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

In November 1811, the House Committee on Foreign Relations reported on all the complaints against Britain, including the help given to Native Americans resisting American expansion in the west. Two months later, Congress, under the dominance of the War Hawks, voted to increase the army first to ten thousand, then twenty- five thousand regulars, and to create a volunteer force of fifty thousand from the militia of each state. A New England Federalist such as Rufus King might object, “I regard this war as a war of party not of country,” and New York congressman Morris Miller might declare, “We will give you millions for defense but not a cent for the conquest of Canada,” but Congress went ahead anyway to authorize a budget of eleven million dollars for the first year of the conflict. As a nineteenth- century historian succinctly observed, “The war may be said to have been a measure of the South and West to take care of the interests of the North, much against the will of the latter.”

Behind the anomaly lay a shift in attitudes about the nature of the United States that James Wilkinson would have understood better than most. It had first made itself felt during the Burr Conspiracy. The western settlers, whose loyalties once swung with the touch of a feather, now felt themselves to be the center of the nation. Colonel Morgan had boasted to Burr that the capital would one day move from Washington to Pittsburgh, while others predicted it could end as far west as Cincinnati or even St. Louis. In Congress, John Randolph, who represented the voters and values of Virginia, mocked their ambitions, saying “he could almost fancy that he saw the Capitol in motion towards the falls of Ohio—after a short sojourn taking its flight to the Mississippi.” But his mockery demonstrated an inability to appreciate the west’s new, expansionist patriotism.

Beyond the Appalachians, the borderless mind-set of the original pioneers had disappeared. In 1787, when Tennessee was still a territory, John Sevier had been ready to pledge the loyalties of its settlers to His Catholic Majesty, and in 1797 Tennessee’s first senator, William Blunt, was prepared to ally himself with Britain to further his plans. But in 1811, when Tennessee congressman Felix Grundy welcomed the prospect of war, he did so because it would benefit the United States. “I therefore feel anxious,” he said, “not only to add the Floridas to the South, but the Canadas to the North of this empire.” This was the new voice of the Mississippi Valley. In place of coexistence, it nourished the dream that one nation would overfill the continent.

In New England, the old Atlantic loyalty to an idea of American liberty, rather than an American nation, remained strong enough to allow opponents of the war to talk of secession, much as the settlers used to do in the Mississippi Valley. In 1809, their opinions encouraged Canada’s governor general, Sir James Craig, to send the agent John Henry “to discover how far they would look to England for assistance, or be disposed to enter into a connection with us.” The answer was not far, and a discouraged Henry soon gave up, before selling his secret to Madison for fifty thousand dollars. His efforts hardly amounted to a British conspiracy, but then Henry lacked the energy and inventiveness of James Wilkinson.

NEWLY CLEARED, THE GENERAL WAS DESPERATE to take advantage of the opportunities available in the larger army that Congress voted for in January 1812. Two old adversaries, Henry Dearborn and Wade Hampton, had already been promoted above him to major general, and he could not afford to be left without an active command. Yet Madison needed him at least as urgently. Three presidents had learned to handle the difficult, treacherous, but pliable general so that he carried out the contradictory duties they assigned him. In March 1812, politics forced Madison to follow their example.

On March 2, Republican Party chiefs informed Madison that he risked losing the party’s nomination for president at the next election unless he showed a clear commitment to war. A week later, the president published Henry’s papers to demonstrate British aggression and, on April 1, proposed a sixty- day embargo on ships leaving port, a recognized preparation for war. On April 10, James Wilkinson was ordered to take command of the defenses of New Orleans.

Appointed to the same position three years earlier, he had brusquely defied Eustis. This time in half a dozen letters, he meekly asked Eustis to specify exactly the powers he could exercise, and the precise goals the executive wished him to achieve. When a hostile paymaster’s office blocked his claim for almost seven thousand dollars in expenses, he presented his case directly to the secretary of war rather than trying to fiddle the money through secret service funding. A chastened Wilkinson arrived in New Orleans in July to discover that his country had declared war on Britain on June 18.

He found the three regiments of infantry under his command woefully unprepared for hostilities. Senior officers had been detailed for service on the Canadian frontier, leaving gaps in command; so many soldiers were absent that most units were understrength; artillery had been neglected until it was incapable of firing; and long years of penury had caused “a frightful destitution of means in every branch of the service except the hospital.” Overall, he concluded, “Imbecility and disorder prevailed throughout.” In the past Wilkinson would have blamed his predecessor, in this case Wade Hampton, for such dismal conditions. Hampton’s incompetence was never in doubt—William Duane, later Andrew Jackson’s treasury secretary, once exclaimed, “I would not trust a corporal’s guard nor the defense of a hen-roost to him”—but Hampton was Eustis’s man. Now Wilkinson only referred to his own efforts to restore order.

The same downbeat, almost diffident tone persisted throughout his correspondence with the secretary. A rumor of Eustis’s displeasure brought an instant, anxious response. “It has been hinted to me that I may be recalled from this quarter,” he wrote in December. “I do not credit the report, yet I think it proper to express the hope that it may not be the case, because it would expose me to great expense and would separate me from my family, and because my constitution would not bear a northern clime.”

In truth, Eustis was more at risk. Before the first shot was fired, he had promised a quick and overwhelming victory. “We can take the Canadas without soldiers,” he declared with blind optimism, “we have only to send officers into the province and the people . . . will rally round our standard.”

When the three- pronged invasion that was to conquer Canada took place, the reality of twelve years of pinched funding and political neutering became painfully apparent. In August 1812, General William Hull humiliatingly surrendered Detroit without a fight; in October, General Stephen van Rensselaer was defeated at Queenston Heights above Niagara; and from his base in Albany, General Henry Dearborn, handicapped by ill health, found it impossible even to reach the frontier. On January 13, 1813, faced by a rising storm of criticism, Eustis chose to resign.

In the discussions to choose his successor, Wilkinson’s name was suggested, offering a hint of the glittering prospects that might have come his way in other circumstances. John Adams thought that on merit he should have been chosen, but, recognizing how deeply Wilkinson was distrusted, added, “His vanity and the collision of Factions have rendered his appointment improper and impossible.” Instead, the president appointed John Armstrong, who had been a junior officer on General Gates’s staff at Saratoga.

In his training regime and his efforts to restore morale, however, Wilkinson’s showing as a general already compared favorably to anything in the north. And he was about to execute a textbook military operation to enlarge the territory of the United States.