another $9,640 on top of the original $12,333. To encourage the renewal of the Spanish Conspiracy, Wilkinson’s friends were to have pensions as well—“You must not entertain the least doubt of the advantages they will derive,” Carondelet declared— and there existed a still more glittering prize. Carondelet could only hint at it, but an independent Kentucky, united with Tennessee and the Northwest Territory, would make a new Mississippi nation requiring its own president. “And G.W. can aspire to the same dignity in the western states that P.W. has in the eastern,” Carondelet suggested beguilingly. That the initials stood for General Wilkinson and President Washington respectively needed no elucidation. Over the next twenty years, the vision of a western United States was to occur in various forms to many people, not least to Thomas Jefferson and his vice president Aaron Burr, but it lodged most tenaciously in the mind of James Wilkinson.

SPEED WAS ESSENTIAL if the conspiracy to bring about Kentucky’s secession was to succeed. Since Gayoso was already in New Madrid to supervise fort construction on the Mississippi, Carondelet promised that he would be available to confer with members of the Spanish Conspiracy. The latter were to come “authentically empowered by the State of Kentucky to treat with us secretly,” while Gayoso would be authorized on behalf of the Spanish to offer “full execution concerning the navigation of the Misisipi [ sic ].” Meanwhile Wilkinson could guarantee pensions of two thousand dollars to Innes, Sebastian, the Federalist William Murray, and George Nicholas—reputedly the wealthiest man in Kentucky.

This proposal was delivered to Wilkinson, still isolated in Fort Washington, by Carondelet’s personal messenger, the resourceful Thomas Power, who came upriver in October 1795. Unfortunately for Power’s attempts at secrecy, his movements were reported to General Wayne. At a public dinner in Cincinnati, Wayne declared Power to be “a spy for the British, a spy for the Spanish, and a spy for somebody else.” No one doubted that the “somebody else” was James Wilkinson.

It was not difficult to identify something alien in Power. Almost everyone knew him as a Spanish courier— Wilkinson himself referred to him as “the celebrated Power”—and none who met him more than once seems to have liked him. He apparently had no home life—“traveling was my ruling passion,” he admitted— and his letters have a voluble, petulant tone. Furious at being outed by Wayne, he denounced the spying accusation as “ungenerous, illiberal, wanton, groundless, cruel, false, stupid, base and contemptible.” Perhaps his sensitive, emotional nature made him a good spy—Carondelet certainly credited him with an exceptional “power of penetration,” and the secrets he picked up in his restless journeying made him valuable to several different employers.