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

Gates made his appreciation known on July 20 by promoting Wilkinson to brigade major, and appointing him to the staff of his own favorite general, Arthur St. Clair. Soon afterward Wilkinson fell sick with typhoid fever himself and was sent back to the army’s headquarters in Albany, where he almost died. Later he used to claim that he came so close to death he could hear the planks being sawed in the yard outside to make his coffin. Fortunately he came under the care of the army’s senior medical officer, who had orders from Gates to keep the young officer alive at any cost.

By the time he was again fit for duty, St. Clair’s brigade had moved south to join Washington, and so Gates attached Wilkinson to his own staff. When the general marched south in December with four regiments from Albany in response to Washington’s urgent request for reinforcements, Wilkinson went with him. The next tumultuous month altered the course of many careers, not least those of the general and the new major.

HAVING DRIVEN WASHINGTON out of New York during the early fall of 1776, General William Howe had unexpectedly followed him into New Jersey instead of going into winter quarters. Taken by surprise, with part of his force under General Charles Lee still in Westchester, New York, and many of his militia anxious to return home at the end of the year, Washington himself was in acute danger of being overwhelmed by pursuing British forces. Unsure where the commander in chief had retreated to, Gates sent his newly recovered aide ahead to find Washington.

Scouting for clues in the confusion of war, Wilkinson rode through northern New Jersey and eventually learned that Washington and most of his troops had crossed the Delaware River farther south into Pennsylvania. With swarms of British troops roaming the area, he decided to consult General Lee, Washington’s second-in- command, who had moved his headquarters close to Morristown, New Jersey. Lee was a fighting general, and an exponent of small-scale warfare. During a period of his life when he’d lived as a Native American with a Seneca wife, his aggressive behavior earned him the nickname Boiling Water. He had learned his trade in the British army, then left to become a mercenary, participating in any European war he could find. As a result, he was, in Washington’s estimation, “the first officer in Military knowledge and experience we have in the whole army.”

At nightfall on December 12, Wilkinson found Lee at an inn outside Morristown, apparently unperturbed that the Connecticut militia guarding him had just decided to return to their homes. Not until the following morning did Lee draft a letter to Gates. Its message was unrelievedly gloomy. Lee believed that, to make best use of his untrained militia troops, Washington should be conducting a guerrilla campaign rather than trying to confront in open battle a professional army that could bring devastating firepower to bear on its enemy through parade- ground maneuvers.

“ Entre nous a certain great man is damnably deficient,” Lee told Gates. Washington’s mistaken strategy had left Philadelphia defenseless and the army on the verge of defeat. “Unless something turns up which I do not expect, our cause is lost. Our counsels have been weak to the last degree.”

Lee intended to remain in Morristown, despite Washington’s repeated requests that Lee move his forces west of the Delaware. However, Lee advised Gates to join their chief as soon as possible, with the implication that he would be needed as a replacement before long.

Lee was still eating breakfast in his dressing gown and slippers when Wilkinson heard hoofbeats on the road and looking out of the window saw a troop of British dragoons gallop up to the inn. Too late, Lee realized that he was the target of an enemy raid carried out virtually within sight of his army. He attempted to hide in the chimney, but, when Wilkinson appeared at the window, the horsemen swore they would shoot and set fire to the building unless Lee surrendered. Convinced it was not a bluff, the general gave himself up and was hustled away, still in his bedroom slippers, leaving Wilkinson to deliver his letter to Gates.

Lee was not only Gates’s friend, but an authority in the area where Gates was weakest, the command of troops in battle. His message crystallized Gates’s opposition to Washington. From then on, he, too, espoused the use of guerrilla warfare relying on militia forces. Following Lee’s advice, however, Gates hurried to join Washington west of the Delaware River. He arrived on December 20, and with the addition of more than two thousand troops Washington at once began to plan a counterstroke against a Hessian brigade stationed across the river in Trenton, New Jersey.

Believing the attack would fail, Gates refused to take part. With the excuse that he was ill, he left for Philadelphia, intending to travel on to Baltimore, where Congress had retreated to escape the threat of British marauders. Wilkinson loyally went with him until they reached Philadelphia. There he decided he could not miss the battle. In a testimony to their friendship Gates gave him an excuse to return in the form of a letter for Washington.

On Christmas morning, Wilkinson galloped back from Philadelphia, arriving toward nightfall as the long lines of American troops were getting ready to be ferried over the icy Delaware for Washington’s surprise attack. So poorly shod were the soldiers that Wilkinson later recalled the trail from their barracks to McKonky’s Ferry was “easily traced, for there was a little snow on the ground which was tinged here and there with blood from the feet of the men with broken shoes.” To transport them with their heavy packs across the water was a dangerous operation made more hazardous by swirling ice floes and a high wind that drove snow in the ferrymen’s faces. When Wilkinson came up with Washington to deliver Gates’s letter, the commander in chief was about to ride out to inspect this first, critical phase of his plan. The encounter remained etched in the young man’s memory.

“What a time is this to hand me letters!” Washington exclaimed. Wilkinson replied that the dispatch was from General Gates, and Washington’s response showed that he was not even aware that his senior general had gone.

“Where is General Gates?” he demanded.

Wilkinson answered that Gates was in Philadelphia, to which Washington angrily asked why he had gone there.

“I understood him that he was on his way to Congress,” Wilkinson replied.

“On his way to Congress!” Washington burst out, and the depth of pent- up exasperation in his voice betrayed his tension. Coupled with Lee’s refusal to obey orders, Gates’s blatant decision to ignore his wishes in order to lobby Congress must have made plain to Washington that after a year of defeats his authority was slipping away. His future, and that of the cause he served, depended on the surprise attack he had planned. As Wilkinson himself admitted, he was so shaken by his commander in chief’s anger that he could say nothing, but “made my bow and left.”

The details of Trenton, Wilkinson’s first experience of battle, never faded, but he recalled with particular clarity the river crossing. A flotilla of boats had been assembled, and almost three thousand men had to be assigned, marshaled, and marched aboard in the midst of a snowstorm, an operation supervised by Henry Knox, whose “stentorian lungs and extraordinary exertions” were in Wilkinson’s view essential to the proceedings. Out on the water, the difficulties only grew more severe as “the force of the current, the sharpness of the frost, the darkness of the night, the ice which made during the operation and the high wind, rendered the passage of the river extremely difficult.”

In these extreme conditions the operation fell more than two hours behind schedule. Once across, however, Washington’s force divided into two columns and marched south, the right column hugging the riverbank while, two miles inland, the left advanced directly into Trenton. General St. Clair’s brigade was closest to the river, and as Brigade Major Wilkinson marched with them, they circled round the town to block the exit on the far side. By now the operation was so late that what had been planned as a night attack became a daylight assault, but it was still unexpected because the defenders of Trenton never imagined that the Delaware could be crossed in such a storm.