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

His means was Little Turtle. Discovering a sudden enthusiasm for Native American ways, Wilkinson sent the Miami chief in late December to meet the president so that he could plead for what was essentially Washington’s old inclusive policy toward the Indians. “Could I be made instrumental in any way to ameliorate the condition of these people,” the general wrote in an accompanying letter, “and to lay the foundation of their permanent prosperity, it would be more acceptable to me than the most distinguished triumph of arms.”

Adams was delighted both by the chief and by the general’s desire to see what was still Federalist policy carried out in the Northwest Territory. “He is certainly a remarkable man,” the president told Wilkinson. “We shall endeavor to make him happy here and contented after his return. I thank you for introducing him to me and for the infomation you have given me concerning him.”

Wilkinson’s real purpose, however, appeared in the letter that he gave the chief to present to Adams. In it, the commander in chief personally informed the president about the rumors that he was being paid by Spain. “I most sincerely wish an inquiry into my conduct military and political. I know, sir, that a sinister connection with Spain is slanderously imputed to me . . . but conscious of my innocence I court inquiry to obtain an opportunity of vindication, which I have amply in my power.”

Adopting the excuse originally prepared for Washington, he explained away the money from New Orleans as payment for tobacco sales or insurance losses. He reminded the president of a conversation at his inauguration when, as a patriot, Wilkinson had sworn he would employ any means in defense of the United States against British attack. He ended with the superb declaration “It is the invisibility of my enemies only which I fear; for while I dare the open assault, I dread the secret stab.”

Adams habitually relied more on his solitary judgment than the advice of his colleagues— a permanent cause of dissension in his administration— and on this occasion, too, he dismissed the doubts of leading members of his cabinet. In his reply he told the general that he had heard many such allegations, especially that Wilkinson was an officer in the Spanish army— “scarcely any man arrives from [the Mississippi] who does not bring the report along with him,” Adams asserted—but that he believed them to be motivated by malice and jealousy. “I esteem your talents, I respect your services and feel an attachment to your person,” he wrote in February 1798. “What measures you may think fit to take to silence the villainous rumours and clamours of your connections with Spain and France I know not; but no violent or military ones will do any good. I shall give no countenance to any imputations unless accusations should come & then you will have room to justify yourself. But I assure you I do not expect that any charge will be seriously made.”

It was an extraordinary endorsement. Effectively it nullified both Ellicott’s warning and any other that might be made to the Adams administration. Yet in reality the president had little room for maneuver. The federal government was still too new to be sure of its power. The previous summer, Senator William Blount of Tennessee had been discovered plotting with the British to seize New Orleans and the Mississippi Valley, but despite the near unanimous vote of his fellow senators that he was guilty of “a high misdemeanour inconsistent with public trust and duty,” he had simply returned to Tennessee and the U.S. government proved powerless to bring him to trial. Any attempt to remove the efficient, popular Wilkinson might also fail and thereby risk causing a mutiny. Speculating some years later on how the head of the army could be removed in such a situation, Adams posed the question that must have occurred to him in 1797: “How is the subordination of the military to the civil power to be supported?”

WITH ADAMS’S LETTER IN HIS FILES, Wilkinson became virtually impregnable to a Federalist ambush. He reveled in his new security. In October 1797, he had moved the army’s headquarters to Pittsburgh, conveniently located between the western states and the federal government. Although Pittsburgh was no Philadelphia, what had been a frontier settlement when Wilkinson first descended the Ohio was now “a thriving town containing about 200 houses, fifty of which are brick and Fram’d, & the remainder Log.” On the army’s budget, he transformed a large frame house on the east side of town into an imposing dwelling fit for a commander in chief. “The surrounding grounds were handsomely laid out, planted, and ornamented by General Wilkinson,” an English traveler noted in 1807, “and considering the smallness of the field he had to work on, [they] show much taste and are an ornament to the eastern and principal approach to the town.”

The setting was comfortable enough to satisfy the demanding Nancy, and Wilkinson’s credit had so improved that in July he could tell the army paymaster “that provisions will always be made at Headquarters under whatever events to honor Mrs Wilkinson’s drafts at sight.” A draft was in effect a check: one payable at sight, rather than a month or year later, as good as cash, and an unmistakable sign of wealth. “I prefer this plan,” he assured Samuel Hodgdon, now in charge of military finances, with the confidence of a man whose chaotic accounts were temporarily in order, “because it enables her to appropriate [money] to her expenditure with precision.”

To reach this satisfactory position, it seems clear that Wilkinson had begun to replace his pay as a spy by taking rake-offs from contractors who wanted to open trading stores in Indian territory or close to military barracks. One of the first was the Canadian company of Leith, Shepherd & Duff, which paid a fee in 1797 for the privilege of operating among the Chippewa near Detroit, but the practice soon became so habitual that the general thought nothing of writing to a food company hoping to land an army contract “to apprise you of my ready disposition to enter into your Service & of my determination to do it well for you .”

Cushioned by these extracurricular payments and by the use of army resources, such as the military wagons that carried their furniture and wine from the East Coast, the entire family could live together in comfort for the first time since James Wilkinson left to make a fortune in Kentucky. “Your dear Sister and our Sons are near me in good health,” he wrote his brother-in-law Owen Biddle in December 1797. “My Ann unusually hearty. We are comfortably fixed and I suppose shall spend the winter here.”

Yet security was impossible for a double agent as deeply involved as Wilkinson. Almost as he wrote, Gayoso received word from Madrid that Captain Isaac Guion’s force could at last be allowed into Natchez. An astounded Ellicott described to Pickering how, immediately after Guion’s arrival, the captain burst into a meeting of the American planters’ committee that administered Natchez, demanding to know “by what authority they met, that it was improper, and by G-d he would dissolve them the next day— he knew better than to be made a cypher of and by G-d he would rule the district with a rod of iron . . . after a debate of some length, he took his leave very politely saying ‘you may all kiss my a*se.’ ”

Ellicott may have been right to blame Guion’s behavior on drink, but the captain was acting on orders. Behind his rudeness to Americans lay the general’s fear of giving offense to Spaniards. Once Gayoso was ready to evacuate the forts along the Mississippi, the commander in chief of the U.S. army lost his insurance policy against betrayal. Even if Gayoso kept silent, Wilkinson could be sure that the citizens of Natchez would not.