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

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For almost two decades, through the War of 1812, James Wilkinson was the senior general in the United States Army. Amazingly, he was also Agent 13 in the Spanish secret service at a time when Spain's empire dominated North America. Wilkinson's audacious career as a double agent is all the more remarkable because it was an open secret, circulated regularly in newspapers and pamphlets. His saga illuminates just how fragile and vulnerable the young republic was: No fewer than our first four presidents turned a blind eye to his treachery and gambled that the mercurial general would never betray the army itself and use it too overthrow the nascent union—a faith that was ultimately rewarded.
From Publishers Weekly
Anyone with a taste for charming, talented, complex, troubled, duplicitous and needy historical figures will savor this book. A Revolutionary War general at age 20, James Wilkinson (1757–1825), whom few now have heard of, knew everyone of consequence in the early nation, from Washington on down. But he squandered his gifts in repeated and apparently uncontrollable double dealing, betrayals (he spied for Spain), conspiracies and dishonesty in the decades following the war. Wilkinson seemed to pop up everywhere, always trying to make a deal and feather his nest. To those ends, he would as soon turn on those whom he had pledged to help as be traitor to the army he served. The only man he remained true to was Jefferson, who in the end spurned him. No one trusted him, as no one should have. Linklater (
) skillfully captures this sociopathic rogue who, for all his defects, still commands attention from everyone trying to understand the 50 years after 1775. His charisma reaches across two centuries to perplex and fascinate any reader of this fast-paced and fully researched work.

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On March 3 Burr was arrested on the Mobile River by a member of Wilkinson’s snatch squad, Lieutenant Edmund Gaines. When the news arrived in New Orleans at the end of the month, the mood in the city changed abruptly. The general relaxed his grip, armed patrols ceased, the seamen were released, and normal commercial life began to return.

On April 20, Wilkinson left New Orleans to return to Washington. He had reason to believe that his performance as the patriotic hero had been a triumph. Not only had he defeated Burr’s conspiracy, but he had done so in a way that commanded the warm approval of the government and, most important, of Thomas Jefferson himself.

26

TWO TRAITORS ON TRIAL

THE ONE AREA WHERE JAMES WILKINSON remained vulnerable was his past. It was certain that Jonathan Dayton and Aaron Burr would in their defense revive the Western World ’s allegations of his “holding a commission and drawing a pension from the government of Spain.” His first, surprising step, taken while still in New Orleans, was to approach the governor of West Florida, Vizente Folch, to help clear his name. Relying, as he put it, “upon those sympathies which connect military men throughout the civilized world,” he asked Folch to give an assurance that Wilkinson had never been paid by Spain or held a Spanish commission. Since Folch had been living with Miró in 1787 when Wilkinson first appeared in New Orleans and “possessed his confidences in a greater degree” than anyone else, this was tantamount to asking him to lie.

Folch was well prepared, however, because, as he informed Captain General Someruelos, “during the Burr disturbances, the general has by means of a person in his confidence [Thomas Power] constantly maintained a correspondence with me, in which he has laid before me not only the information which he has acquired, but also his intentions for the various exigencies in which he might feel himself.” To give Wilkinson the clearance he wanted, Folch first declared that had the general been guilty, Spanish archives would certainly contain some record of his commission and pension. Then, he announced grandly, “Under my sacred word of honour, no such document, nor any other paper tending to substantiate such assertions, exists in the records in my possession.”

As one critic pointed out, Folch’s declaration was narrow and qualified since he made it in Pensacola while the relevant papers were held in Havana. But at least his Spanish handlers were now prevented from making any embarrassing revelations. In similar fashion, the general persuaded Thomas Power to provide a certificate— to be shown only to the president, Power specified—declaring that Wilkinson had never acted as a Spanish agent. Finally Wilkinson set about insulating himself against the damaging information held by Daniel Clark.

During the summer of 1806, Clark’s loyalties had made another dizzying turn when he at last secured the nomination to be the Orleans Territory’s representative to Congress. In the fall, when rumors of Burr’s movements first reached the city, Claiborne immediately assumed that “the delegate to Congress from this Territory, Daniel Clark, is one of the leaders [of the conspiracy].” But, forced to choose which way to jump, Clark turned against Burr. In mid- October, he advised members of the legislature, including Joseph Bellechasse, commander of the city’s militia, “to forget any personal animosity towards the Governor, and to rally round the government, and die, if necessary, in its defence.” Then he hastily left the city to take up his duties in Washington.

As early as December, Wilkinson had sent Clark a reminder that each of them knew too much about the other’s links to Burr. “Suspicion is afloat! and numbers are implicated,” he wrote, and added with dramatic underlining, “Thank God, your advice to Bellechasse, if your character was not a sufficient guarantee, would vindicate you against any imputation.”

In January 1807, at the height of his dictatorial rule, the general recalled in another letter Clark’s pro- Creole comment about not wanting his children to be part of the United States. “It is a fact,” Wilkinson wrote, “that our fool [Claiborne] has written to his contemptible fabricator [the president] that you had declared if you had children you would teach them to curse the United States as soon as they were able to lisp.” The theme appeared for a third time in March 1807: “Mr. Burr and his accredited agents have made, or endeavour to make, much use of Mr. Clark’s name.” Wilkinson assured him, “General W. has never mentioned it.”

This letter crossed with one sent by Clark from Washington warning Wilkinson, “You are calumniated from all quarters,” with rumors “of your having received 10,000 dollars, at Orleans, of the Spaniards when you went to take possession. I have pointed out the utter impossibility of such a thing.” To this, Wilkinson replied in May, smoothly assuring Clark, “A friendship, founded on almost twenty years acquaintance makes it my peculiar duty, pending the highly important developments which are at issue, to watch over and defend your fame, should it be implicated in the discussion.”

It was a dangerous strategy. As preparations were made for Aaron Burr’s trial, and public excitement mounted about who else had been involved, one or another might conclude more was to be gained from blowing the whistle than keeping such dangerous information secret.

Unnoticed amid the storm of interest stirred up by Burr’s appearance in court was the return to the United States on July 1 of Captain Zebulon Pike and most of his party. An epic of courage and hardiness had taken them close to Santa Fe, where they were, as expected, captured by the Spanish, but not until February 1807. As prisoners, they were then taken down the Camino Real deep into Mexico, ending up, ironically, in Chihuahua, Wilkinson’s ultimate goal. There Salcedo ordered Pike and his men to be released, and they were escorted back through Texas to the border. The expected rescue had never come, the expected war with Spain was not fought, and what was perhaps the real conspiracy with Burr remained hidden.

BY THE TIME JAMES WILKINSON reached Washington, his enemies were waiting for him in force. Chief among them was Aaron Burr. At the time of his arrest, he exclaimed bitterly to Mississippi’s attorney general, “As to any projects or plans which may have been formed between General Wilkinson and myself heretofore, they are now completely frustrated by the perfidious conduct of Wilkinson, and the world must pronounce him a perfidious villain.” With the help of his daughter, Theodosia, and the wealthy Blennerhassett, a powerful legal team under the leadership of Edmund Randolph, George Washington’s attorney general, was assembled to defend Burr, their overt aim being to prove both Burr’s innocence and the general’s guilt.

“Our ground of defence is that Mr. Burr’s expedition was in concurrence with General Wilkinson, against the dominions of the king of Spain, in case of a war,” George Wickham, the most damaging of Burr’s counsel, stated bluntly. “If we prove that, at the time Wilkinson was pretending to favor Burr’s expedition . . . he was receiving a Spanish pension, this will explain his conduct. He defeated the enterprize of Burr by hatching a charge of treason against the United States, on purpose to serve the king whose money he was receiving!”

Others were ready to provide corroborating detail. Even before his arrest, John Adair had pinned the blame for failure on Wilkinson. “Why, something would have been done if Wilkinson had not turned out a damned coward,” he declared on hearing the news from the Sabine River, “for if he had attacked the Spaniards, and the blood of one man had been spilt, the government could not have stopped the western people.” Arrested and shipped north as a prisoner by his former friend, Adair had immediately been released on a writ of habeas corpus and gladly supplied the defense with copies of Wilkinson’s numerous letters encouraging him to “come on” to Mexico.

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