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

UNTIL NOVEMBER 10, Wilkinson kept a flickering hope of success alive. On land and water British forces maintained a harassing pursuit of the army. Despite his sickness, Wilkinson continued to be sufficiently energetic to keep them at bay. On two occasions, enemy schooners and galleys that had slipped past Chauncey’s uncertain defenses were rapidly turned back by fire from a battery of heavy guns Wilkinson ordered to be unshipped and placed on the bank. On the north side of the river, Brown could always be relied on to outflank and drive off any would- be ambushers. As they approached the rapids of the Longue Saut, however, the boats threatened to race ahead of the marching soldiers, and to slow them down Wilkinson ordered them to anchor early. Overcome by a return of his fever, he took to his bed and gave command to Lewis. Meanwhile Jacob Brown went ahead to explore the land alongside the rapids, leaving John Boyd in command on the north side of the river. The delay also allowed a British pursuing force of about fifteen hundred regulars and militia under Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Morrison to catch up.

Late in the afternoon of that gray, overcast day, Boyd launched a series of ill-organized and uncoordinated attacks against Morrison’s strongly held defensive position on the perimeter of some open ground known as Crysler’s Field. By nightfall, 321 of Boyd’s 3,000-strong force had been killed or wounded, and the survivors were forced to retreat to the river.

Subdued and sullen, Wilkinson’s men boarded the boats, and the next day the long line of vessels hurtled down the rapids. Waiting at the foot of the Longue Saut was another messenger from Wade Hampton. He had one final blow to deliver. Instead of marching toward Montreal as ordered, Hampton had turned back to Lake Champlain, where he intended to go into winter quarters. On November 16 Wilkinson submitted this news to a council of senior officers. Unanimously they agreed that “the attack on Montreal should be suspended for the present season.”

THERE COULD BE NO COMING BACK. He had been given the chance of winning the war and had failed. From Albany, Secretary of War John Armstrong wrote that he found it “quite incredible” that Wilkinson should have been defeated by an inferior force, adding, shamelessly, that if only Wilkinson had taken Kingston, “the upper province [of Canada] was won.” Desperately the general replied by laying the blame on Hampton’s refusal to obey orders and demanded he be arrested for his “outrage of every principle of subordination and discipline.” But it was a useless appeal. Hampton had already resigned, and Wilkinson’s tainted reputation was against him. A man already charged with responsibility for Terre aux Boeufs, participation in the Burr Conspiracy, and being a Spanish pensioner could hardly expect the public to believe he had nothing to do with the failure of the Montreal expedition.

Through the winter, his army shivered and sickened in makeshift huts constructed in the forest by French Mills, now Fort Covington, just south of the St. Lawrence. Inexplicably Hampton had furloughed all his officers before resigning himself. The confusion that ensued cut off supplies of food and medicine coming from Albany. Pneumonia, dysentery, and typhus spread until, as Wilkinson himself admitted, “The mortality spread so deep a gloom over our camps, that funeral dirges were countermanded.” On his own responsibility, the general rented buildings to accommodate 450 patients in the settlement of Malone, ten miles to the south where he had his headquarters. But a steady stream of deserters testified to the demoralization of his army. On January 27, 1814, an official tally of the force at French Mills showed that of the 8,143 men who had left Sackets Harbor, only 4,777 remained ready for duty.

Nevertheless, in a final bid to escape the impending wreck of his career, the general searched for a last- ditch victory. Unable to ride because of his illness, he had himself towed in a sled “on which a box is placed to receive my bed” to Plattsburgh to discuss a winter offensive with General George Izard, who had been drafted to replace Hampton. From there Wilkinson went on to Albany to suggest to New York governor Daniel Tompkins an attack on Prescott, using the combined forces at French Mills and Plattsburgh, bulked up with New York militia. Tompkins, who had been warned by John Armstrong to expect a sick old man on the edge of resignation, was surprised by the veteran’s unabated forcefulness. “He threatens to make a dash soon,” he told Armstrong after the meeting. “I have great confidence in your penetration upon most subjects, but I fear you have not formed a correct judgment of the General’s talents and qualifications. He is wonderfully tenacious of his authority and is very indifferent about his old carcass, and vapours too much.”

Determined to prevent the general from exercising command again, Armstrong immediately ordered General Jacob Brown to take two thousand men from French Mills back to Sackets Harbor and withdrew the rest to Plattsburgh. Wilkinson protested that this order “blasted all my hopes, subjected the public to millions of expense, [and] sacrificed thrice the number of men Prescott would have cost.” As he had done throughout his career, he responded by demanding a public inquiry, then, without waiting for Armstrong’s reply, fixed on another, less ambitious target. This was a strongpoint called La Colle Mill, situated thirty miles farther down the Champlain Valley, whose capture would open the road to Montreal.

On March 29, a force of 3,999 men accompanied by eleven guns marched north from Plattsburgh. For the last time in his career, the general issued a stirring order—“Every officer and every man [must] return victorious or not at all, for with double the force of the enemy, this army must not give ground”—but for the first time in his career, he neglected intelligence. Without maps, his inexperienced scouts became lost, and the heaviest of his artillery, the eighteen-pounders, sank axle-deep in slushy mud.

Not until late on March 30 did the first men reach the target, an imposing, stone- built mill with stone walls on either side offering protection to the six hundred defenders. From about 150 yards, the attackers fired their muskets, and when they proved ineffective, the lighter guns, twelve-pounders, were brought up. Once it became clear that their shot could do no more than chip the stone walls, the conflict descended into stalemate until at dusk Wilkinson ordered his men to withdraw. Two days later, the last of his force dragged the guns back into camp. Even before the expedition had left Plattsburgh, orders had been sent from Washington relieving him of his command pending a court- martial. Thus the military career of Major General James Wilkinson ended with a whimper on April Fools’ Day.

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THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

THE COURT- MARTIAL ORDERED for the general’s failure on the Canadian frontier was the third military tribunal he had faced. On top of that, he had already been subjected to four congressional investigations into allegations of misdeeds, and two more unofficial trawls through his past by Luther Martin and Daniel Clark. Despite the wealth of allegations against him, he had not yet been found guilty, and it was said of him with increasing frequency that he had never won a battle but never lost an inquiry. The sheer number of probes testified to his public reputation among contemporaries, and from the perspective of two hundred years it is tempting to regard them as rough justice, a way of getting even for the undoubted lies he told to conceal his actions as a Spanish agent.

Yet with the hindsight of history, what seems overwhelmingly obvious is that the wrong accusations were leveled against him. Even the one charge of which he was certainly guilty, covert treachery to the United States, was less damaging than his overt and repeated betrayal of the army. Yet no court could try him for acquiescence in its political neutering and financial strangulation because the instigators were Presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.