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

In the short term, he suggested two tactical moves, one of which directly betrayed one of the president’s most vital secrets, the proposed exploration of a route to the Pacific by an expedition under Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, which was due to depart from St. Louis later that year. Since any weakness would encourage the westward expansion of the United States, Wilkinson urged the Spanish authorities to “detach a sufficient body of chasseurs to intercept Captain Lewis and his party . . . and force them to retire or take them prisoners.” Second, and perhaps more surprisingly since it affected his own burgeoning plans, he recommended that Spain should “drive back every illegal usurpation toward the region of Texas” and prevent any exploration of the Red and Arkansas rivers; otherwise “they will very quickly explore the right path which will lead them to the capital of Santa Fe.” Finally, the governors of Texas and Florida should fortify their frontiers to prevent American incursions.

As a general survey, Wilkinson’s “Reflections” offered a realistic assessment of the unpromising situation facing Spain. The territorial exchange was not an impossible scenario: the Floridas were what Jefferson had originally instructed his negotiators to acquire. They contained good harbors and the mouths of the Mobile, Tombigbee, and Apalachicola rivers, all important routes for western producers aiming to transport flour and tobacco to the outside world. Many influential figures believed that in economic terms the Floridas made a more immediately useful addition to the United States than the empty desert of Louisiana, whose open spaces would only encourage settlers to scatter across an area too large to govern.

His advice on frontiers certainly convinced the Council of the Indies to recommend later that year the establishment of an inviolable boundary between Texas and Louisiana stretching north from the Gulf Coast along the Arroyo Hondo River, today the Calcasieu River. Folch himself rigidly turned down every American request to descend the three great rivers flowing through the Floridas.

But the greatest immediate value of Wilkinson’s paper lay in the intelligence about Lewis and Clark, which by any standard represented high-grade information. Publicly Jefferson had characterized Lewis and Clark’s expedition as no more than the kind of “literary pursuit which [Spain] is in the habit of permitting within its own dominions.” Nevertheless, their proposed route following the upper reaches of the Missouri would take them through territory still claimed by Spain. Furthermore, in a secret message to Congress in January 1803, Jefferson had revealed that the expedition’s real purpose was to “explore the whole line, even to the Western ocean,” thus establishing a claim to the entire region.

Recognizing the importance of Wilkinson’s information, Casa Calvo immediately instructed Antonio Cordero y Bustamante, the energetic acting governor of Texas, to take steps to counter this “daring undertaking” and to make every effort to “divert and even to destroy such expeditions.” As a result, at least three attempts by an armed patrol of two hundred men sent out under Captain Pedro Vial were made to kill or capture Lewis and Clark’s party. Had they succeeded, the history of western exploration would have been delayed for a generation, with far-reaching consequences including the unopposed expansion of British settlement throughout Oregon.

With the added prospect of Wilkinson’s report on the president’s thinking, Casa Calvo and Folch agreed it was worth paying him twelve thousand dollars. As a bonus, they also gave Wilkinson a permit to export sixteen hundred barrels of flour annually to Havana, a source of profit with the potential to make good some of the shortfall on his original demand.

For the first time, Wilkinson received the full amount of his reward for treachery without having to pay intermediaries or risk the murder of messengers. And unlike in previous betrayals, on this occasion he intended to replicate his success by betraying Spain’s secrets to the United States.

IN THE UNITED STATES nothing was known of his return to active work as a Spanish agent, but doubts about his loyalty were never far from the surface. Apart from his initial report on the peaceful state of the city, Wilkinson had gone silent in New Orleans, ignoring Dearborn’s increasingly frantic demands for information. “You have taken no notice of any of my letters,” the secretary of war wrote in February, “[at a time] when information had been highly important relative to any Military operations.” When Wilkinson did reply, it was to cast doubts on Claiborne’s capacity, declaring that the province would be better run by “a Military executive Magistrate.” Alerted by Daniel Clark to rising anti-American feeling in the city, and apparently fearing some sort of military coup, Jefferson asked Dearborn in February to intervene: “It is so important that Wilkenson’s [ sic ] maneuvers should be understood. He is turning on us the batteries of our friends in aid of his own . . . he should be brought away as soon as possible, or I should not wonder if some disturbance be produced to keep him there.”

On March 4, all of Louisiana was officially handed over to the United States, and in those outlying forts and towns that had not yet registered the original transfer from Spain to France, the flags of all three nations were flown within a single day. On that day the general’s term of office as military commissioner officially ended, and Dearborn wasted no time in ordering his return to Washington. By then rumors were beginning to spread through New Orleans about Wilkinson’s sudden purchases of sugar. Suspecting another Spanish payment, Clark persuaded an equally dubious Morales to let him examine the Louisiana books, but, as he reported back to Claiborne, found nothing—the twelve thousand dollars appeared only in the Mexico accounts. Wilkinson’s assertion that an old tobacco deal had at last paid off strained credulity, but there seemed no other explanation.

When the general sailed for Washington in April 1804, he took with him the mirror image of “Reflections,” a twenty-two- page strategy document prepared for American eyes, accompanied by eighteen hand-drawn maps of the country between the Mississippi and the Rio Grande— the very territory he suggested that Spain should fortify against U.S. expansion. He also transported a large cargo of sugar purchased with part of the payment for “Reflections,” and the assurance that once more his Spanish handlers would not refer to him by name, only by his old nom d’espionnage , Agent 13.

WITHIN WEEKS OF HIS RETURN to Washington, Wilkinson had developed a relationship with Jefferson close enough to suggest he did have an inkling of what the president concealed in his heart. If so, part of the secret concerned Jefferson’s continuing apprehension of the dangers of a standing army, and his wish for greater control over it.

To meet Jefferson’s needs, Wilkinson drew up a new set of Articles of War on his return from New Orleans that dramatically increased the president’s power in matters of military discipline. The most contentious change concerned the individual soldier’s allegiance. Under the old Articles of War, composed in 1776, a soldier swore “to be true to the United States of America” and was forbidden to utter “traitorous and disrespectful words against the authority of the United States in Congress assembled.” The Constitution had designated the president as commander in chief, but so far as the army was concerned, the chain of command stopped at the senior general. The president had to exert control through him over the military, the most potent instrument of executive authority.